As time goes by I keep my eyes on this story with Pavel Durov being imprisoned in France and discussions around that matter. There is not that much factual progress on the topic though. It seems like after yesterday's post there is nothing French government has to say or would like to say. No further details, explanations or any new evidence. Meanwhile, Pavel is the one who spends his time in prison. So, time is kinda not on his side. I hope they gave him a good book at least.
In the same moment, suddenly Mark Zuckerberg decided to go public on the same issue of governmental pressure and control over social networks and communications. The letter he sent to a US House committee chair has been published today: https://x.com/JudiciaryGOP/status/1828201780544504064.
Even though wording of the document is still quite fuzzy, I think this is as open as Zuckerberg has ever spoken on the matter. In the light of Durov’s current state of affairs, it looks pretty reasonable for Zuck to remain nice and compliant, but I remember how a few years ago Mark suffered through his public hearings in the US Senate, known as “Zukerberg explains the Internet to the Congress”, so probably we just saw his comeback.
My feeling is that everybody in tech got a bit tired of constant attempts to guide and control us without taking any responsibility for the consequences. Instead of solving real problems, such as dealing with rushing real estate prices, offering solutions to issues in health, prison, immigration and pension systems or handling at least some of the wars waged here and there on the planet, governments around the world decided to focus on an attempt to enforce what one should or should not watch, consume or smoke. The worst part is that many of those legislation samples are just dramatically incompetent. There is no significant AI startup in Europe at the moment but somehow there is already a regulation of this topic. I’m not even mentioning those freaking consents about cookies you probably gave 1000 times just today. Is there any good from having them? Any analysis or self reflection from those who wrote them into a law? Who is responsible for such a waste of time? I think by now billions of dollars in development time were invested into asking users to confirm they are fine with having a cookie.
Of course, it would be laughable if it was not a real law one should take into consideration. And, as we just saw, you can very well end up in jail if you choose to ignore it. So, how do we deal with that legalistic nightmare as a society? What is our plan?
Historically, the response was always to develop a new frontier which is not regulated at all and move there for a while. The Internet itself once was such a paradise, until legislators found out how to use a browser. And nowadays Crypto and Web3 did an attempt to push the borders, but it doesn’t look like a successful one so far.
Remember how developers were charged with “operating” the Tornado Cash service and, as a result, somehow laundering more than $1B in criminal funds? Fun part is that Tornado crypto mixer is open source and developers don't have any control over it since it is self-governed. And that is a crucial fact for understanding here! Crypto protocol can be deployed in such a way that no one in the world has direct control over it. I could be the one who wrote the code, but I'm not the one who operates it. Protocol runs as a smart contract on a distributed network of Etherium without any control or operation efforts. As a result of this, even developers can’t block users from interacting with it. But all of that didn’t stop the Dutch court. They said: “Fuck it, TLDR”, - and sentenced one of the developers to 5 years in prison. Of course, despite that fact Tornado Cash is still running and processing transactions, because math is a bitch which doesn't care about the decision of the court or feeling of the poor guy who didn't even have a chance to stop the mixer he didn't run.
Humanity needs an idea to move forward. Otherwise, the great Leviathan is going to consume every bit of the freedom we all enjoy now. Bite by bite. So, everyday I ask myself, what is it going to be? So far, no luck spotting. But maybe it is a good sign. Maybe it is not a bug, but a feature of a new thing. And this thought gives me some hope that one day I will find this new frontier and join the party. See you there!