@@ -13,10 +13,10 @@ conference on “The Decentralization of Power”](https://www.mtaconf.org/)._
1313
1414**✿**
1515
16−IN THE BEGINNING, *God created the prokaryotes. And the
16+IN THE BEGINNING, _God created the prokaryotes. And the
1717prokaryotes were without nucleus and organelle; and structural
1818simplicity was upon the face of the deep. And chemotaxis moved it upon
19−the face of the waters.*
19+the face of the waters._
2020
2121A single-celled organism possesses many advantages, notably simplicity
2222of form. Being largely indistinguishable, they have no differentiation
@@ -120,7 +120,7 @@ apex predators---at best, sheepdogs with a strong strain of wolfishness;
120120at worst, tar pits manned by various bad-faith actors. The pre-Web
121121cypherpunks were right: "Privacy is the power to selectively reveal
122122oneself to the world."[^9] If anything, they were too narrow; not only
123−their valued "open society" (polyvalent crypto-anarchy) but *any*
123+their valued "open society" (polyvalent crypto-anarchy) but _any_
124124non-megacorp society at all requires true privacy.
125125
126126What cyberspace (and human culture writ broadly) needed was an immune
@@ -156,7 +156,7 @@ sensibilities enjoy the sanction of megacorp sociality. There is
156156essentially no native culture left, only that forged in the enterprise
157157brand management office.[^10]
158158
159−In an immune system, *surface barriers* are designed to make it hard for
159+In an immune system, _surface barriers_ are designed to make it hard for
160160exogenous agents to enter a cell or organism; in our analogy, the
161161primary surface barrier was the match of physical separation to
162162psychological separation. Surface barriers were rendered finally
@@ -164,9 +164,9 @@ obsolete by the launch of the World Wide Web and its subsequent
164164infiltration of every aspect of human culture. To the extent they exist
165165today, it is a matter of ignorance, self-discipline, or happy accident.
166166
167−The *innate immune system* responds non-specifically to pathogens. Any
168−immune system must have a way of deciding what is *me* and what is
169−*not-me*. Framed as an identity problem in a zero-trust environment,
167+The _innate immune system_ responds non-specifically to pathogens. Any
168+immune system must have a way of deciding what is _me_ and what is
169+_not-me_. Framed as an identity problem in a zero-trust environment,
170170users have evolved several ways to uniquely identify agents without
171171reference to legacy systems. Chief among these means is the blockchain,
172172introduced by Bitcoin for control and transaction of digital assets and
@@ -177,7 +177,7 @@ platforms.
177177Identity is still fluid and polysemous, but in certain key instances it
178178is indelibly demonstrable.[^11] The individual actor has the capability
179179to express itself with many public faces or none; one of these typically
180−enjoys government sanction and liability, but it is no more *real* than
180+enjoys government sanction and liability, but it is no more _real_ than
181181the others, only more legible to regulation and taxation.[^12]
182182
183183Another aspect of the innate immune system is the public visibility of
@@ -186,7 +186,7 @@ epistemological grounds (i.e. you have a right to know what code you are
186186running) and practical grounds. (Linus's law: "given enough eyeballs,
187187all bugs are shallow."[^13])
188188
189−The *adaptive immune system* responds to specific pathogenic incursions.
189+The _adaptive immune system_ responds to specific pathogenic incursions.
190190Particular conditions arise, whether through social, regulatory,
191191military, or other requirements, which must be met with specialized
192192forms that are thereafter in evolutionary competition with the external
@@ -201,7 +201,7 @@ firearms, deviant scientific or political thought[^15], or even the
201201DRM-free sharing of copyrighted material can be contained[^16]; the
202202experience with export-grade cryptography[^17] has already shown that
203203regulatory attempts ultimately fail. The philosophical question is what
204−kind of world will evolve (a *fait accompli* driven by factors beyond
204+kind of world will evolve (a _fait accompli_ driven by factors beyond
205205any individual or office) and the practical question is how any
206206particular group of actors can preserve their own agency, autonomy, and
207207ambit of action.
@@ -226,7 +226,7 @@ agencies have in place arbitrary investor requirements which would make
226226little sense even if pegged to something like inflation or index rather
227227than the rapidly-devaluing petrodollar. Nominally put in place to
228228protect the naïve from getting scammed, these restrictions have had the
229−pernicious effect of pulling up the ladder behind the *actuel riche*.
229+pernicious effect of pulling up the ladder behind the _actuel riche_.
230230
231231DAOs have rapidly evolved as a way of distributing ownership and stake
232232in a purely democratic way. (As an aside, the word "democracy" has been
@@ -240,7 +240,7 @@ Decentralized autonomous organizations, zero-knowledge cryptographic
240240proofs, cryptocurrencies, proof-of-identity systems, and their
241241as-yet-unborn kin represent the evolution of an immune system on top of
242242the Darwinian churn of the legacy Internet. The stakes are necessarily
243−high: possession is *de facto* ownership, the other end of the stick
243+high: possession is _de facto_ ownership, the other end of the stick
244244from "not your keys, not your coins" (the old cryptocurrency chestnut).
245245The focus is currently on ownership of money, non-fungible tokens, and
246246similar assets, but broadly speaking such systems allow the
@@ -287,7 +287,7 @@ cryptographic evidence of its identity gets a vote on the consensus.
287287We must consider modern systems to necessarily interact at the pinnacle
288288intensity of competence and competition: any differential advantage that
289289can be exploited to outcompete an adversary not only can be exploited
290−but *should* be. Illegibility, redundancy, and apposite complexity are
290+but _should_ be. Illegibility, redundancy, and apposite complexity are
291291allies in the immune fight to maintain identity and ownership in the
292292modern Internet.[^24] Any system which does not have an operational
293293DAO-like layer is immunocompromised. All tools for the individual and
@@ -331,15 +331,15 @@ been diminishing both by cutting off older forms from the modern world
331331and by cultivating only certain state-legible apex predators[^26] and
332332their preferred ovine repast.
333333
334−Contra this monoculture, the *telos* of social computing is to recreate
334+Contra this monoculture, the _telos_ of social computing is to recreate
335335the village green, not the penitentiary. Revisiting a thesis from above:
336336"All tools for the individual and collective need to be architected
337−around *using cryptographic proofs to create stable high-trust havens in
338−an otherwise* zero-trust adversarial world." The village is a stable,
337+around _using cryptographic proofs to create stable high-trust havens in
338+an otherwise_ zero-trust adversarial world." The village is a stable,
339339long-term tribe well below Dunbar's limit which shares values and assets
340340in common, from which a member occasionally ventures out into the
341341broader social web but always has a home. Every village will grow its
342−own culture, perhaps even its own *cultus*, enabled by decentralized
342+own culture, perhaps even its own _cultus_, enabled by decentralized
343343technologies to protect their assets and precious peculiarities. The
344344World Wide Web has been an extinction-level event for many forms of
345345life, livelihood, and culture. For others, it has offered strange forms
@@ -348,174 +348,31 @@ now operational, human endeavor stands on the cusp of a Cambrian
348348explosion, unconstrainable by a rent-seeking boardroom-and-bureaucracy
349349world that never comprehended the light shining in its darkness.
350350
351−[^1]: Kaufman, Jim. (2010) ["Evolution and
352− immunity"](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2913256/).
353− *Immunology 130*, iss. 4, pp. 459--462.
354−
355−[^2]: President Eisenhower's original coinage was likely "the
356− military-industrial-academic complex."
357−
358−[^3]: E.g., Richard Bellman of the RAND Corporation on the origin of
359− "dynamic programming," a mathematical discipline: in dealing with a
360− recalcitrant secretary of defense who hated the word "research,"
361− Bellman instead chose the word "dynamic" arbitrarily because "it's
362− impossible to use the word 'dynamic' in a pejorative sense. ...It
363− was something not even a Congressman could object to. So I used it
364− as an umbrella for my activities." (Bellman, Richard. (1984) [*Eye
365− of the
366− Hurricane*](https://books.google.ch/books?id=4FwGCwAAQBAJ&lpg=PA159&dq=#v=onepage&q=).)
367−
368−[^4]: The nuclear triad doctrine, joining the Air Force's Strategic Air
369− Command bombers, the Navy's nuclear submarines, and the Army's ICBMs
370− and other assorted nuclear warheads, was based less on strategic
371− considerations than on appeasing constituent departments of the
372− military. Strategists developed a formal justification decades later
373− in a magnificent demonstration of motivated reasoning. (Woolf, Amy.
374− (2016) "U.S. Strategic Nuclear Forces: Background, Developments, and
375− Issues". [CRS
376− 7-5700](https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc847627/m2/1/high_res_d/RL33640_2016Mar10.pdf).)
377−
378−[^5]: The Air Force early commissioned the RAND Corporation on contract
379− with Douglas Aircraft Company as the first "think tank"; RAND soon
380− upended the traditional role of passive reception of studies by
381− making its own recommendations and showing their analytical chops.
382− Other service branches followed suit, such as the U.S. Navy's Center
383− for Naval Analyses and the Battelle Memorial Institute for various
384− federal contracting agencies; compare also the role of the national
385− laboratory system, e.g. Los Alamos, Sandia, Livermore, etc. for the
386− Department of Energy and Department of Defense. (Rich, Michael.
387− (2003) "RAND: How Think Tanks Interact with the Military".
388− [RP-1050](https://www.rand.org/pubs/reprints/RP1050.html).)
389−
390−[^6]: "On January 18, 1994, the first large-scale deliberate USENET spam
391− occurred. A message with the subject "Global Alert for All: Jesus is
392− Coming Soon" was cross-posted to every available newsgroup."
393− ([Wikipedia, "History of email
394− spam"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_email_spam))
395−
396−[^7]: The first instance which seems to have brough this to general
397− public awareness was the submission of Judge Robert Bork's video
398− rental history as evidence in his Supreme Court hearings before the
399− U.S. Senate. The resulting Video Privacy Protection Act was
400− delightfully naïve. Besides relying on "video rental" narrowly
401− construed, users have effectively no leverage against
402− unilaterally-imposed terms of service and end-user license
403− agreements. (See, e.g., [Electronic Privacy Information Center,
404− "Video Privacy Protection
405− Act"](https://archive.epic.org/privacy/vppa/).)
406−
407−[^8]: E.g. Tumblr and OnlyFans and adult content; Twitter and right-wing
408− content; Youtube and Facebook and unsanctioned medical content, etc.
409− Note that this is regardless of the viability of a given view or the
410− necessity of vigorous debate within a field, but focuses on the
411− palatibility of politics to the megacorp entity providing the
412− platform, even if the content drives platform usage.
413−
414−[^9]: Hughes, Eric. (1993) [*A Cypherpunk's
415− Manifesto*](https://nakamotoinstitute.org/cypherpunk-manifesto/).
416−
417−[^10]: The mass shift to remote work from March 2020 onwards due to the
418− COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the trend of corporate
419− colonization of private spaces. At first, this was occasionally
420− humorous, as when a child ran into the background of a Zoom call, or
421− underwear or private materials were inadvertently left in view of
422− the remote audience. In the end, it demanded that individuals
423− reconfigure their homes to accommodate mass corporate preferences,
424− thus another invasion of private space by the megacorp panopticon.\
425− I note as well an invasive doctrine demanding "truth in
426− communication" under names like ["radical
427− transparency"](https://www.bridgewater.com/principles-and-culture)
428− and ["radical
429− candor"](https://third-bit.com/2018/11/24/afraid-of-change/) put
430− forward by partisans of power over against vulnerable employees,
431− clients, and customers, who may be disproportionately affected by a
432− megacorp demand for one-sided transparency.
433−
434−[^11]: Several have pointed to the failure of Craig S. Wright to
435− demonstrate cryptographically that he is Satoshi Nakamoto, the
436− pseudonymous inventor of Bitcoin. (C.f. Khaosan, Venzen. (2016)
437− ["Craig Wright is Not Satoshi Nakamoto---The Technical
438− Proof"](https://www.ccn.com/technical-proof-craig-wright-not-satoshi-nakamoto/).)
439−
440−[^12]: Davidson, Dale, and Rees-Mogg, William. (1999) *The Sovereign
441− Individual: Mastering the Transition to the Information Age*.
442−
443−[^13]: Raymond, Eric. (1999) [*The Cathedral and the
444− Bazaar*](http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral-bazaar/ar01s04.html).
445−
446−[^14]: The [Coalition for Content Provenance and
447− Authenticity](https://c2pa.org/) "addresses the prevalence of
448− misleading information online through the development of technical
449− standards for certifying the source and history (or provenance) of
450− media content."
451−
452−[^15]: Cf. Walker, Shawn, et al. (2019) ["The disinformation landscape
453− and the lockdown of social
454− platforms."](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1369118X.2019.1648536)
455− *Information, Communication & Society 22*, pp. 1531--43. Walker et
456− al. lament that "highly ephemeral mis/disinformation campaigns" are
457− not susceptible of study due to closed platform APIs. "Social media
458− platforms \[attempt\] to rekindle trust by appearing to reinforce
459− individual privacy within a newly secured user community, a set of
460− measures that also locked academic and non-profit researchers out
461− from studying social platforms while preserving corporate and
462− business access to social media users' data." They fail to address
463− the tension between community self-determination and academic
464− exploitation.
465−
466−[^16]: "If in fact you can't crack \[the encryption\] at all, government
467− can't get in, then everybody is walking around with a Swiss bank
468− account in their pocket -- right? So there has to be some concession
469− to the need to be able to get into that information somehow."
470− ([Barack Obama in March 2016 at
471− SXSW](https://www.businessinsider.com/obama-comments-on-encryption-at-sxsw-2016-3))
472−
473−[^17]: Heninger, Nadia. (2016) ["The Legacy of Export-Grade Cryptography
474− in the 21^st^
475− Century"](https://publish.illinois.edu/science-of-security-lablet/files/2016/08/10062016-Heninger-Slides.pdf).
476−
477−[^18]: Chohan, Usman. (2017) ["The Decentralized Autonomous Organization
478− and Governance
479− Issues"](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3082055).
480− Discussion Paper Series: *Notes on the 21^st^ Century*.
481−
482−[^19]: Lessig, Lawrence. (1999) *Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace*.
483−
484−[^20]: Hobart, Byrne \~lableg-tadrex. (Nov 17, 2021) ["The Promise and
485− Paradox of
486− Decentralization"](https://urbit.org/blog/2021-11-18-the-promise-and-paradox-of-decentralization).
487− *The Diff*.
488−
489−[^21]: See, e.g., the Governor Alpha smart contract protocols. Solari,
490− R. (2021) ["The case for Governor
491− Alpha".](https://medium.com/tally-blog/the-case-for-governor-alpha-15c1362d49eb)
492−
493−[^22]: Robinson, D. (2020) ["Ethereum is a dark
494− forest"](https://www.paradigm.xyz/2020/08/ethereum-is-a-dark-forest).
495− Paradigm blog.
496−
497−[^23]: [Uqbar Network](https://uqbar.network/); ["Introducing Uqbar
498− Network"](https://uqbarnetwork.substack.com/p/introducing-uqbar-network);
499− \~hocwyn-tipwex/uqbar-event-horizon (Urbit group)
500−
501−[^24]: This is not to deny the benefits of system-legibility, in
502− particular legal protections. As common law develops around DAOs, I
503− hope for similar affordances where they must interact with the
504− legacy legal system.
505−
506−[^25]: Originally this list included Discord, as there has been
507− substantial growth in stable goal-oriented communities thereon.
508− However, more recently the company [adopted a user
509− policy](https://discord.com/blog/addressing-harmful-off-platform-behavior)
510− which subjects use of their product to judgment calls about
511− "off-platform behavior"---a clear violation of a cypherpunk ethos
512− which Discord likely never espoused anyway.
513−
514−[^26]: E.g., Auerbach, David. (Mar 3, 2022) ["The metaverse will steal
515− your
516− identity"](https://unherd.com/2022/03/the-metaverse-will-steal-your-identity/).
517− *UnHerd*. Auerbach correctly recognizes and decries the looming
518− "monetisation of identity" which will allow any platform controller
519− to incentivize prosocial or antisocial behaviors at will.
520−
521351_The header image is [Volvox sp. microscopic algae](https://www.flickr.com/photos/picksfromoutthere/35891780782/in/photolist-WFCKYA-XPdGLq-2k9Cew6-ViCgrB-23QUBQR-21rF362-CCSE2n-23AwZ7m-CbKedu-gznqa-2dHUv3k-EE8eoq-gznq9-i5zqqk-WYSwcf-XWVgQk-WabAAG-gLjRj-gDcLp-4VvECm-259cDCS-i5zqRk-25cV246-i5yNvM-gupiMJ-PXLbhr-LUACZ7-ihvxSH-ihvvVg-ihwjbF-ihvxDX-i5yQDd-ihzQwK-fWwpxb-rarKrm-8LWTQf-qVar5j-ihzAPA-JNrgyK-ihzBrC-ca6Ex9-2kCTSrj-ihz67k-qfJsYd-248ePDL-ihztbm-ihzuyS-LQYZQq-2kCTRxL-ihvWPA) by Picturepest on Flickr._
352+
353+[^1]: Kaufman, Jim. (2010) ["Evolution and immunity"](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2913256/). _Immunology 130_, iss. 4, pp. 459--462.
354+[^2]: President Eisenhower's original coinage was likely "the military-industrial-academic complex."
355+[^3]: E.g., Richard Bellman of the RAND Corporation on the origin of "dynamic programming," a mathematical discipline: in dealing with a recalcitrant secretary of defense who hated the word "research," Bellman instead chose the word "dynamic" arbitrarily because "it's impossible to use the word 'dynamic' in a pejorative sense. ...It was something not even a Congressman could object to. So I used it as an umbrella for my activities." (Bellman, Richard. (1984) [_Eye of the Hurricane_](https://books.google.ch/books?id=4FwGCwAAQBAJ&lpg=PA159&dq=#v=onepage&q=).)
356+[^4]: The nuclear triad doctrine, joining the Air Force's Strategic Air Command bombers, the Navy's nuclear submarines, and the Army's ICBMs and other assorted nuclear warheads, was based less on strategic considerations than on appeasing constituent departments of the military. Strategists developed a formal justification decades later in a magnificent demonstration of motivated reasoning. (Woolf, Amy. (2016) "U.S. Strategic Nuclear Forces: Background, Developments, and Issues". [CRS 7-5700](https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc847627/m2/1/high_res_d/RL33640_2016Mar10.pdf).)
357+[^5]: The Air Force early commissioned the RAND Corporation on contract with Douglas Aircraft Company as the first "think tank"; RAND soon upended the traditional role of passive reception of studies by making its own recommendations and showing their analytical chops. Other service branches followed suit, such as the U.S. Navy's Center for Naval Analyses and the Battelle Memorial Institute for various federal contracting agencies; compare also the role of the national laboratory system, e.g. Los Alamos, Sandia, Livermore, etc. for the Department of Energy and Department of Defense. (Rich, Michael. (2003) "RAND: How Think Tanks Interact with the Military". [RP-1050](https://www.rand.org/pubs/reprints/RP1050.html).)
358+[^6]: "On January 18, 1994, the first large-scale deliberate USENET spam occurred. A message with the subject "Global Alert for All: Jesus is Coming Soon" was cross-posted to every available newsgroup." ([Wikipedia, "History of email spam"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_email_spam))
359+[^7]: The first instance which seems to have brough this to general public awareness was the submission of Judge Robert Bork's video rental history as evidence in his Supreme Court hearings before the U.S. Senate. The resulting Video Privacy Protection Act was delightfully naïve. Besides relying on "video rental" narrowly construed, users have effectively no leverage against unilaterally-imposed terms of service and end-user license agreements. (See, e.g., [Electronic Privacy Information Center, "Video Privacy Protection Act"](https://archive.epic.org/privacy/vppa/).)
360+[^8]: E.g. Tumblr and OnlyFans and adult content; Twitter and right-wing content; Youtube and Facebook and unsanctioned medical content, etc. Note that this is regardless of the viability of a given view or the necessity of vigorous debate within a field, but focuses on the palatibility of politics to the megacorp entity providing the platform, even if the content drives platform usage.
361+[^9]: Hughes, Eric. (1993) [_A Cypherpunk's Manifesto_](https://nakamotoinstitute.org/cypherpunk-manifesto/).
362+[^10]: The mass shift to remote work from March 2020 onwards due to the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the trend of corporate colonization of private spaces. At first, this was occasionally humorous, as when a child ran into the background of a Zoom call, or underwear or private materials were inadvertently left in view of the remote audience. In the end, it demanded that individuals reconfigure their homes to accommodate mass corporate preferences, thus another invasion of private space by the megacorp panopticon.\ I note as well an invasive doctrine demanding "truth in communication" under names like ["radical transparency"](https://www.bridgewater.com/principles-and-culture) and ["radical candor"](https://third-bit.com/2018/11/24/afraid-of-change/) put forward by partisans of power over against vulnerable employees, clients, and customers, who may be disproportionately affected by a megacorp demand for one-sided transparency.
363+[^11]: Several have pointed to the failure of Craig S. Wright to demonstrate cryptographically that he is Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous inventor of Bitcoin. (C.f. Khaosan, Venzen. (2016) ["Craig Wright is Not Satoshi Nakamoto---The Technical Proof"](https://www.ccn.com/technical-proof-craig-wright-not-satoshi-nakamoto/).)
364+[^12]: Davidson, Dale, and Rees-Mogg, William. (1999) _The Sovereign Individual: Mastering the Transition to the Information Age_.
365+[^13]: Raymond, Eric. (1999) [_The Cathedral and the Bazaar_](http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral-bazaar/ar01s04.html).
366+[^14]: The [Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity](https://c2pa.org/) "addresses the prevalence of misleading information online through the development of technical standards for certifying the source and history (or provenance) of media content."
367+[^15]: Cf. Walker, Shawn, et al. (2019) ["The disinformation landscape and the lockdown of social platforms."](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1369118X.2019.1648536) _Information, Communication & Society 22_, pp. 1531--43. Walker et al. lament that "highly ephemeral mis/disinformation campaigns" are not susceptible of study due to closed platform APIs. "Social media platforms \[attempt\] to rekindle trust by appearing to reinforce individual privacy within a newly secured user community, a set of measures that also locked academic and non-profit researchers out from studying social platforms while preserving corporate and business access to social media users' data." They fail to address the tension between community self-determination and academic exploitation.
368+[^16]: "If in fact you can't crack \[the encryption\] at all, government can't get in, then everybody is walking around with a Swiss bank account in their pocket -- right? So there has to be some concession to the need to be able to get into that information somehow." ([Barack Obama in March 2016 at SXSW](https://www.businessinsider.com/obama-comments-on-encryption-at-sxsw-2016-3))
369+[^17]: Heninger, Nadia. (2016) ["The Legacy of Export-Grade Cryptography in the 21^st^ Century"](https://publish.illinois.edu/science-of-security-lablet/files/2016/08/10062016-Heninger-Slides.pdf).
370+[^18]: Chohan, Usman. (2017) ["The Decentralized Autonomous Organization and Governance Issues"](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3082055). Discussion Paper Series: _Notes on the 21^st^ Century_.
371+[^19]: Lessig, Lawrence. (1999) _Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace_.
372+[^20]: Hobart, Byrne \~lableg-tadrex. (Nov 17, 2021) ["The Promise and Paradox of Decentralization"](https://urbit.org/blog/2021-11-18-the-promise-and-paradox-of-decentralization). _The Diff_.
373+[^21]: See, e.g., the Governor Alpha smart contract protocols. Solari, R. (2021) ["The case for Governor Alpha".](https://medium.com/tally-blog/the-case-for-governor-alpha-15c1362d49eb)
374+[^22]: Robinson, D. (2020) ["Ethereum is a dark forest"](https://www.paradigm.xyz/2020/08/ethereum-is-a-dark-forest). Paradigm blog.
375+[^23]: [Uqbar Network](https://uqbar.network/); ["Introducing Uqbar Network"](https://uqbarnetwork.substack.com/p/introducing-uqbar-network); \~hocwyn-tipwex/uqbar-event-horizon (Urbit group)
376+[^24]: This is not to deny the benefits of system-legibility, in particular legal protections. As common law develops around DAOs, I hope for similar affordances where they must interact with the legacy legal system.
377+[^25]: Originally this list included Discord, as there has been substantial growth in stable goal-oriented communities thereon. However, more recently the company [adopted a user policy](https://discord.com/blog/addressing-harmful-off-platform-behavior) which subjects use of their product to judgment calls about "off-platform behavior"---a clear violation of a cypherpunk ethos which Discord likely never espoused anyway.
378+[^26]: E.g., Auerbach, David. (Mar 3, 2022) ["The metaverse will steal your identity"](https://unherd.com/2022/03/the-metaverse-will-steal-your-identity/). _UnHerd_. Auerbach correctly recognizes and decries the looming "monetisation of identity" which will allow any platform controller to incentivize prosocial or antisocial behaviors at will.