A digital payment rails that functions like cash, as in my bank can’t prevent me from handing it over to whoever I want for whatever legal reason is a critical aspect of a free society that has gone digital.
You might disagree with bitcoin and co being the answer for this, but it’s the only tech that’s posed a viable solution as of now. Viable is not perfect. But if this article bothers you, at least understand this a (the) major aspect of why people work on serious cryptocurrency projects.
I like cryptos but LN UX is awful. It makes more sense for some kind L2 that doesn't require to open channels (Arbitrum, Optimism come to mind) and allows to send stablecoins to succeed.
Can’t speak to Arb, but OPT supports centralized rollbacks. Limited set of key holders impact what contracts get written to L1. LN’s pre-signed checks is a stronger protection but still has so long to go.
It needs work still but I think it is not bad. Muun, for example, is amazing and non-custodial. CashApp and Strike also have very nice and fool proof custodial options.
Edit: Stablecoins are coming to Lightning soon enough.
Payments aren't where you catch those people anyway. If you know someone is selling child porn, you don't just refuse them from your payment network, you call the cops. Alternatively, if you want to sell child porn, you set up a shop selling t-shirts on Etsy for $50 apiece, and use that as your payment back-channel. Payment providers are only effective in stopping porn when it is sold as porn; they lack the investigational capacity to deal with porn that is sold as something else.
I simply don't think that CC provider restrictions are a good way to deal with CSAM in the first place, basically.
In general, I find people's - especially politicians' - abuse of CSAM / child abusers to push through bad policy to be a bigger problem than actual CSAM / child abuse.
How much harmful policy has been pushed through with the excuse that it will stop CSAM? Often without having any particular effect on the issues it claims to be working against. People who spread or produce CSAM will use encryption and cryptocurrencies, leaving everyone else to be under permanent surveillance.
How do you stop them? By investigating and hitting down hard when you catch them irl, just like we always have. Not by racing to a dystopian surveillance state.
And that’s where I’d agree to disagree. That logic extends to a lot of possibilities with undo our civil contract which has always prioritized certain individual liberties and left it up to law enforcement to deal with the fallout. Changing fundamental aspects of commerce has long been one of those protections until spending went digital. and that’s not a slippery slope argument, it’s the demonstrated regulatory and private sector direction since the patriot act. Such as this article.
Aggressively pursue and punish producers and distributers through the justice system.
Having providers of financial infrastructure assume the legal risk for its users without due process is not how things should work in a democracy with rule-of-law, because it will adversely affect innocents.
Good old-fashioned police work? Hunt 'em down and lock 'em up without abridging everybody else's civil liberties along the way. Nobody's opsec is perfect (see Ross Ulbricht).
Is anyone even seriously interested in stopping csam on a grand scale, or is it just bluster to get surveillance passed? We just had ghislaine maxwell sentanced to only 20 years for a lifetime spent grooming kids for the elite who remain unpunished
You might disagree with bitcoin and co being the answer for this, but it’s the only tech that’s posed a viable solution as of now. Viable is not perfect. But if this article bothers you, at least understand this a (the) major aspect of why people work on serious cryptocurrency projects.