Alex: And we're live once more on X. And ⁓ joined once again by by Richard. We have a very interesting show today. We're gonna talk about ⁓ well actually it's used to be this joke in ⁓ little Britain when somebody goes and tries to solve a problem at the local office or the town hall, ⁓ they would be greeted by a very, very polite Elderly lady who would just check something on the computer and her answer would always be sorry, computer says no. And we've we've all been there. You know, it's it's usually at the worst time when you're in a hurry or have a creative idea that you're worried you lose, or you have an important task that just needs to get finished. You're at your keyboard or in your phone, and guess what? Computer says no.

Richard: Right.

Alex: Your account is suddenly under review, or an approval is pending, or the service is just unavailable. It's certainly frustrating, but why is this happening more and more? The situation seems to be most prevalent in Europe. And even though you might reside in another jurisdiction or another part of the world, what transpires in Europe may have repercussions even in your jurisdiction and will affect you directly. Today we're going to talk about the mounting compliance requirements in the EU and how that has led to algorithmic censorship and digital seclusion. As always, Richard Paris is joining us here on the Open Internet Pod live on X. how do you feel about the topic, Richard?

Richard: I mean, I think I was partially instrumental in making it happen, ⁓ at least for the title. because it just occurs to me that it's ⁓ you know, you're just feeling it more and more. So I think it's it's really trenchant as well because it seems often seems innocent enough. I think people are really sensitive to things like a shadow ban or like being obviously locked out of an account for a reason ⁓ of transgression or something, or per like perceived you did something wrong. ⁓ but what we're seeing is like so many shades of that happening where it's not quite clear, like is it ⁓ you know, did my account run out of credit or am I somehow shadow banned, or is there a system glitch, or have they changed their policies, or or what? And I think there's a there's a mounting kind of sense under underneath things that it's not just that it's not, you know, it can't just be that people are getting worse at running internet services. There's something else going on. ⁓ and so I think it's really trenchant to try and pick that apart. I mean, of course there are times when, you know, you get logged out 'cause you tried the wrong password fifteen times. I'm not saying every time the computer has a problem, there's some nefarious suggestion ⁓ to nefarious reason behind it. But I do think it's really interesting to pick apart the different ways that this is starting to impact on the openness and the function of the internet and its relation, as you say, to ever increasing complexity and and requirements around compliance and, you know, like expectations of what you will and won't do and what you need to do to use services, et cetera, et cetera. And it's I think it's you know, at at the at the very least it's one of those things where it piles up, man. Like you know, like all these y you kind of have to do one thing and then another thing and then, you know, after a while it's sort of you know

Alex: Right. We're gonna get into all of that ⁓ quite soon. So keep some of those bullets in the chamber because we're gonna come back to it. ⁓ before we get to that part though, ⁓ we have something ⁓ something of a tradition here, and by tradition it means we've done it done it three times now, including this time, and it's called the EU watch, where we analyze bit of the craziness that's happening in the EU. And today.

Richard: Yeah. Yeah.

Alex: We're gonna talk about the EUDI. That's the name of the European Digital ID. And ⁓ apparently it's gonna go into effect this summer. We already have a few pilot countries that will issue it first, and that's ⁓ Ireland, Spain, France, Italy, and Estonia. We are already hand handing over all of our traffic to Google and Meta and whoever else is spying on us on the on the internet. But now we're also allowing allowing Google to store our digital IDs and our information. I mean is is that a smart thing to do? ⁓ I mean it certainly falls in line with other EU decisions, but what do you make of it, Richard?

Richard: Well, I mean, first of all, UD sounds like a like a less pleasant version of Aldi. but jokes aside, ⁓ I was kind of researching this a bit for the show today and looking into it, and I ended up in a place that left me genuinely disturbed. ⁓ which was called biometric update dot com or something. And it it's like when you realize that there are weapons trade shows and people talk about how good landmines are at removing people's feet. And stuff like that, right? There's this like it's a website for providers in the biometric identification space. ⁓ of which there are plenty of, you know, like ⁓ hand print to get into work kind of security system y things. But like just reading the website, you're just like, This is these are people who are keenly interested in this ⁓ EUDI because they'll be implementing it. ⁓ And all the products and things, you know, you kind of scroll down and look at what they're talking about. And it's all, you know, kind of when you start looking at the variety of different kind of biometric identification services and what they're talking about in terms of how they work and who you who might deploy them, it kind of starts getting creepy. ⁓ and I think, you know, this is ⁓ really important for for a bunch of reasons. I mean it's basically like if you As you point out, like if Google are needing your EU ID it then they have that front facing EU ID. You've just given it to, you know, a massive tracking organization. ⁓ and as someone in security said to me once, like, biometrics is fine as a as a UID, as a user identifier, but it's terrible. You can't use it as a password because you can't change it. And I think we s that's where I see the massive problem here and why I think it it really is a hill to die on is we've got a situation here where because these IDs are being handed out centrally by an quote unquote authority, we're s now in a position where people who are handed these IDs are powerless ⁓ in terms of their use and on use, etc. So I mean it just makes tracking. Talk about simplifying tracking. If you have to hand over your ID every time you log into things, et cetera. ⁓ and of course, you know, there are ways of fixing this. There are ways of letting people have I you know, a central cryptographic identity that lets them create separate ones and stuff, but that's not how this is looking like it's gonna work, which means you have a s you know a single or a f small set of identifiers that you have to use. ⁓ you have no choice about that and you can't just swap them out. ⁓ this is fundamentally it changes the way we go about everything we do. I mean, even something like ⁓ you know, tr transport cards, all that kind of stuff that we used to to use to get on the subway and stuff, you could still go and buy a new one for cash. This completely changes the world in ways we're not anticipating because that centralized it ⁓ administration of those ⁓ IDs takes away any kind of autonomy people have to act without permission. ⁓ you're unmuted, Alex.

Alex: Sorry about that. Yes, it it feels like it's one of those situations where you have this old ID and no matter what happens, that's the only one you get to keep to keep. And it's it's just I think it opens so many vectors for you know pre-crime or you know self-censorship. It's just it's a can of worms just waiting to get thrown in people's lap. And ⁓ yeah, just I I don't care for it. Like the more I learn about it, the less I care for this stuff.

Richard: Well, I think it's ⁓ it's also really important that ⁓ D, right, a digital ID, right? It changes things 'cause I mean like plenty of countries have had ID cards and stuff. ⁓ yeah, that's can be problematic in different ways. But you were never asked that to like input that everywhere you went. And funnily I think people would have had a fit ⁓ if you'd started saying to Germans you need to use your you know puzzle to like make a phone call or get on the internet. or whatever, they would have thought, you know, buy a newspaper. ⁓ people would immediately have objected. But because it's digital, we've taken away the obviousness of that problem and we're supplanting it so it's much easier to do. It's easy to do almost universally and people aren't necessarily it's not visible to people that I just hand it over, you know, an ID card. If it was a physical ID card or a passport and you had to do that to like buy a cup of coffee and they wrote it down, you'd start being like, wait, what? But We're starting to see that everywhere, right?

Alex: Yeah, and I'm also thinking about it in in a different way because let's say it was an ID that I had, right? That could be something like let's say an NFT on a blockchain and I own it in my wallet. And when I change wallet, I can just send it to another wallet. But this to me feels more like the ID is centralized somewhere and what I get is access to it. This feels a lot like licensing a game or licensing a software piece, right? A ⁓ an app.

Richard: Licensing yourself, right?

Alex: I'm licensing myself from the government, my my identity from the government.

Richard: Yeah. No, no, I mean that's basically that that's basically the issue. And I think that's the thing is we were we people had IDs before in in some jurisdictions, not in all. ⁓ and there was a difference there because there was a sense that there were there were s limited spaces where it was okay to request that. And there were you often rules. I mean f for all of Australia's foibles, you have a tax file number here, but literally it's not visible to people.

Alex: А має

Richard: in administration, et cetera, right? Like they've done a decent job of keeping it. You only ever have to give it to the you know tax authority and a few other people and they can't pull it back out of their system, et cetera. And it's got one purpose and they actually police it. That's kind of possible when it's like that kind of thing, but, you know, people would never have accepted the system if the police could ask you for it. And I think what we're seeing now is yeah, this this kind of flip of that logic of it's it's not your ID, it's kind of your permission to do things from the ID's ⁓ you know, ⁓ issuer. And that that that's why I think it's ⁓ you know, it it's a real sticking point and something we have to get up in arms about because it it it really does change everything.

Alex: Yeah, it it it does bring up not necessarily memories, but it you know, you you read books about medieval Europe and how people were like tied to the land and sold with the land and it's it certainly has ⁓ you know, certain fragrance that reminds us of that time.

Richard: Yeah, well I mean it's it's funny 'cause things like a passport and you can see the trajectory that's going you go and read the front of like US or I think Australian British passports. I I try to remember what European ones look like. But ⁓ yeah, it i it's a basically a message from the authorities saying let let this person wander around, right? and that's kind of totally flipped to now being like you need it to get permission to do things all over the place, right? And it's like it's not like Literally we you people we have that phrase in English, it's your passport to this, right? Which means it's your it opens up this vista for you, right? You can go do things you ⁓ and now if you actually look at how passports are used, it's like, well they're re you know, they're a requirement that you know you need to have them to do certain things in a in a limiting way. ⁓ and I think that's you know, things that you could do before, now you have to give your passport to do them. And I think that's that's the change we're seeing here, but we're seeing it on a utterly different scale and with utterly different ⁓ kind of ⁓ threads into the different aspects of our lives that that these things never used to touch. Seeing Alex frozen here. Is that me or Alex? ⁓ we're back. Yep.

Alex: We're back. We're back. Yeah, yeah. Sorry about that. ⁓ yeah, you were s you're saying, sorry.

Richard: Sorry, I just said said probably the finest, ⁓ wittiest things I've ever said on the board. ⁓ no, I was just I was just I was just winding up. ⁓ just saying like, yeah, this is this is totally different because it it it gets its tendrils into every aspect of our lives. It's not a few small things, it's it's everything we do.

Alex: Perfect. It's all gonna get uploaded, so And I think that's a that's a very good point you're making because the next news item that we have here on the dock, it's about the state of Florida in the United States suing TikTok. ⁓ apparently craziness is not geo logged to Europe and Australia. They can also pull it off in the United States. ⁓ so basically the state of Miami is suing Bitdance for not implementing age verification fast enough. The complaint also accuses TikTok of using what its own documents call coercive design tactics in order to manipulate young users into spending more time on the app. Now, that part is probably true. Let's not let's not kid about it. But is this one of those cases where you're like throwing the baby out with the bathwater? Like you're you're waiting for the worst possible outcome, even though you kind of you

Richard: Yeah.

Alex: along the way and you were worried about what can happen with social media, but you wait until the last possible minute so that you can easily implement like a strong armed version of, you know, like, ⁓ digital ID is the only way to solve this problem.

Richard: Well, I think I think there's I mean, yeah, there's a very interesting I think it's a bit of sleight of hand here, ⁓ and it's a weird one. Because yeah, yeah, I mean your immediate reaction is of course you know, bite downs, bite downs pioneered the dopamine drip feed. I mean they know like they they you know, blew their way into it and they're one of the few Chinese tech firms, despite their quality, that have made inroads to the Western market because they're so good at that. And what's interesting to me is which way do we go from there, right? So one conclusion is these guys will stop at nothing to monetize or to drain every second of user attention out of their users. So we shouldn't trust them with anything. One conclusion I can see. Another one is these guys are ruthless, you know, extractors of value from the users. So let's trust them to protect the people we're accusing them at the same time of exploiting by implementing age verification. I mean, it's a A, why why would you give that job to the person you're accusing of ⁓ you know basically exploiting the users that you're trying to protect? ⁓ and then B, why now? And I think this is this is the the thing that that kind of flips me that way on this question is ⁓ you know, I think there is a very real need to look at, you know, how the dopamine feed impacts kids and stuff and hence, as a barent, a lot of work to do to deal with that, and you know, and making sure your kids don't get too addicted in the first place and trying to wrench them away if they are on the way is hard, right?

Alex: How would how would this type of content harmful harmful content harmful content? Sorry about that. How would harm I can't I can't pronounce harmful. What's wrong with me? Okay, so how would harmful content be handled on something like ⁓ Red Square?

Richard: Well, I think this is this is an interesting thing 'cause we were just dealing yesterday with the decentralized moderation tools. ⁓ because we had a glitch. And to me, ⁓ these things are Well when I look at it basically I my way of assessing my first kind of litmus test, my first kind of way of getting the smell of this kind of legislation is to see if it maps onto existing human, existing social ⁓ modes of of regulating things. Because it's very easy to think things are new, but actually for the most part we have social systems for things like, you know, being polite or looking after each other or whatever. And so to me What you need is social involvement in this stuff, right? So if you look at how we do it at Saito you have the underlying feed, which I like to think of it, think of it like the telephone, right? We don't regulate telephones in the sense of you have to tell people what you're talking about on the phone. I mean, despite things like chat control coming up. ⁓ the idea is that you couldn't really have a functioning telephone network if telephone companies had to police what people say on the phone. But we have a w ⁓ a a bunch of things we think about around telephones ⁓ to make sure that society keeps working. You don't give a five year old a functioning tel telephone with a SIM card. You don't give them unlimited access to TikTok. ⁓ you, you know, very cautious what they can and can't do with that device. You the same as phone calls, you don't let them just answer the phone or call random strangers, right? We have systems for dealing with this. Yeah.

Alex: Yeah, we get the point, but I mean like what is it specifically that you can do on Red Square to address this?

Richard: Well, the main thing is that you could run anyone could run a Red Square server because like those phone messages that are going on underneath, the server can then decide what it does with them. So as a as a family we could run a node where only stuff that mum and dad have ⁓ permitted can be visible to kids. ⁓ as a school or a community, we could do the same thing. We could also subscribe to a service from someone we prov we trust, you know, Al Alex's Kid Mining co that goes through and looks for not just, you know, healthy content but positive content that that we think is useful for kids to have visible, ⁓ along with them talking to each other, right? That the there's a there's a bunch of ways you can do that. But what you've got is something very different to there's one single platform and you're making them responsible for everything that's going on on the site. you have a free and open way of communicating underneath something and then you have tools that you need to take responsibility for on top of that that you know you and people like you can ⁓ can use to control what you or your family or your children are seeing ⁓ in ways you see fit. ⁓ so we don't have these conflicted, you know, ⁓ priorities between the provider, the platform wanting to, you know, extract as much value as possible, but being required to then police this. We have users and content, you know, being created and being and deciding what they do with it without intermediation. And to me that's the right way to do it. Yes, it takes some effort, but it's open and if I don't like, you know, the one provider, I don't like what my community's doing, I can join another or I can do it myself. have options. I don't have to trust that the government will strong arm something half suitable out of the big provider of the platform, which will be as much as they can get away with, to be frank. And then, you know, hope that that works out. And at the same time, I'm not then saying you get to police whether I can use it or not.

Alex: Right. So what So what I'm hearing from what you're saying here is that you don't really need to check everyone's ID in order to fix the issue.

Richard: Well well th that's yes, that's that point I suddenly realizing right at the end there, you've got this this this other corollary, which is it's not a matter of having to like see everybody's idea, which of course, you know, the people miss the inverse of age verification because it's so light and that's why we wait until there's a fire breathing dragon to slay before we implement this stuff, right? Because if you run up to people and say, Can I you know s d steal your youngest daughter They'll say no, if you say, Well, we have to feed someone to the dragon or it's going to eat the village, people forgive you for that the the crime, right? And that's literally, I think I'm suddenly stretching a metaphor here, but I I think that's like that's how I actually see this problem, is that you know, you let it get this way and then you distract from the fact that you're trying to stop something which is genuinely problematic with a measure that is not thought through, not required as a solution for the problem, but ⁓ is happens to be ⁓ in many ways ⁓ you know very palatable to both sides. I mean, TikTok certainly don't want me deciding who can use their system and what they see. ⁓ you know, they're very happy to be told they have to do it.

Alex: So I guess if I would be reading my own show notes, ⁓ I would be saying something like you don't need to check everyone's ID to fix this issue, but you do need everyone's ID if you want to police and convict people who don't tone the tone the line in the digital public square. Would that be an accurate description?

Richard: Yeah. Well, yeah, or even if you just want the ability to. Right. I think this is the thing. Like you you don't have to see it as like there's people s waiting behind the curtains ready to jump out and get you. But there's a there's an urge to control there and this creates that, right? Nobody's seeing that as nobody on the implementation bureaucracy side is seeing that necessarily as a negative and that's a problem because, you know, as soon as that's a tool that's available and that's how it will be seen, not and unpro is unproblematic and a tool that's available, it will be s implemented for the next thing that becomes necessary.

Alex: Got it. So ⁓ moving on and this this this is actually quite an interesting topic ⁓ because it's something that I I witnessed myself and I was wondering what's happening here. Not so much well, let me just talk about it, right? So now we have forced ads in meta apps. So this is not necessarily new, but both Facebook and Instagram app can now stop your Dom scroll.

Richard: Hmm.

Alex: To show you an ad for five seconds. And sometimes when you swap between stories from your friends, you can also get a forced ad. And you know, you can always break this by just closing the app and coming back in, but I never come back in. And, you know, I I think we have you know, we have multiple threads that we could pull out in in this story, but the the one that sticks out to me is that Meta thinks it has enough addicted users that it can enforce ad breaks. at an acceptable churn rate. And the wider story here would be that harvesting user data alone is no longer enough. How are we, you know, are we reading too much into this story or is this something that's happening?

Richard: I mean this is step three, I think, of Doctor O's inshidification in a golden frame in the museum of, you know, things that are obvious, right? It's like this is exactly what happens, right? ⁓ there's and it's what happens because you have p centralized platforms, right? So they've you know They've got an audience that basically has to use their their platform if they want things. That audience is already there doom scrolling, so you kind of got them. The advertisers therefore don't have anywhere else to go. And what do you do? Well, you you can just like mess around and and and initiative the process if it's going to get you one more dollar. And so they're just taking away the the ads that ⁓ are kind of second you know, th the the f the feed is already full of essentially ads, right? So they're taking away the independent ads and just placing their own in the way. That's all we're really seeing here. And what what that that can happen because they've got such complete control. And I mean it's a total myth to think that like this is because they're somehow struggling to pay for the servers or something. I mean the the cost of running these platforms is immense, but not per user. I mean it's it's a it's tiny per session. ⁓ And this is not because there there's some kind of struggle. ⁓ I think there's a v there's a kind of strong sense that the whole, you know, like yeah, it's it's difficult to like build the data centers, etcetera, etcetera. And really that the truth there is that ⁓ those the companies that have done this have engineered for it to be so because that's their mode, right? Like that hyperscaling is a problem. It means that anyone who wants to challenge them has to come through the V C system and they get head heads up about it. Right. it's got nothing this has got nothing to do with the cost of running the model. This is because essentially you have a c a centralized platform and it doesn't have anywhere else to go, right? It's already optimised to a certain point and no one who got in on the game as it was growing is happy to say, ⁓ the growth stops now. And so you end up having to cannibali cannibalize cannibalize ⁓ your yourself and your audience and your, you know, people on both sides are getting ⁓ chewed up by this. So you know, for me it's it's again it's a why we do things differently on CIDO, right? We don't have that that that central space. Red Square on one node can be quite different to Red Square on another. People can pick what which one they use. And you're you know, you over time your feed comes more and more also directly from your peers. You know, it's not even touching the network. ⁓ and that to me is, you know, the way out of this. But, you know And what that does for the people who are doing you know, there can't be advertising in that that ecosystem, but it's advertising that's that is just what it is, right? It doesn't have platform control, it doesn't have the ability to curse anybody, it has to win out, which means either it's so good people watch it anyway, right? So Wendy's makes such a great ad that I'm just happy to watch it 'cause it's funny. Or ⁓ it pays me enough, you know, a car company pays me enough to watch their long ad because they think I might buy their car. that I'm like, well that fifty dollars was worth it. That pays for, you know, two weeks of browsing or something at the real costs. You know, the real cost of running the internet, that would probably pay for a month, two months of using these services. ⁓ and so, you know, you can by breaking away from that platform model, ⁓ you you totally change the economics and you get rid of this ability to squeeze both sides because you just have the power of the platform to do it.

Alex: Right. And it's also a difference between running a business and then and squeezing as much as possible from all sides, like you said. And it's another thing to run these services on top of a blockchain and then you just pay the actual cost of the of the network, right?

Richard: Yeah. Well, it's it's also it's like the difference between running a you know, a cafe on I'm trying to think of a good example whether it's a cafe on the main street versus in a mall versus on a cruise ship, right? I mean the economics are completely different. You know, on a cruise ship you can charge what you like because people can't go anywhere else. It's very different, right? And so what we keep doing is creating these captive situations in rather than these open you know, Main Street situations where well anyone can open a cafe, there's no restrictions, and so the market will support a certain number of cafes and the cafes will sort out covering the kinds of experience people will want and hopefully you end up with something good. Rather than well, it's a cruise ship and you get what the curators decided and once you're on they can screw you for everything they can get out of you because you have no choice.

Alex: Yeah, I I think that ⁓ this this network model that you mentioned earlier where where the the network itself decides how many coffee shops it can sustain. I think that kinda goes against this idea of greed. And I think that a lot of the business models are built upon greed and they strive on greed. So you need the moat. You need it to be super expensive, right? 'Cause you you wanna keep as many people out as possible as investors and as many of them as possible as users. And it's also kind of maybe requires a shift in in how we perceive doing business.

Richard: Yeah, well I think it I mean it it's a ⁓ it's it's a different attitude towards consumption and what you want and and how you want it to be organized, right? So it's it's wanting to be in a world where you've got the opportunity for anyone to compete and to have to make some decisions for yourself. ⁓ you know, there's nothing there's nothing stopping Starbucks putting Starbuckses on the on the main street and competing with everybody else. ⁓ But if you look at where the majority of them are, they're in restricted spaces where things like rent is incredibly high and they've paid a lot to get that corner, et cetera, et cetera. And you also look at places that where there are lots of Starbucks and where there aren't, right? There's ⁓ there's plenty of places where they've gone out of business because people have su they want something else. The issue is if you force people ⁓ you know, into situations where they've you they've gotta make a choice between one or two big players and that's the problem. and they lose that ability to make those choices.

Alex: Exactly. And you know, speaking of networks and network usage, I think that ⁓ you know, the concept itself might might suffer a change as we are witnessing more and more issues that impact ⁓ actual use of these platforms. And we mentioned some of those in the beginning of the show. And you know, just to go through them once again, we're talking about, you know, curated comments. So for example, you can watch a reel on Instagram and

Richard: Yeah.

Alex: the comments that you see can be completely different from the comments that I see because of different profiles that Meta has created for us, right? And they can think that, ⁓ these comments will engage Alex more and these comments will engage Richard more. So let's just show them the right comments, right? And ⁓ you know, you you have stuff like algorithmically scrubbed comments. For example, on TikTok, you can write a comment and you can get it banned in real time. So it's like you press send And you don't even get to see it. It just gets automatically deleted and you get a notification that you broke some sort of rule. So and then you have shadow b banning, effort banning, right? If you use a VPN, they hit you with a seven step CAPTCHA. ⁓ with the I think the ultimate goal would be self censorship, right? So this this idea of a computer says no seems to be encompassing much more than just algorithmic censorship.

Richard: Yeah.

Alex: It is actively trying to punish anyone who is not complying. ⁓ what is the what is the end game here? Are we missing something?

Richard: Yeah, I think I mean it really occurred to me because I was thinking about this topic computer says no, and I've been experiencing it more and more in the service, customer service context. And I was thinking, that's different. And then I but but then I was also thinking, wait, The you know the ⁓ the feeling is almost identical. And then I realized it's it's actually because it's the same thing. The the customer service experience that I'm that I'm having is about control. It's about coercing me or cajoling me into doing something that the provider wants me to do. Often it's simply giving up. in asking what I w for what I wanted or complaining about the quality of a service or, you know, doing something that that's not profitable from from their end. And so I've realized actually it's really it's a really spookily similar experience. This kind of system says no, computer says no world where it is like the little Britain thing. Sorry, computer says no. And it's actually decided way before that this is a worthwhile tactic. ⁓ and so I see ⁓ I think you see this kind of ⁓ thing where there's it you know and again it's control. People people kind of think you might you know, it can tend to sound like you're being a bit paranoid if you say these things, but it's not it's not necessarily control in the sense of, you know, I want you to go here or do that or think this. It's just step by step like this is more convenient, more profitable, more ⁓ you know, simpler to administer for me. And so that's why we see these things increasingly. So I think that's that's the kind of thing we see with the with the ⁓ implementation of say u ID requirements, right? Which start off for age, but really it's there's a there's a desire there in the system to have that. It has in useful consequences, like only companies that can be bothered implementing that or have the infrastructure to implement that can then play. So now I you know, as an administrator, now I've got ⁓ a beat on who's using the system and I've got a couple of compliant providers that I can hold over a barrel because I'll lose everything if I decide to really go after them, ⁓ under my control. And so therefore administering them is simpler, right? Then it's not necessarily looking at the the the implications for that. ⁓ for instance, the ridiculous stuff we saw with the age verification being built into operating systems, which would have killed you know, implemented blindly would have killed and is still threatening the whole open source community. Alternative operating systems, alter you know, alternative ways of doing things with equipment would have made it illegal to like resurrect an old laptop that can't run Windows eleven and put Linux on it because well it doesn't have age verification. So to me I think it's this it's it's it really comes down to that. I'm not saying every time, again, like I said before, yeah, it's possible to log yourself out of your account because you you make a a you know a couple of misentries. but it is about being able to, you know, manage ⁓ what users are doing, how what platforms are doing, et cetera, et cetera. So it does come down to control. And same as that customer service experience, you know. ⁓ when I realized and started looking into this, ⁓ The I found out that the in my bank in Australia did this one, my ex bank. ⁓ they play short snippets of the same song again and again and again. Technically because it means they don't have to pay rights, but they've found it gets people to just give up. Right? It's so annoying. Playing you eight bars or seven bars probably worse, of a song again and again and again for thirty minutes that it just gets people to stop stop calling and that's what that's actually what they want. Because f they know for the most part people can't go without banking and so they you know, they're just stuck and they don't get to claim their refund or they don't get to ask for the service they want. So yeah, it's about that kind of coercive control, I think, end to end.

Alex: No, I I agree with what you're saying and while listening to your ⁓ to your reply and ⁓ your insights, it occurred to me that It's there's two ways you could go about doing for example what you said about people calling and waiting in line. You can you can do what I've seen being done when people are nice, which is to ask you if you wanna be called back when it's your turn in line. And you they ask you if this is the right phone number, and then you press one to you know accept, and then you hang up and then they call you in forty minutes, and guess what? You're first in line and you can have your chat with customer support. That's one version of it. And there's the version that you described. And it's obviously that choices are being made there, right? And it's

Richard: Hm. Well, I mean i it's the classic thing. You discover that the first thing happens when you pressed one on the phone tree, which is make new purchase. Right? Or join or whatever it is that they want to happen, right? When it's when you've gotten into the end where there's a problem with my thing and you have to fix it, then suddenly you don't get the callback option or the you know, ⁓ yeah. No, no, I think I think it's that's an obvious example of it. I agree.

Alex: But that's what I'm saying. That's what I'm trying to That's what I'm trying to say is that the the the fact that the less control you have, the worse your outcome is should not come as a surprise. You know it's it's it's i i it it is like that. You either can enforce rights for yourself or negotiate rights for yourself, or you can't. And if you can't, then guess what? The conditions it's like that scene in the Star Wars.

Richard: Yeah. Mm.

Alex: I have altered the deal. Pray I don't alter it further. Eventually you end up, you know, like Lando Carissian and ⁓ what's his name? ⁓ the Sith Lord. What's it? Not Hans Holler the the black guy with the hat. Darth Vader, that's the guy. So

Richard: Mm. Hansel. ⁓ Right. I was I was assuming you couldn't forget his name, but anyway

Alex: Apparently I can't.

Richard: This is not the Sith Lord you're looking for.

Alex: Yeah, exactly. No, but ⁓ basically that's gonna be like this is not the customer support you're looking for. And I said they're just gonna hang up on you. And and and that's that's the end of that. But but you know it's it's it's so important that we understand the the reason for the open internet, right? There there's a reason for it, and the reason for it is that you will have a chance to negotiate better terms for yourself.

Richard: Ha ha Mm. Mm-hmm.

Alex: The moment everything gets centralized and digitalized and all you have is a license to be alive or the license to exist via an ID, then you know, how can you negotiate anything?

Richard: Yeah. Well I think this is this is this is exactly right. I think if there's a call to action on that it's it's around like ask yourself just just stop and think when you hear about these things, like why is this happening and what what is this really the right solution ⁓ to this problem? So ⁓ you know, and does it does it really make sense that this thing is being implemented because of the named problem, right? And that's that's really where to start.

Alex: That was my that was my second question. Why is this happening?

Richard: Right. Well no, I think I think that's that's the thing. It can be varied can be varied reasons, right? So ⁓ I think there's a bunch of them that we've kind of covered before. There's subtle ones, like it's if you make it incredibly onerous to be compliant to have users, then you deal with only a very few companies that that have that ability. So you don't have as much regulate, right? It makes life simpler for the for the regulator, for the people bringing in these rules. ⁓ you then also have the I mean it it it I I see it as a kind of ⁓ institutional it's not laziness it's kind of a it's it's a drive to make things simpler for themselves, right? For institutions to simplify their own task set. So You have it with KYC AML around finance, and you have it with these ideas of like needing to register, you know, to to do various things ⁓ online, etc. And it's because it's sort of seen as well, it's easier just to track people digitally than it is to actually do the hard work of going and finding out what's you know where the criminals did something and how they did it. The thing is it it's it's usually founded out of a combination of laziness and then the fact that these things can be very complicated and time consuming, which really appeals to bureaucracies because they get to grow and to to to have lots of steps, etc. and, you know, governments love throwing this stuff at say a bank because then that's job creation because they have to have a compliance team and you know this is sort of unquestioned for its for its ness you know necessity. Which is ridiculous because in the end what you're doing is you're making it hard for people to send their grandmas overseas some money, but any half decent money launderer still has a bag of tricks. And in fact you make being a professional money launderer more ⁓ more and more ⁓ profitable because ⁓ you're just, you know, removing some of the simple methods of doing it. So to me I think it it's The reasons why is this kind of combination of institutional laziness of just wanting simpler ways to achieve ends. ⁓ and then that that creates a desire for control because it's perceived that that control will make stuff easier to do, it'll make administration easier. ⁓ and then it also creates a whole lot of busy work administering all this information you're collecting and so on and so forth. And so it gets general acceptance and nobody pushes back against it because it grows the bureaucracy that invented it.

Alex: Yeah, I hear what you're saying, but I think I think laziness should have a little like asterisk next to it. And maybe we should also add the fact that, you know, it's easier for us for us to manage more and more people, which means we can extract more and more from these people, right? At a lower and lower cost. And that is aligned incentives between the tech world and the bureaucracy, right?

Richard: At Right. Well the bureauc the bureaucratic version of the bureaucratic government side of that is a s it's an assumption that we should be administering these things and that that that us having more work to do but that work being easier is therefore good because keeping us busy is the right thing to do, keeping us in control is the right thing to do. So I think yes, it's it's a financial ⁓ imperative on the on the business side. Yeah. It's just I mean it's just straight up about making money out of these things. on the ⁓ government side it's it's laziness combined with a sense that, you know, we the power we have should be extended. and you know, it's not necessarily a question, it's not necessarily a power hungriness as much as it is just a sense of entitlement or unquestioning assumption that, you know, we have governing to do and therefore, you know, the easier it is, the better we can do it, the better.

Alex: It reminds me of this ⁓ wonderful quote ⁓ from Steve Jobs when he was talking about ⁓ the previous CEO of Apple. This is when he came back in '97, and I think what's his name is John John Scully, the previous ⁓ Pepsi Pepsi CEO. And he said that John Scully said that Apple is a ship that's leaking water, and my job is to point it in the right direction.

Richard: Right.

Alex: I feel like that's the way bureaucracy is thinking right now, you know. Our society is a ship that's leaking water and our job is to point it in the right direction. ⁓ but yeah, you know, it's just just it's it's it's it seems ridiculous enough to be true considering everything that's happening, you know, like they ruin everything and then they're like, let's let us fix it.

Richard: That's I think that Yeah. Well it's it's also I mean, I think the real the real ⁓ pathos to that statement or seeing the the insanity of it is not necessarily that they caused the leak, but you you don't pointing a ship in a particular direction has n has not nothing to do with how much water it's staking on, right? Like the Yeah. The the

Alex: That was the point he was trying to make, yeah. Yeah.

Richard: the kind of assumption is ⁓ you know there's there's there's ⁓ these bad things happening. People bad people bad criminals send each other money and so we should regulate. ⁓ and then very shortly afterwards the exact purpose of all this stuff is forgotten and what you've got is a huge, ⁓ massive set of rules and regulations that a bunch of people are very, very busy implementing and enforcing without real regard to like what are they ac what efficacy are they actually having on that that thing. It's just assumed, ⁓ like assuming that age verification will protect children, it's just assumed that ⁓ you know, AML rules will ⁓ actually do anything about, you know, criminal sending of money. ⁓ you know, there's often no

Alex: ML rules are just supposed to help people, you know, find out about the British Virgin Isles and understand that this is the place where you launder money. Stop trying to do it in other places. Or you exact exactly.

Richard: Well we'll just use HSBC in Hong Kong. I they would they would they they they've been hammered for it so many times and yet they still keep seem to keep coming back. No, I mean I I I think with these things you can also you start to see if you actually look at the definitions in there. I mean the definition of money laundering was taking money you've gotten from illegitimate reasons and making it clean. But the AML rules are about transferring money illegally, irrespective of how you got it. So you can you can take tax paid money that you earned working for the government as as a judge or whatever. Like the most legal money you could have, your money you earned as a school teacher, whatever it is, and breach AML rules by sending it overseas improperly. Or to someone l ⁓ locally improperly. And that to me is like that's where you see this break, right? People are assuming it's about

Alex: Mm.

Richard: when you call it money laundering, they're assuming it's about criminals moving their cash, but that's not what the rules actually cover. And I I think that that is a nice analogy back to that seems obvious, but when you look at age verification for ⁓ internet usage, you know, the assumption is ⁓ well we're protecting kids 'cause we're age assessation or verification where we're making sure the kids aren't getting in, but what you're doing is I Ding everyone at the door, irrespective of their age. And that's different. ⁓ And and that's yeah, it's the same problem.

Alex: Right. And Right. And I'm I'm just wondering, you know, like ⁓ not necessarily wondering, but this is why I think it's important to resist these changes. You know, it's ⁓ it's so many goalposts moving at once that it can become so confusing. You know, you don't know what's right, what's wrong, what's left, what's right, what's in the middle, you know, very few anchor points that are still left and even those are under attack.

Richard: Yeah. W well I think if we ⁓ and it's actually not a universal tenet of like Western law or anything, ⁓ but if in say a country like in the UK or Australia where the law is basically you know innocent until proven guilty, if you said to people around the world, okay, the police can now without reason ⁓ hold you for as long as they like and whenever they do that, it's your job to prove that they don't have a reason to hold you. Right? ⁓ well they d didn't have a reason to stop you. People would be very suspicious and and almost certainly up in arms about that. It just se it's just obviously so wrong. But ⁓ what we've got is a situation where essentially that's what the h is happening online. ⁓ and people are just saying, ⁓ well no police now have the ability to stop and detain or block anyone from going anywhere because we're protecting children. Right? And and but the protect children distracts people from like, wait, how is this even helping anybody? What's the purpose of this? And what what's it actually going to be used for? and you know, yes, if the police could stop anyone from going anywhere whenever they like, they could protect. potentially stop a bad person from going somewhere to do something bad, but there's no evidence that they will work that out or that that's what it will be used for. And that's what we're seeing, right? Is you need you know, you need to technically it's you ki you need to show your ID to sh prove that you're not a kid, but now you're showing your ID for whatever reason that that they want to see that. And it's being recorded whether you like it or not. ⁓ so I think, you know that's that's really the the the crux here to me is that we see this this this disconnect between what's actually being the reason things are being proposed and what we're actually seeing implemented in a way that exposes some of the reasons for that you know actually coming to pass.

Alex: Right, but I mean, you know, I hear what you're saying and and you're you're right on the money, but I'm also thinking, you know, you're a co-founder of this, you know, innovative state of the art blockchain, right? You guys built all these tools that can be used without a digital ID, without, you know, GDPR compliance, without having to fill in a hundred forms and all that stuff. From your point of view, right? Because you you guys already saw this in China happening, you know, 10, 15 years ago. You know, from your point of view, do you sit there at night sometimes you just like smile to yourself because this is literally

Richard: Mm.

Alex: gonna push a whole bunch of people into looking for alternatives, right? Because guess what? I'm not gonna use that. I'm not gonna use the digital ID. Sorry. I'm gonna go find an alternative thing. Is this just like the the first step of creating this alternative market?

Richard: ⁓ I wouldn't say smile to myself 'cause that's like ⁓ being really happy that the the pandemic hospital you built in Foresight is now getting really good use, right? It's like Well no, but I think it's it's it's it's it's an interesting one because I think it's it is it is like that. It's not just that people don't like it so now we've got customers, right? It's not like aha the opposition made pink cars and nobody likes them and we're cleaning up because we've got blue ones.

Alex: It was the it was the figure of speech, Richard. I know you're not very

Richard: it's confirmation. It's real confirmation about the importance of what we were doing. And I do think ⁓ I mean I think i i it's it's clear and obvious that you know what we were seeing happen in China was very ⁓ very formative to building SADO because we could see where the internet could end up. I mean because they just they just you know fast paced it, they just made a beeline for, you know, a controlled internet and they understood very quickly that if they were gonna have an internet it was going to be a state controlled one. ⁓ and that's that's what they built. You know, they're very, very fast, very adept at like making all this happen. It makes Europe look kind of European in its clunkiness for getting to the point. ⁓ and so yeah, that definitely, you know, kind of ⁓ removes a sense of, ⁓ this could happen in China but it couldn't happen here, right? Because yeah, there we can see it happening step by step. We're going towards real name verification, etcetera, for internet usage as a general standard in the West. so yeah, I mean it's it's sort of vindication that this is why we need CIDO. I think what's actually exciting is like like the example I gave last week on the pod, you know, like PC magazine starting to talk about this. And these guys are not political or or don't particularly care about these things ⁓ they see, you know the closest they get is like DNS management being, you know, uncorruptible, that kind of thing. ⁓ and yet they're starting to see it. So we're starting to see people across the board, you know, feel this kind of thing. ⁓ and I think that's, you know, ⁓ David, my co founder, is ⁓ presenting today and ⁓ just finished actually, ⁓ paper at a conference in in the UK. And the first thing he said to me when we had our first catch up call after he landed in the UK is my God you can feel it. And he'd been in in Thailand and Asia generally, a couple of times Canada recently, hadn't been to Europe in I think ten years. And just the the feeling of using the internet, being hounded around, asked to comply with things constantly, ⁓ was genuinely, you know, genuinely off putting to him. And I think so people seeing you know, seeing that in action, ⁓ is is a real confirmation that we've built something of value and the you know, we hope that, you know, more and more people can make use of it. Again, to do these very, very simple things. By all means use digital IDs. They're fantastic. Digital ID is simple, effective cryptographic tool that lets you do a million things really simply online that some of which aren't even possible in other ways. The question is not digital ID or no digital ID, it's who gave it to you? What control do you have over it? ⁓ you know, w what relate Right, who has root access to that digital ID. ⁓ is it yours or is it, like we've been saying, kind of are you licensing permission to your own identity to go and do things for as long as you can get that license? And that's that's I think fundamentally the difference that we're we're seeing. I think people are picking that up. ⁓ that's really it's really great that it's confirmation, I think, for why we've worked so hard to build what we've been building and why, particularly in the crypto space, we, you know, it's been

Alex: Who has root access.

Richard: It's a challenging place to keep your head down, keep building something that is purely just for the utility of it. to try and make a a positive social change rather than ⁓ you know, a finance product or something like that, which is much easier to get out there and and and sell to people. so yeah, it's it's it's it's it's vindicating. I think it's also ⁓ crunch time in that sense, in that it's not just yeah, we've given

Alex: Yeah.

Richard: put a lot of effort into creating something that gives people an alternative, ⁓ that lets people build ⁓ pl you know, software and tools and platforms that work peer to peer that don't have, you know, things that like they they cannot need GDPR ⁓ you know, compliance because even if the two people are Europeans, they're only just two people talking to each other. It's no company involved. There's no data access manipulation sharing involved. This is fundamentally different. I think it's really cool. But ⁓ you know, it also means we need to look at things like, you know, the extremes not happening, like at what point does the digital ID get required to use your you know, to get internet access in the first place, such that everywhere where you can connect with Wi Fi or with cellular you have to tie it to that ID and then you have to tell people what you're doing, right? This is this is w why we need to fight this fight.

Alex: Right, the point you were making earlier that because of the way the net network functions, when two people talk to one another, there is no middle part, which means there's no need for GDPR. That right there is pure alpha. Because ⁓ I I was posting ⁓ on on Mastodon for for Sado and ⁓ somebody asked me about GDPR compliance. And I explained exactly this thing where it's like you cannot have GDPR between two people talking in a bar. The network works in a similar way. And it kinda like they didn't know what to do with that answer because we have been so conditioned to think in these specific ways and it's time to, you know, start thinking for ourselves.

Richard: Mm. Well, i it it's interesting as well, 'cause I mean, like most of the tech podcasts where people talk about this, ⁓ Europeans that where I've talked you know, these are system administrators talking about running servers, kind of tech podcasts that I'm boring enough to listen to. and, you know, people have for a long time felt like, ⁓ we're lucky Europeans, we've got this GDPR, it protects us and and I think that's kind of that sense is being misused now because GDPR For Europeans where they're using products from American providers was making the regulatory landscape a bit more in their favor than it would have been if they were ⁓ well than it was because you know they weren't even afforded the rights of US citizens, which the US providers at least have to protect, and w offshore they didn't. ⁓ so people have a positive sense. ⁓ GDPR is a protecty thing, it's good. And then that becomes a ⁓ tool for like getting people to think, ⁓ yes, well this is actually the way it should be, to the point where they then worry about why does our personal per person to person conversation not have a GDPR aspect to it. It's it doesn't make any sense. It shouldn't be necessary. But people are so conditioned to ⁓ you know having to to do these things, like people conditioned to needing a login and don't understand that you can use private keys, etc., where you p public private key pairs where you don't need a login. But people sometimes feel insecure because despite the fact it's cryptographically far more secure, ⁓ and you have complete ownership and control over it, like, you know, there can't be a breach of the company database that exposes this stuff. ⁓ people still use to the idea of like, well, give it to the you know, I'll give it to the man and then the man will protect me. Right? Like that's this the it becomes ⁓ you know, some people might think of it more like Stockholm syndrome. I think it's a bit different to that, but it it it's definitely prevalent. Right, where people just assume these things are necessary. And it takes a bit of a mindset, but it's also incredibly freeing the first time you realise, ⁓ there isn't an intermediary here. Like this is brilliant. I can just talk to my friends without, you know, ⁓ having to ask the government for permission or having to show my ID, or having the company trying to ram ads into the middle of my chat or whatever it is. ⁓ and to me that's that's really positive.

Alex: Definitely, definitely. I think I think we should have a whole episode or on intermediaries and how there's like this whole class of, you know, in-betweeners that are just like chomping at our everything, you know. So ⁓ that was the that was a great episode. ⁓ we're gonna close it up and afterward afterwards we're gonna answer the question from ⁓ from the community. So Before we do that, I also need to plug the open internet pod. I forgot to add the layout today, but you know, you can always listen to this pod afterwards or share it with your friends. You know, use your favorite podcast app. Just search for the open internet pod. We're also on YouTube if you really want to watch this video. So thank you again for ⁓ for watching and listening to us ramble on for an hour. And now ⁓ for the people that are joining us live.

Richard: Yes.

Alex: We have a question from the community if it's from the category devs do something and it's from ⁓ bit bitten sour intern and he or she wonders are you planning to bring in dedicated professional marketing teams slash agencies and business development specialists slash firms to actively grow the project?

Richard: ⁓ so I mean it's a it's an interesting one 'cause it ⁓ isn't ⁓ necessarily aware of of all the things we've done and are doing, ⁓ that involve dedicated professional marketing teams, et cetera. ⁓ we've we've worked with a lot of people ⁓ who've come and volunteered, ⁓ who've charged eye watering sums of money and in various models, et cetera. ⁓ Generally speaking, ⁓ in the space, so the kind of quote unquote professional web three crypto marketing firms, if you look at ⁓ what they what ninety-nine percent of them ever achieve, ⁓ it's usually a few months of glory for a project followed by a crash and, you know, not much else. it's not what we're about. ⁓ we haven't for one thing gone and got a hundred million dollars or you know, pump the token to like drag it out of retail, to build a massive treasury to go around paying ⁓ you know, sixty two hundred, five hundred thousand a month, which I've seen budgets for out there promoting projects, ⁓ which they're only doing because they know they're gonna get it back on on retail sales and it's got to be unsustainable. So we do have dedicated professional marketing teams. We do work with business development. ⁓ but we do it maybe a bit differently to where other ⁓ other projects do because we've got a genuine platform and social movement out there to get happening. ⁓ I think where you'll see the kind of most similar to your classic you know product and then marketing kind of one two in companies ⁓ will be in projects building on CIDO. That's exactly the way they'll want to grow a user base and start doing things. Our job is to do outreach. Which we do in various ways, including things like this podcast. ⁓ to get the word out about why CIDO's important and why you'd want to build on it, etcetera. To build the tech, and then yes, ⁓ we've got, you know, lots coming up to work on getting people to come and build and do things on the tech, which you know, can include stuff like working with VCs to set up funds to help that happen, ⁓ and to help interested parties work on it, which will then warrant having your classic product marketing team going out there and actually pushing a product in the in the way that you market a product. ⁓ promoting whatever you want to call it, marketing, ⁓ growing a social movement and ⁓ something that that that is trying to achieve what side of it achieves isn't a classic product marketing challenge. and, you know, so we've had various ⁓ success, ⁓ most of it minor. working with kind of professional agencies, et cetera, previously. but I think we've got a pretty extensive range of of things happening now and they will they will continue to keep growing as the ecosystem keeps growing and warrants more kind of traditional outreach, et cetera. If you think about something like Ethereum, et cetera, it's not really promoted in that sense, right? People don't promote Ethereum per se, they when you see stuff being promoted it's something that builds on it. When you see, you know, ⁓ something building on Solana, et cetera, that's how it happened. The initial push for something like Solana all came out of ⁓ out of VCs and people who were, you know, insiders in the project, ⁓ not the kind of traditional marketing. So it's it's a d it's is a complicated thing. ⁓ like I was just saying about Sido, a lot of people are so used to the way things work that they don't initially see the value ⁓ until they're being squeezed really hard as to why they'd want to work, why they'd want to use something like Sido. ⁓ I feel like we were saying right at the start of the pod, that wind is changing fast with people feeling more and more urgency around these things. And I think we're doing a great job at the moment of capitalizing on this current ⁓ growth in awareness of the problems that Sido solves for people. ⁓ and that's probably the biggest thing we can be doing. So we're dedicating a lot of time to that. As that grips, et cetera, and we get more people building on Cyto, then we'll see more traditional product marketing of getting those projects out and that will be where the real, real growth comes from. And unlike Flash in the Pan ⁓ projects or DeFi projects, et cetera, that will be longer and sustained because it's genuinely providing value and the people who are building profitable companies on the chain will be consistently requiring ⁓ access to the network, et cetera. They'll be building genuine lasting users rather than ⁓ speculation. And that's really what we're what we're out to do.

Alex: So what you're saying is that long term goals and strategy and vision prevails over a flash of the pan pump and dump.

Richard: Right. I mean, it's just not what we're about. I mean, we've been building SADO on a wafer, you know, thin set of funds for, you know, eight, nine years now. We're not here to flip it and go and live in the Bahamas on the money we pulled out of unsuspecting retail investors. We're here to genuinely make a difference. and therefore it's a slow it's a slower, longer burn, but I think it has a much bigger potential impact ⁓ all round than something that's a you know quick meme coin or a small DeFi project.

Alex: Perfect. That makes total sense. And you know, good things come to those who wait. So ⁓ on that ⁓ what we call bombshell, let us ⁓ end this show. And ⁓ once again thank you everybody for watching us live. ⁓ today was a special day, it was on a Wednesday. Let us know if Wednesday works better for you guys than Thursday, otherwise we're gonna be back to our regular Thursday slot next week. Have a good one, take care.

Richard: Thanks guys.