Will your crypto project be censored? Philosophy and practice of censorship with Costanza Gallo

Costanza and I work for this worm Association and today we're going to talk about censorship what it is and why we care about it so before I start I want to make sure that everyone here is comfortable we're going to talk about blasphemy genocide extreme violence so if for whatever reason you are not comfortable I don't mind if you just leave and I'm gonna be happy to have a one-to-one chat with you later also disclaimers I'm not a lawyer and this is not legal advice and whatever I'm saying does not represent an organization that I am or I was affiliated with in the past these are my own so we're gonna have a look at the philosophy of the interplay between censorship and freedom of speech we're gonna look the legal elements of censorship how it happens we're going to look at governments which is quite an important part and the enforcement brand of censorship and how we can protect ourselves which is the final goal of this talk so I guess here everybody agrees that people should be free to express themselves so why would you draw the line for freedom of speech are you okay with knowingly insult someone like in the case of surely Abdul cartoons I am as a matter of fact my father was a cartoonist and it did some pretty naughty stuff this is an example of what I'm talking about the pope say that God was like father and like mother so suck it and tell me if it tastes like milk it got super difficult too and this newspaper got transferred countless of times but like you used to say other we are free to insult or we are not free at all so what is freedom of speech according to the universal Declaration of Human Rights everyone has the right to the freedom of expressions and opinion regardless of where they are and of any media and this article is pretty cool but we led to some of the darkest moments of the mankind the abuse of the misuse of freedom of speech Let's uh yeah some of the darkest moments of our history yeah freedom of speech is good but what if you could save millions of people what if you could go back in time and stop Hitler's propaganda what if you could kill the radio in the Rwanda genocide would you do that because that's the real question and that's the question that governments use to justify their needs to be able to stop speech to stop code and to have an infrastructure that they can stop whenever they want so moving on what do the U.S Iran plateau and the Bible have in common censorship this is because it's a global phenomenon and it's not related to a country or a time in place it happens all the time the US and Iran they both translate tornado cash Plato was arguing for censorship to shape children's mind and the Bible well it says um you shall not take the name of the larger God in vain the history of censorship is as old as the reality of humankind the common factor is the suppression of expression according to whatever the rulers want you to do so now a comprehensive analysis of censorship will take too long compared to the time that we have here and so we're going to focus on the power dynamics behind the censorship of crypto projects so in other words the act that prevents people from using software and we will try to have to answer the question why does it happen and not as in to prevent the genocide but as the encensorship that prevents people from using Code because the IP address is an allocation that someone doesn't like so there are four components to play low government infrastructure and affected people and projects some anthropologists says that low is immune to an end and I like this approach because it's very practical and it goes to the root of the problem so if I looked at human activities are determined by specific problems like rules about property Duty and privilege excuse to solve practical problems through the use of Corporations and cultural values here is malinowski and is the father of modern anthropology it says that in looking for low and legal forces we should try to discover knows that are obeyed willingly and spontaneously rules that are conceived and act upon as binding obligations and those are the key words three elements words of consideration here violating the rules means the end of the society the final end of low is the preservation and low should be obeyed willingly and spontaneously so we'll see later white this particularly important now questions if violating lowest means the end of an institution what is the institution that censorship law tries to preserve and what are the rules that are conceived as binding obligations so for example for Plateau chancellorship was fundamental to fight patricide and intergenerational fight this is because if children had known the true characters of gods and heroes that would kill their parents now another element is that technology goes way faster than the low I'm not sure if you remember this moment from zuckenberg's earring after the Cambridge analytica Scandal it was super fun it was a masterpiece to understand what legislators get about technology nothing um and imagine this is a future because everything that is not illegal is illegal so the fact that Tech goes faster than the low means that crypto projects exists in a gray area so the load doesn't work like a smart contract you kill someone you go against the law is way more than answered and there are more great zones so governments this is governments think that society would be if there was complete censorship so why and how do they do that the artificial explanation like we saw before is saving society and fighting Terror in any of his forms money laundering legal sanctions against enemy countries preventing illegal activities of any kind and fighting fake new rhythm so let's play a game remember we are an amazing bubble let's get out of here and let's try to step into the shoes of a fictional character the year is 2024. our name is Simo skinners and we are faced every day with new challenges the world has evolved and things like borderless Financial freedoms Central Authority have access to knowledge have very different meanings than what we've used to and all those new things like web3 cryptocurrencies are a daily pain in our ass they have extravagant narratives like permissionless borderless and animals not Central Authority cyberpunk lunar tank Cosmic Banks we don't understand much about it they preach freedom from gentle Authority but other beef Society without a central Authority how would that work so what do we do when we Face a challenge we either fly free or fight and since we cannot go to Mars yet we fight with a two dollar disposal so we transfer the code now transferring my father's newspaper was very easy when everyone was going to fire the new the police will go to Every news agent in the country and we'll take the copy of the market and I will not be win for him because the police was super slow so by the time they will go everywhere it was already sold out freedom of speech one censorship zero but internet transferring in a centralized world is different it requires cooperation from institutions and infrastructure organizations so now we can actually we're gonna analyze those is because first of all an analysis of sponsorship on a specific country will be legal advice but it will also not offer us enough understanding of what is actually going on so in order to protect crypto project is more helpful to abstract them and look at the actors involved in enforcing the sanctions so making censorship happen in particular centralized not providers and centralized software development tools malinowski the Anthropologist from before you say that the worker Society is not done by individuals or by Community as a whole but by institutions and even what three today we do have institutions now we are fighting the sharing that yes but if we are realistic and we look at the status of things today we do have institutions tell them organizations like GitHub for example they are structured they are created to carry out specific functions and they have a set of rules that govern their behaviors and before we say that loads should be obeyed willingly and spontaneously so how does it work in practice those institutions comply with censorship orders and their actions have a noble effect to everyone that is within their sphere of power or influence products of people that rely on them and by taking down calls or by preventing IP addresses with interacting with them they are today's transfer and the enforcement body of censorship so let's see how it works in projects now freedom and control is not like black and white is on a spectrum and so we can see how they interact them on the extreme left we have total freedom on the team right total censorship now if we match the picture with SSID whether it's a rule of law that chance or some code we need to understand how those interact so on the extreme left again we have total non-compliance extreme right over compliance which is when institutions Go Far and Beyond what it has to and somewhere on the right we have perfect compliance now here imperfect compliance closer to the right side of the spectrum we have a dual class of trade events some people have the right to use the code some other people don't Who belongs to each class is decide by governments and spoiler people in the country are normally first-class citizens while people in advance with other addresses are second-class citizens so someone might argue that by transferring that bit and complying that bit the infrastructure still gives the majority of people access to the code and to the tools and it is what for example GitHub declaration same we might need to block content if we receive a complete request from government officials so that our users in that jurisdiction can still have access to the platform so here the government acts as the legislative body and the platforms act as the enforcement body if we go to the extreme right we have over compliance with the ship flows that's the case when for example there is no specific sanctions against a country yet people with IP addresses Associated to that are prevented from interacting with the platform and we do we still have dual class citizens but now this time with the size will belong to this class if the side by the platform the infrastructure so here develop themselves of judicial and executive power which is a bit worrisome if you ask me now the more we move to the left the more we have non-compliance and we have more freedom of speech we decide the platform decides that they won't apply at all with the with the transfer shift loan foreign they give them everyone freedom of speech the problem is that they put themselves a great personal risk to be incarcerated to go to jail to be them as terrorist organizations and because those are the questions and the trade-offs that platform providers have to do so we're almost over um we've seen the three forces behind censorship low government and infrastructure and we also saw the interplay between freedom and compliance and a trade-off that centralized platforms have to consider so will a crypto projects be transferred that depends on two questions first of all how much do government officials governments bureaucrats feels like even threatening them you are threatening the society do they understand what you're doing do they understand your reasoning or they just like crypto I don't want to see anything of it and the second question is what's the risk appetite of the centralized platform that you rely on so where does delivers as the builders that rely on those institutions I want to be optimistic and see a positive part emerging the more with the centralized the infrastructure layer the more it becomes resilient to censorship and projects can decide for themselves where to be on the Spectrum um why one block transferring is still one block too many as of like last week or two weeks the number of ethereum blocks that were transferring IP addresses was decreasing so there is a positive path emerging and we do have tools at our disposals so instead of relying on centralized platform instead of relying on AWS and GitHub you can use the centralized platform like swarm that will allow for to let you decide for yourself where to be in the Spectrum with above because thing is that overall each one of us has a different perspective each one of us has different considerations and the trade-off is not the same for everyone so you should be able to decide where to be for yourself on the Spectrum some may want to fight from within with the code I want to comply some others want to fight with code above all it has to be a choice and it is a choice and finally this is legal advice get yourself a shadowy super lawyer so those are my contacts and thank you so much