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So the 3 options you have is:
- Moderation
- Downzapping
- Doing nothing
Moderation
The problem with moderation is that there is no real recourse, unless the moderator is benevolent and fair to everyone, which is impossible. Thus you'll always run into a final word from a moderator, the boss of the moderator, on Reddit, the admins, and so on. You know... the judge. All sounds great but it isn't because people are always biased.
Downzapping
The issue with downzapping is that whales rule. Generically that's the downside of money being the only moderator, and therefore this knife at least cuts both ways, because the other side that whales rule too is upzapping. So there could in theory be balance here, which is what this entire No-Trust-November experiment we're still in since December '25 is about. In practicing it I found the previous implementation that this replaces (where the up- and downzaps are counted by magnitude on a log scale) more fair, but it is not implementable without some form of trust/sybil-resistance, thus it is not possible to do it that way in the current implementation, because the only sybil resistance is 21M.
Doing nothing (no moderation, no downzapping)
The problem with doing nothing is that - although it's laissez-faire, and I like that - there would be no recourse against scammers at all. So whales still rule, but in absolutes: if there is only up, then those with most sats to waste will always be the most visible.
So to me, downzaps is not a great option, I don't really like it, BUT, it is the best option of these 3. If there is a better way to do this then we should discuss it.
The fact that this is downzaps battling boosts, means that this is an ad issue, not a freedom of speech issue:
That's the sybil issue I mention:
before, zaprank was modulated by:
- Trust earned through getting zapped (there still is an algo for this for rewards) and new accounts start at 0
- Magnitude: 10 stackers of full trust zapping 10 sats gives 20 rank, 1 stacker of full trust zapping 100 sats gives only 3 rank.
Now:
it's just the amount of sats spent, which is only bounded by the 21M BTC cap.
This explains why boosts and downzaps are much more important and used now, and for much higher amounts, because now whales are the boss, replacing long-term respected stackers that got zapped a lot by other respected stackers, whom were the previous boss.
We're not allowed to say Darth's name anymore?
It's one of my favorites too (even tho i literally just typed this in an anon imgflip session, so technically it is new, haha.) Many of the oldtimers feel this way. I have some irl friends from that era (because opti wasn't always careful with identity before) and every time I meet one of these people this is a shared view as a big problem. Worse, some of the people that appear to be all cypherpunk nowadays are in fact through the backdoor funded by the same system they claim to despise[1].
But to their defense: often because there wasn't much of an option for the same type of funding if you only wanted whales to help you out - I just was lucky to learn very early that ycombinator is not the place you go to for a Bitcoin startup; they'll always go for the shitcoiner solution because there's more early gainz to be had with an ICO than with an honest business that cannot ICO. ↩
I understand your point. I have to be honest. I'm not saying I have given it a lot of thought, but as it stands now I really loathe the concept of downzapping. It strikes me as antithetical to everything I believe in re freedom of expression. I am not wearing my lawyer hat when I say this. Do you see this as the only option for combatting scam ads on SN?