The entire premise of the article is flawed. Blockchains aren't at all as "take it or leave it" as it's being portrayed as. In fact, the exact opposite compared to traditional web services.
Yes you can send a token or NFT to anyone on the chain, yes as far as the data layer is concerned that is "immutable". That however does not prevent you as a user to forgo your access/freedom to an entity that knows best for you, just like we do everyday in traditional web services, social media, banking institutions etc.
What does that look like? The underlying data layer (the blockchain) is public and open source. A "moderation" company can build their own middleware that filters data, throws out spam/harassment etc. Then, your node or wallet consumes and interacts with this middleware instead of the base layer. Now you have successfully incorporated abuse/harassment moderation without having to worry about the blockchain at all. If someone sends you something undesirable, you never see or interact with it.
At the end of the day, blockchains give you *the option* to have your freedom, they do not force it upon you. The same can't be said about the traditional tech.
So this is the modern narrative of "decentralization"? Just rely on trusted middlewares? What's the utility of the trustless blockchain behind it. Moreover, middleware or not, it's still on the chain and accessible to everyone.
Usenet had killfiles and email has spam filters. Decentralized systems (and some poorly-run centralized systems) need client-side filters and it's time for the crypto/blockchain/Web3 community to start developing them if they want to be taken seriously.
No this isn't the modern narrative, it's the stop gap solution for individuals that don't have the capacity to adapt to a new paradigm or have particular concerns (e.g. abuse)
The utility is still right there for whoever wants to take advantage of it, but they still have the option to forgo part or all of the trustless nature.
It doesn't matter if the "offending data" is sitting on a computer somewhere (that's all a blockchain is) what matters if it's accessible and as I mentioned, it's up to the blockchain nodes to transmit it or a user to consume it. Both of which can be solved if needed with middleware.
I'm sorry but having the "freedom" to ignore abuse and harassment is not a solution at all. If someone releases e.g. revenge porn of you, whether or not you can personally see it will be 100% irrelevant to whether or not it is abuse because clearly other people still can.
You're welcome to say that you prefer these tradeoffs in your monetary systems but please don't try to say that it's somehow better at handling abuse. It is objectively worse.
There are plenty of ways to distribute and obtain revenge porn. Nothing unique and especially nothing efficient about blockchain. Blockchain isn't some special higher power, from a data perspective it's not substantively different than a server with media on it.
It's not the job of the software protocol to address social/legal problems. That's the job of governments and law. If the law in particular jurisdiction prohibits certain illegal content, then the node operating in that jurisdiction will be compelled to follow it, blockchain or not.
It is objectively better because one has an option and the other doesn't.
What option do you have if twitter _does not_ filter out media that you deem bad?
Conversely, what option do you have if twitter _does_ filter out content that is not objectionable to you?
The difference here is that the fundamental promise of blockchain is that there is no trusted middleman, so it is not possible even in theory to prevent abuse without subverting the purpose of the whole system. For existing web2 systems, we can argue at the edges about which things are handled correctly, but at least the mechanism is there.
by definition, there is no middleground that can the same level of freedom while also offering less freedom (via censorship)
now, IPFS (not a blockchain, obviously) gives node owners control over the content they want to host. it's definitely not as free as a traditional blockchain, but it's probably closer to what you're looking for
Yes you can send a token or NFT to anyone on the chain, yes as far as the data layer is concerned that is "immutable". That however does not prevent you as a user to forgo your access/freedom to an entity that knows best for you, just like we do everyday in traditional web services, social media, banking institutions etc.
What does that look like? The underlying data layer (the blockchain) is public and open source. A "moderation" company can build their own middleware that filters data, throws out spam/harassment etc. Then, your node or wallet consumes and interacts with this middleware instead of the base layer. Now you have successfully incorporated abuse/harassment moderation without having to worry about the blockchain at all. If someone sends you something undesirable, you never see or interact with it.
At the end of the day, blockchains give you *the option* to have your freedom, they do not force it upon you. The same can't be said about the traditional tech.