Real life example of Lightning Network censorship AKA “What's wrong with LN in one tweet” \ stacker news ~bitcoin

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Real life example of Lightning Network censorship AKA “What's wrong with LN in one tweet”twitter.com/c_otto83/status/1474382420925366314?s=21

15 sats \ 21 comments \ @thrown 25 Dec 2021 bitcoin

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3 sats \ 0 replies \ @eduardopro 26 Dec 2021

LOL, that Otto guy expected support. What a loser.

6 sats \ 6 replies \ @k00b 25 Dec 2021

This isn’t a problem with LN. It’s a problem with one dude that’s mostly mitigated with privacy best practices.

It’s kind of like a guy kicking you out of his house and you’re like “well, that’s what’s wrong with houses.”

1 sat \ 5 replies \ @thrown OP 25 Dec 2021

I understand what you mean, but an individual house isn’t part of a transportation network. I’m not an expert but tell me what you think of the below:

Imagine if roads are privatized. Eventually the majority of roads will be owned by just a few corporations (because you can only make money at large scale). Now all of the sudden being kicked off is a lot more of a problem. Especially if multiple of these corporations agree on kicking you off.

101 sats \ 3 replies \ @freetx 26 Dec 2021 freebie

This is false tho, because there is no "monopoly control", there is nothing preventing anyone else from spinning up routing nodes.

Any corp that tried to "corner the market for purposes of censorship" would trivially be routed around.

To present it another way: Why hasn't this happened with SMTP yet? Why isn't there 1 mega-corp who dominates and censors email?

5 sats \ 2 replies \ @thrown OP 26 Dec 2021

To present it another way: Why hasn't this happened with SMTP yet? Why isn't there 1 mega-corp who dominates and censors email?

There is. It's called Gmail. Effectively, Google controls the entire email protocol.

Just ask anyone that runs their own email server and is considered spam by Gmail (even though their server is perfectly compliant by SMTP standards)

3 sats \ 1 reply \ @DarthCoin 27 Dec 2021

This is damn true! I run several email servers, self hosted, with all dmarc, dkim, spf etc specifications OK and google still reject my emails because my IP is in a range from the ISP that is doing spams. So if I have for example 193.45.50.1 and another IP from the same ISP`have 193.45.50.2, the entire block is put into spam list. ISPs doesn't give a shit, even if you put an incident, google doesn't give a shit. As you said is a tacit conspiracy between ISP and google to push email servbers to be hosted on their servers/IPs so they can control you more. fucking nightmare

1 sat \ 0 replies \ @thrown OP 27 Dec 2021

This is why these things need to be ensured / fixed on the protocol level.

Consolidation is inevitable because humans are lazy and prefer to just pay someone else to handle it.

But I suppose one way to try to ensure decentralization is to make self-hosting as easy as possible and as early as possible, before consolidation can happen.

2 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b 26 Dec 2021

Your analogy is better. However, software roads probably don’t approximate physical ones - way less scarcity … either way, this sucks and it’s why privacy is harped over and over in ln protocol dev. Hopefully we’ll solve this.

2 sats \ 0 replies \ @NA 27 Dec 2021

Real life example of why privacy matters

2 sats \ 5 replies \ @nout 26 Dec 2021

I think this all worked out as expected. Anyone can decide who they make peer connections/channels with based on any criteria they would like. As soon as someone starts suggesting to others to cancel a specific user, then they face an immunity reaction from the community. This community doesn't appreciate censorship and cancel culture and it's good to show it.

This pot-stirring event also helps teach people about the value of anonymity and specific aspects of LN, so that's a plus.

1 sat \ 2 replies \ @DarthCoin 27 Dec 2021

People should learn how to have a "public face" and a private life. Have separations between them. I run 3 LN nodes. One is public, with name and all shit linked to telegram alias. But that telegram it doesn't represent any real man in real life. Is just an alias. Another node is totally unknown, no name, no linked to anyone. Another node, mobile, that is a bridge in between those 2.

Is ok to have a public node as far you know how to keep away from your real identity.

2 sats \ 1 reply \ @nout 27 Dec 2021

Yeah, but the UX of compartmentalization like that is tricky and you have to learn a lot of things. So this is nuanced and I'm on one side happy that community handles issue/attack like this quite well, but on the other side I'd be happier to see protocol level functionality like @thrown suggests.

1 sat \ 0 replies \ @thrown OP 27 Dec 2021

I know that minimint is adding functionality for managing Lightning stuff. Considering that it is meant to be an e-cash mint that provides default anonymity for its users, fingers crossed that it handles lightning in a similar way.

1 sat \ 1 reply \ @thrown OP 26 Dec 2021

This community doesn't appreciate censorship and cancel culture and it's good to show it.

The one thing better than hoping for good behavior is ensuring it on the protocol level.

1 sat \ 0 replies \ @nout 26 Dec 2021

I agree with that. Are the systems like LN+ creating fully anonymous channels or do you still have to get to know the people? Maybe giving LN nodes a name is not a good idea...

1 sat \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 27 Dec 2021

Now Otto will release a new LN script based on operator being jabbed or not. Seems that Otto wear too much time the face diaper and affected his brain.

1 sat \ 1 reply \ @faithandcredit 26 Dec 2021

The same problem exists in proof of work but it is also solved because a miner can decide to not include your transactions but since there are other miners someone else will just do it :)

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @thrown OP 26 Dec 2021

Definitely better in an anonymity preserving system though. Although I guess even Monero has on-chain addresses that could be doxxed.

1 sat \ 2 replies \ @thrown OP 25 Dec 2021

Will this kind of thing be a problem for LN?

I’ve seen others say that the solution is to just make everything pseudonymous. Is that really a solution though?

6 sats \ 0 replies \ @0260378aef 25 Dec 2021

My gut reaction is that it doesn't need a solution; the whole advantage of LN or other 2nd layer solutions is that you can choose who you share a local consensus with; that's what gives it tremendous advantages in privacy, scalability and cost. How you choose that, whether it be an economic reason or other reason (including stupid reasons), is entirely your business.

The globally enforced consensus we have on the base chain is extremely powerful - only miners can even try to block transactions there, and the globality means it'd be pointless unless a huge proportion of miners agreed to censorship and even then .. While that set of properties is great for anti-censorship, it comes at very high cost in time and energy/money.

I'm guessing you see this as more of a problem because of persistent node IDs and a tendency to associate real-world identities with them. I see that as a discussion about routing nodes, but before considering that, consider also that the sender anonymity properties of LN are really pretty good, so just considering an ordinary user, this is most likely not a problem (at least within the system! no crypto magic can stop the problem of merchants demanding ID from their customer ...).

As to routing, yes anonymity is preferable I suppose. But anyway, if it is impaired by such choices to not interact, well someone else will be happy to provide you a route, for a fee. You can imagine fragmentation, but personally I am optimistic that trying to block routing like that will be futile.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 27 Dec 2021

No, this have nothing to do with LN. Is just a stupid rant and stupid decision from a stupid operator. He will be isolated soon by all other participants and he will pay himself the price for his own stupid "cancel culture"