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I hope you are right.
In some ways SNs being small in scope at this state is an advantage- it allows experimentation and fine tuning of the V4V censorship resistant model.
If SNs can develop ways of enabling coverage of issues to be raised that larger platforms mostly fail to raise, even to a small audience, then that is a success, IMO.
Still don't see why downzaps, and even upzaps cannot identify the originator as this would provide improved transparency.
Why, afterall, would anyone except a malicious actor wish to conceal their up and downzaps?
Sure, as @Scoresby points out people could still create new accounts to enact such malicious zaps but at least it would be visible that the zapper is probably concealing their real identity...and in the case of sybil boosting it would lessen the effectiveness and convenience of such deceitful practices...the sybil boosting would be more visible than currently...credit for, and thus incentive for genuine up zapping would also be increased!
Amongst other reasons, consider that there are places in the world where you can be severely punished for expressing certain views. Anonymity protects people in those situations and allows them to support what they want to.
I agree with you on that but linking zaps and downzaps to a nym does not cause any increased risk of state force being applied to the nym involved.
If the state can identify a nym to their citizenship identity then anything that nym says is already exposed to risk.
How would attaching zap/downzap to the originators nym actually increase that risk? It doesn't! The nym is already a pseudonym.
All identifying the nym zapping or downzapping does is link that nyms social standing within the community and provides some accountability for their actions within the community.
Perhaps they're careful about what they say and use the freedom of anonymity to support what they really believe.
Anyway, there are good reasons for anonymity and it doesn't take a ton of sleuthing to figure out who the main downzapper is. His bloodthirsty views are well-known and he doesn't seem particularly shy about them.
I do not know who the primary downzapper is though have made every effort to find out.
Perhaps I am missing something but would suggest if I do not know many others do not either.
If you know why not reveal who it is?
Not linking downzapping to the nym doing it allows ongoing covert censorship without any effective accountability within the community.
Identifying zaps/downzaps improves transparency and accountability and credit for zapping!, without in any real way increasing risk of exposure to state interference...at least for people who already openly and honestly speak their mind.
You are effectively defending someone who you say does not speak openly and truthfully but who hides behind a cloak of anonymity and uses it to censor the dialogue on SNs.
Someone else pointed out that Peter Todd's spending is highly correlated with these large downzaps. He's not heavily involved in discussions, so it's not likely to be from zapping the things he's reading.
I'm not particularly interested in who is doing it, though. I'm interested in the experiment of letting money be the moderator. What's important is that someone can do this and the system can adapt to it (we'll see how well).
By the way I have looked on TOP, and Peter Todd does not conceal this spending data- the primary downzapper of Greater Israel Project posts does conceal their spending data- I can confirm this because I have several times tracked top spenders when I was boosting these posts with large amounts and the downzapper was definitely someone concealing their spending data as the top spender at those times- the only stacker spending enough on those days to account for the very large downzaps was someone concealing their spending data- so its not Peter Todd- unless hes using a second account.
This is the problem where downzappers can conceal their actions- others come under suspicion - for transparency and a healthy community we need to make downzapping (and ideally up zaps) identifiable to the nym making them.
Then there's more than one, which isn't too surprising
Interesting given his passionate defense of Ukraine.
It would be fascinating to hear from him, if it is him, his reasoning for supporting Israel and The Greater Israel Project.
If he has credible reasons then why is he so shy about sharing them?
From my point of view Ukraine faces a similar expansionary land grab attack from Russia, to what Palestinians and much of the Middle East face from Israel...but if @petertodd sees differences let him explain and enlighten us!
I recently upzapped his report on Ukraine and asked his view on Chinas involvement support of Russia, but got no reply. It might help if he can see who upzaps him too!
Regardless of whether the covert downzapping is him or not, not identifying downzappers only allows a cloud of obfuscation, concealment and anonymous censorship incentive to degrade the SNs user experience.
Equally, crediting upzaps with the nym that makes them should provide more incentive to positively zap...while also attaching accountability to downzaps and dis-incentivising malicious misuse of them.
Certainly agree letting money be the moderator is a worthwhile project- just the devil is in the detail. I personally loathe how our western democracies have become owned and dominated by rich corporate lobbyists who hide behind various mechanisms of concealment - they have corrupted our democracies because they are able to hide their identities and payments.
Clearly that's the case but the implication isn't obvious.
Stacker News is very small and the cost of suppression is probably close to 10k sats per lost reader. If we ever scale to something like other news aggregator sites or social media platforms, that would be very expensive.