Never underestimate how #KYC restricts your…

Tim Bouma — Mon, 28 Oct 2024 12:49:13 GMT

Never underestimate how #KYC restricts your freedom and changes your behaviour. Last year I purchased a drone. While on holidays, I wanted to take an aerial photo of the farm where I grew up. The app immediately warned me I was in a restricted airspace (near an airport and military installation) and it initiated a KYC process to continue. Given that the manufacturer and app provider is a foreign company (guess which one), I had no idea what was going to happen to that information. Needless to say, I was a bit freaked out and did not continue. I haven’t used the drone since (over a year).

I think about this a lot:…

Tim Bouma — Mon, 15 Apr 2024 14:15:28 GMT

I think about this a lot: we have to be careful not to let the rules of the old system dictate the requirements of the new system.

This reminds of a question asked of a British general in the early days of the Great War - what was necessary to win the war. His answer, “More hay for the horses!”, thinking a well-equipped cavalry was going to dominate the battlefield. We all know how that turned out.

As we build on #nostr, I am seeing more and more comments about needing #KYC, content moderation, etc. All very good old system requirements, but we need to be careful not to build these controls into the centre of the system. The biggest threat I see to developers and providers is an ‘enforced duty of care’ - you can do something and now we’re going to force you to do in the name of ‘protecting’ something or another.

I am by no means advising illegality, we just need to be aware that one party’s cool feature can become someone else’s threat vector.