Re: Elon is right about Twitter (and the web in general) but his current solution is wrong
> I wouldn't be following paedophiles and nor would you or any other normal user.
That, however, isn't likely to be nearly enough to stop the legal repercussions that censor-resistant-twitter would run into. If it becomes a widely used distribution mechanism, it's fucked.
It also ignores that Twitter bubbles up content from people you don't follow (both algorithmically as well as in the form of retweets etc), but I assume you'd knock that on the head (and nothing of value would be lost)
> You can perform "DMCA takedowns" by providing a blocklist with the official client, this is what LBRY does and that puts them in compliance with the law. It's up to end users whether they choose to accept the filtering though. All you need do is replace the response to 'https://api.lbry.io/file/list_blocked' and boom!
I'm not sure it does put them in compliance with the law. I'm even less sure that a media company's legal department would feel that way if there was an org with deep pockets on the other end.
As a general rule, the law doesn't concern itself too much with how you've implemented something - if your platform is being used to distribute something, the reasoning tends to be that you're responsible for making sure your platform provides the means to comply with the law.
Saying "sorry, it's decentralised, I can't block it" isn't likely to be much of a defence.
Even if it *is* a valid defence now (which I doubt), as soon as it's successfully used by a large org, you'll see lobbying start for "modernisation" of the law to address the new-fangled distribution approach.
> Besides, if the product is open-source, anyone can make a fork at any time.
Indeed, which is a big part of why it's a bad idea to build your product in the way you've described. You want your own defences against infringement to be robust - no being able to do much about 3rd party forks is defensible, but only if your initial implementation didn't start out with similar flaws
> Funny enough, when prosecutors discovered anyone could fork TPB (along with its database) they just gave up and took the loss.
You're talking about a criminal investigation here - the prosecutors aren't going to keep pissing public money up a rope for no good reason.
What you'd be looking at with decentralised-twitter would be a civil suit, with the *AAs of the world bringing the claim. You're probably right in that they wouldn't pursue forks (or many of them), but you can be sure they'd be working to push Twitter into bankruptcy.
> Were Musk to open-source Twitter and rearchitect it as a P2P service, the exact same thing would happen. As long as he followed the approach LBRY currently takes he'd be fine,
I disagree. What LBRY have done is sufficient for an org of their size and profile - it's not likely to be nearly enough for one like Twitter. Even if Twitter ultimately won the ensuing legal action, there's a significant cost to defending and no guarantee of costs being awarded. They'd also very likely face action in multiple legal systems too (BREIN would almost certainly pursue them too, for example)
> The key difference is that Musk would likely encourage forks from the get-go, stripping the feds of any public benefit justification for trying to go after him in the first place
It would also strip Twitter of any real value, so he'd spend $9bn (or whatever) to buy Twitter and immediately devalue it. I'm not saying he definitely wouldn't, but that's not the kind of behaviour that keeps one rich, and remember that he's likely funding the acquisition via leveraged debt.
> That, plus his big bank and huge ego, would be enough of a deterrent!
His big bank isn't a deterrent to a civil suit, if anything it puts an even bigger target onto Twitter.