The free-speech precondition: anonymity

Steemit now requires new account registrations to include a mobile phone number. This is a devastating blow to those requiring free-speech. Why? The only truly free-speech is anonymous speech. Non-anonymous speech may be legally protected (in some jurisdictions), but when the identity of the author is known, the author is not free from retaliation. Free-speech statutes are often limited to protection from state infringement (e.g. the U.S.). Laws do not protect whistle-blowing employees from their employers who have the power to sack them, for example.

Anonymity is therefore paramount to free-speech.

Why steemit started blocking anonymity

It's an extreme hack motivated by a desire to easily control abusers. It's comparable to using a machine gun to kill a chicken. This move demonstrates that the whole system is inherently flawed-- flawed by the fact that useful content cannot be separated from drivel by the rating system as it was designed.

This overkill is being imposed on hundreds of thousands of users for the convenience of a few admins.

The price: our freedom + the steemit purpose compromised

The unique life-blood that gives value to the steemit system is the promise to be censorship-resistant. When #steemit started requiring mobile phone number disclosure, the side-effect was in fact to censor. That is, authors are effectively compelled to self-censor when their identity is exposed. (Case in point, this post herein only exists because it's published using an account that predates the mobile number collection).

The fallout:

• Suppression of the most important stories. Without the protection of #anonymity:
  • The most significant stories will not be reported due to possibility of retaliation.
  • Only authors not streetwise enough to refuse mobile phone disclosure will register new accounts, thus reducing the content quality to the collective intelligence of those contributors.
• Elitism: contributors too poor to afford mobile phone access are excluded.
• Inequality: some states force mobile phone registration on their users and others do not (and the current trend is state-forced phone registration).
• Steemit brand destroyed: This new direction makes steemit.com unsuitable for whistle-blowers and civil rights activists. The tool has been downgraded to stimulate Facebook-quality blogging.
• Naïve users exploited: the current model effectively encourages users to trade their privacy for convenience (or to save time/money). Those unaware of the compromise they're making won't discover they need privacy until it's too late and the information disclosure is used against them.
• False advertising: steemit advertises "Free of Charge... no strings attached", but obviously trading your privacy for an account is a very big "string" to attach.

Workarounds

There are some workarounds for advanced users, but they are impractical for the general public. These obscure options are not even shown to users as they are asked for a mobile number. The options are:

• Buy your freedom: you can buy an account with anonymous tokens ($5), or for 0.01btc (~10usd) you can buy an account from @someguy123
• Work for your freedom: you can mine an account <= option just killed by hard fork

Acquiring anonymous tokens

How does one get anonymous tokens? For existing users who need profile division, obviously anonymous tokens cannot draw from their existing account (it would defeat the purpose). It would be very cumbersome and also costly to deposit cash into a bitcoin ATM to seed this account, many of which require id anyway (a non-starter).

Elitism (part 2)

The $5 barrier-to-entry is excessive for contributors who are actually participating for the core purpose (which is not money-centric aspects). $5 is extortionate, particularly in some third-world countries where anonymous speech is often needed. 25 cents would be sufficient to make spam uninteresting. Why not lower the barrier-to-entry so users don't need to rent a server farm to get a libre account? (libre meaning freedom from privacy compromise)

A moderate user (say 1 or 2 blogs/week) needs ~5-10 accounts just to get a basic level of anonymous identity division (thus upwards of $25). Not to mention the time and effort of getting the right form of anonymous money.

Back to Usenet we go

The high price in time and money has made the system inadequate for anonymous blogging. Users will pay the price in freedom instead. Is returning to Usenet and anonymous remailing perhaps the answer to all these problems?

Unanswered questions

Can the proof-of-work from the mining be transmitted entirely over Tor? And if so, what's stopping spammers from doing this? How large of a server farm is needed to mine $25? What's the rental cost of that computing power?