Topic: Theymos using Censorship to Engineer Bitcoin (Read 1015 times)

How many times do I have to say the same thing. This is a privately owned forum. Theymos can do as he pleases. Instead of actually censoring XT he has allowed such topics to remain in the forum in the altcoin section.

Stop opening more threads for the same thing. This is like the 3rd or 4th thread about "censorship".
+1 mprep

lol rekt   

Ad hominem, classy.

/s

Yes, I can. He pays taxes on the income from the forum's advertising. He was also the one who the government contacted with a subpoena on the DPR case, to release information from Bitcointalk. They don't contact randoms, they contact who legally owns the forum and thus has full authority, with no one to answer to except the law, to release sensitive information.

See previous comment.

However, the government considers theymos the owner of the forum while Sirius owns the domain itself.

Post about XT in the altcoin section.  Problem solved.

Mprep, stop being a minion and listen carefully

You're not a lawyer. You cant say Theymos legally own this forum.

He is a chief operator of the forums but unless you're an expert of the law (lawyer) you dont know if Theymos is legally the owner.

Sirius and Satoshi created the forum, and there is no legal contract to sign over the ownership.

So far, I haven't seen widespread support for BitcoinXT, but rather support for bigger blocks in Core, as well as a very vocal minority running around and screaming in various Bitcoin communities how they support BitcoinXT. If it, however, becomes more popular than Core and consequently becomes the "real" Bitcoin (as in the overwhelming majority of people/services/miners/etc. accept it as such), I think the place where BitcoinXT discussions will hold place will change from the alt sections to the main forum.

Well Theymos is wrong and soon to it find out.

theymos thinks differently and you're not the one running the forums.



Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastercoin

And that's not censorship. Censorship is eliminating any kind of access to the censored information. As I said, getting to XT threads is literally a few clicks away. Click - you're in the main page, click and you're in the altcoin sections, another click if it's in the second page and click again to open up a thread. Is that difficult to do?

Regarding /r/bitcoin:

Some people argue that "It's his playground, he can do what he want. Start a new reddit if you don't like it."
Technically and legaly I 100% agree. But from an ethical and moral point of view, I really think that you should respect your community and not censor things. ESPECIALLY if you are in control of one of the most important sources for information (during a major event).

However, Theymos has made a CLEAR statement that he doesn't care about the communities view about things, he rather have them leave. 90%+ wanted thing to change in a poll that had MASSIVE response. That poll is now gone with SO many other threads!

Regarding bitcointalk:

Much of the same logic applies here as well. I think the question we all should ask us;
- Where do we want to communicate?
On a platform with one dictator that make all the decisions (and one that has stated that he want 90% of the community to leave if the do not agree with his view of things), or should we try to find a place where things like this is handled in a more democratic way?

This is not only about communication, it's also about who will earn money on that site....

Regarding Mastercoin:

I really don't know anything about it, but I think the recent events regarding xt is more than enough to question Theymos actions and position!

Altcoin section moderator here:

Definition:

Source: http://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/censorship

Moving to the altcoin sections isn't blocking, it's literally clicks away. Regarding the /r/bitcoin subreddit, you are free to create another subreddit that doesn't delete BitcoinXT threads.

You do know that this forum legally belongs to theymos, right? As such he can "engineer" whatever the hell he pleases and so far he's been pretty liberal about it.

Yeah, clicking your mouse several times is such a hard task.

/s

See previous definition.

And you go to the altcoin sections to see the threads. Big whoop.

So far I've seen crap in this forum that would never fly in most internet communities, not by a long shot. Moving threads to the altcoin section is not and will never be censorship. You can still fully access it from the comfort of your home.

If it was so amazing, it would've survived in the altcoin sections. Apparently, the "enormous attention" was just excitement for something new that quickly withered off.

MasterCoin - BitCoin. See the difference. It was/is a different cryptocurrency and it doesn't matter if it was built on top of the Bitcoin blockchain. 99% of current altcoins are tweaked versions of the Bitcoin code.

I don't think he cared enough about it to dislike it.

He supports the Core side and that's his freedom to choose. He allowed for discussion of XT to remain in the forum. And if he doesn't want to host someone's bullshit on a forum that he owns or a subreddit that Reddit allowed him to control (as legally Reddit probably owns all subreddits), it's his damn business.
He didn't delete XT threads on Bitcointalk, he moved them. And I've already expressed my opinion about Reddit.

And to finish off my post, here's a comic strip from xkcd.com:

If that's all it took to kill Mastercoin, it sounds like the ultimate pump and dump scamcoin. Sounds more like it had very little going for it in the context of other projects in development. And no, Mastercoin is not bitcoin. Maybe there should be a separate subforum for colored coins outside of the general Alt subforums. But the fact remains.

Theymos is using censorship to engineer his personal beliefs of Bitcoin - and XT is not the first time. 

When Theymos doesn't like something, he buries discussions of it to places where it isn't easily found.  This amounts to a form of censorship.  He like to imagine 'oh, that's not true bitcoin - so I'll just stuff that over in alts'. 

It has a profound effect on the community.  Censorship is wrong.  Theymos as custodian of the largest platform on bitcoin should self impose restrictions on continued use of this technique.

For example, Mastercoin was worth $150M market cap and getting enormous attention.  Mastercoin is added layer on TOP of bitcoin.  It introduced some really useful new function - on top of bitcoin's blockchain. 

Theymos didn't consider it real bitcoin.  He moved the Mastercoin threads deep into the very noisy 'Alts' section.  The community could no longer effectively communicate and organize.  Mastercoin dissolved and disappeared immediately thereafter. 

Theymos simply destroyed Mastercoin because he personally didn't like it. 

Theymos does like XT.  He considers everything outside his ideal - 'an Alt'.  So, he invokes a kind of censorship to bury those topics. 

It is a very dangerous part of our Bitcoin community that one man has his finger on the delete key and can silence large groups of people presenting important opinion - by merely declaring is 'Alts'.

Theymos needs to stop.  - or be stopped.