PowerKee’s “Bastion of Privacy” #9
The events of recent weeks have reminded us of the value of decentralization, community governance, and censorship resistance. These are some of the primary properties that define the cryptocurrency space.
These properties have reached a new echelon of importance in light of the censorship imposed by West Coast technology companies. In this week’s “Bastion of Privacy”, we dive deeper into Donald Trump’s de-platforming by major technology companies, WhatsApp’s new terms of service, and the implications of these events for personal privacy and freedom of speech.
Censorship vs Freedom of Speech
On January 7th, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Instagram, and several other social media platforms banned Trump and supporters. These West Coast technology companies blamed Trump for inciting violence and encouraging his supporters to storm the Capitol.
Shortly afterwards, Apple and Google took down the right-wing app Parler from their stores/ Amazon Web Service took it fully offline by suspending services to the company.
Politics aside, these moves bring up serious questions about the concentration of power in the hands of a few West Coast CEOs, who tend to lean liberal. Whether you like Trump or not, he is still supported by a large share of the American population.
More than 74 million people voted for him in the election, the second-highest total in history, behind Joe Biden’s 81 million. Should a handful of Silicon Valley CEOs have the power to silence nearly half of the American electorate?
In his post explaining the decision, Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter, acknowledged that “having to ban an account has real and significant ramifications.” Jack also highlighted the danger in the degree of power “an individual or corporation has over a part of the global public conversation.”
He then referred to Bitcoin and its foundations of being a technology that is not controlled by any individual, corporation, or country. Bitcoin transactions can’t be censored, and as long as you hold your private keys, you will always have access to your money.
As human rights and privacy rights increasingly come under attack worldwide, building decentralized systems and products with privacy at the centre is becoming increasingly urgent. The need for genuinely decentralized social media applications is also apparent. We should strive for community-driven governance, where content moderation and other crucial decisions are made by the community and not an all-powerful CEO.
We should also consider the degree to which cryptocurrency projects rely on centralized services. For example, a 2019 study showed that the majority of Ethereum nodes, 62% of them, use a centralized service. Amazon Web Services represents about 25% of all nodes.
WhatsApp Going After Your Data Privacy
In another unfortunate piece of news, WhatsApp is upgrading their terms of service to allow it to share all kinds of personal data with Facebook and other companies under the Facebook umbrella.
The move resulted in a significant spike in downloads of competitor apps like Signal and Telegram, known for their encryption and privacy focus. This makes it rather clear that most of us still value the privacy of our data, especially in an increasingly interconnected world.
Blockchain Technology as The Solution
It is becoming painfully apparent that we are facing an erosion of our freedoms and rights. Our freedom of speech and right to privacy are particularly in the crosshairs. The recent events are just another example of censorship and concentration of power of moderation in the hands of a few.
With blockchain technology, we can address some of our most pressing concerns. Decentralized social networks, governed by the community, can secure our right to free speech, away from Silicon Valley censorship.
Privacy coins and privacy-enabling blockchains, like PowerKee, can ensure the privacy of our financial transactions and, more broadly, our data. We expect 2021 to be a big year for privacy, as more people recognize the importance of protecting and preserving our rights and freedoms.
About PowerKee
PowerKee is a cryptocurrency network that makes privacy easy. Users can transact cheaply and instantly while maintaining anonymity. The PowerKee protocol uses a mixture of zero-knowledge proofs and coin mixing to provide strong privacy assurances to its users.
