Decentralized technologies in the service of civil society
I see the task of civil society as the creation of decentralized digital technologies that would be popular.
As stated above, this is currently a very niche story for geeks, but in light of the increasing tyranny of states, it is increasingly relevant. And its relevance will only increase.
So, what to do in the face of increased state censorship and other delights of state abuse?
1. Civil society outside the state. This means both active individuals with strong horizontal connections and the infrastructure that solves their pains and problems.
2. Counter-propaganda. As Alexei Navalny bequeathed, at least 5 minutes a day should be devoted to the fight against (in our context, conditional) Putin. The same citizen journalism or independent editorial boards. Constantly remind who our enemy is, who is the enemy of freedom: these are states and those who want to change into major's boots in order to trample under them those whom they consider wrong (ironically, in Russian, these are most often the right, not the left).
Remember that a war is being waged against you, against freedom, designed to make you dumb slaves of states. With the development of technology, we are getting closer and closer to the dystopias described in science fiction.
We have a duty to resist.
Civil society outside the state
Civil society outside the state is a zone of law outside state anarchy.
Recently, with the arrest of Pavel Durov, we were able to see once again that states are just bandits. They take money from people in the form of taxes to “ensure security” and fight crime, and then they stage a security theater that has nothing to do with it (restrictions at airports, for example, and in particular the frames), or they put Pavel Durov in jail for not fighting crime for them.
So, the solutions:
1. Digital state. A purely virtual construction, which, nevertheless, has a real community of its members-citizens, and carries out real political work to recognize its passport by the Ministries of Foreign Affairs of countries.
Such a state could be an association of emigrants from the CIS – a second passport would be useful to them in case the first one is cancelled, and for travel.
Right now such an example is (at least, this is declared) Bitnation. Their website is extremely uninformative, but here is the link. Write if you know more about them.
2. Extraterritorial contractual jurisdictions. Strictly speaking, this could be included in the first point, if Montelibero, Free State Project — Europe (FSPE) did not declare itself as such. However, they are not quite virtual, as they have chosen Montenegro as their base.
This is both a community and projects on the blockchain, read more at them.
3. An association of like-minded people in a specific territory — the Free State Project in New Hampshire, which served as an inspiration for Montelibero. I highlighted it as a separate item because the territory is their base. Although this division is conditional.
But there is a nuance. States fight against those who create projects that are dangerous to them or interfere with their plans for total surveillance and control.
Examples – Lbry (Jeremy Kauffman), Tornado Cash (Alexey Pertsev), Silk Road (Ross Ulbricht), WikiLeaks (Julian Assange), Edward SnowdenTelegram (Pavel Durov).
If you are involved in such projects, there are two paths: try to remain anonymous (like Satoshi Nakamoto) or be aware of the risks but be public to convey to people the need for resistance.
Blockchain
So, blockchain as a decentralized technology.
It's usually used for cryptocurrencies, but you can also use it to make ID or anything else, and in particular online voting (quite a challenge).
This is a key technology for the topic. I suggest thinking about what projects can be implemented on it.
Examples (not necessarily about blockchain, but on topic) are on the slide below.
Resist
The task of civil society is to resist state violence.
Resist. Fight for freedom – otherwise, in a few years, we will be living in a global digital Gulag.
Bibliography:
– Digital repression and protest technologies: racing with censorship. —Kira Fedorova — https://te-st.org/2024/04/12/technologies-of-revolution-and-repressions/
– How did civil society emerge and what can it do in Russia today? / Grigory Yudin — https://youtu.be/os-Nh0cNkto?si=srjijIAXGlUIiz60
– Decentralized search for the free web. — Sasha Podolsky — https://habr.com/ru/articles/690252/
– Decentralized services versus distributed ones. — https://habr.com/ru/sandbox/157698/
– Distributed networks and decentralized applications. Brief analysis. — https://habr.com/ru/articles/782714/
