When I was a child, I was fascinated by the story of Rumpelstiltskin. I would ask to hear it over and over again and, who knows why, I had a certain fondness for that grotesque dwarf, the bad guy in the story. A few days ago I reread the story. For those who don't know it, it begins with a miller who, in order to ingratiate himself with the king, has no better idea than to tell him that his daughter is capable of turning straw into gold. The king's eyes shine, after all he has huge amounts of straw and would like to have greater riches. So, without further ado, he takes the girl to the palace and locks her and a spinning wheel in a room full of straw. Very kindly the king tells her the deal: if the next day the straw is not turned into gold, he will kill the girl and the father for liars. The girl, of course, has no special powers, so she has nothing left to do but cry in the face of certain death. That's when a little imp appears and offers her a second deal: he himself will turn all the straw into gold in exchange for the girl's necklace.
Illustration in public domain.
The girl accepts, the imp does the job and the king is amazed to see such a feat. But the king, so greedy, wants more gold. He fills an even larger room with straw and challenges her again, in case it was a coincidence. The whole story is then repeated, with the miller's daughter giving the imp a ring in exchange. The king begins to make bigger plans: she will be a poor miller's daughter, but heck if she has a dowry... He then takes her to a third room: if she succeeds in repeating the feat, he will marry her. The imp appears again, but now a problem arises: the girl no longer has anything to offer him. The imp comes up with an idea: he will transform the straw into gold, the girl will marry the king and give him her first child. Deal. The straw turns to gold, a full-fledged wedding, a wedding night, and nine months later a little prince is born, with red cheeks. That same night the imp shows up to collect his pay. The girl, who had already forgotten the deal, cries and cries, offers enormous riches, but the imp wants none of it: what are riches compared to a life? Well, all that crying softens him up, and he sets her a challenge: if she can guess his name for the next three days, she can keep the child. The girl tries every name that comes into her head, but none of them is correct. So she sends the palace servants to collect names all over the kingdom. One of them tells the queen that he has seen a strange dwarf dancing and singing around a bonfire. The lyrics of the song reveal the name: Rumpelstiltskin. So the princess teases him a bit by saying common names and, at the last attempt, blurts out the correct name. The imp becomes enraged, hits the floor so hard, that one of his feet sinks in and, as he tries to pull it out, his body splits in the middle.
As I read the story, I continue to feel sympathy for the imp. A greedy miller gives up his daughter to almost certain death to ingratiate himself with the king. A greedy king willing to kill a woman for not knowing how to turn straw into gold. A woman who gives her future child to an imp. Those are the "good people" in the story. On the other side, an "evil" imp, dwarf, ugly and grumpy, who is the only one who doesn't care about money. He prefers a life (it's not clear what he's going to do with it, but hey) to riches. And, most importantly for this post, he guards something of great value: anonymity. So much value he places on anonymity that he ends up dying for it.
Anonymity on Hive
I've been thinking about anonymous posting on Hive for a while now. When I talk about this with someone I usually get two opposite and lapidary answers: either you can't publish anonymously, or publishing on Hive is already anonymous. Both, I think, have their part of reason. Anyone can create an account on Hive, choose a username and post without ever revealing their real name. Posting on Hive is pseudonymous. The difference between pseudonymity and anonymity in the strict sense is that in pseudonymity many posts can be ascribed to the same user. The pseudonym thus becomes a kind of "brand", which can be made to grow publication after publication, gaining more and more reputation. That brand can be the same as the real name, it can have certain similarities or, as in my case, it can be completely different. (Theoretically anonymity in the strict sense could be achieved in Hive by creating a new account for each post, but it would be impractical and I don't think anyone would bother to do it). Anonymity and pseudonymity permeate the crypto world and is in the flesh in its founding myth. I don't particularly care to know who Satoshi Nakamoto is: it's enough for me to imagine him as an imp singing and dancing around a campfire in a dark forest.
At least as far as I know, there were two attempts to bring anonymity in a more or less strict sense to Hive. The first was AnonRamblings, created by @emrebeyler "in one Friday night", in May 2020. It consisted of a website from which one could post to Hive anonymously. Posts were stored at the comment level of a daily main post in the Anon Ramblings community. As all posts were published under the @anonramblingscom account, authors did not receive rewards. The last post in the community is from February 2021 and the website is no longer available. As the creator himself was in charge of clarifying, it was only an experiment conducted for a hackathon, and there were many, many things left to be polished, but it has the merit, I think, of opening the discussion about the relevance or not of allowing anonymous publishing on Hive.
The second project was (or is?) Proof of Blind, created by @trostparadox. The goal of this project was "to help high-quality content creators get rewarded and recognized, based solely on the quality of their work". In this definition there is a big difference with AnonRamblings, as the issue of quality is explicitly mentioned (I will come back to this later). To participate in Proof of Blind, you had to submit your post using a form. The content was then checked for plagiarism and, if all was well, it was published on the @proofofblind account with the author as the beneficiary at 85%. The author, then, was not completely anonymous (one only had to check the list of beneficiaries to find out), as the aim of the project was not to allow anonymous publication, but to establish a mechanism so that new authors could be rewarded for their quality articles. Indeed, the idea was to then publish statistics with the authors' usernames so that the curators could follow them. I do not know if it is still possible to publish in Proof of Blind. The latest publication is from April 2022.
Anonymous publishing on Hive, then, is still quite rudimentary. Now, should it be possible to publish anonymously? I don't know. Surely there will be opinions for and against. I also don't know how it could be implemented. I am not from the technical side. Rather, I want to do a philosophical thought experiment.
Thought experiment 1: anonymity in the strict sense
What if Hive had a checkbox to post anonymously? Checking that box would generate a random, specific alias for that post.
The immediate consequence would probably be silence. Where are my votes, where are the notifications? All automatic votes would disappear. So would the earnings, since paying someone the post rewards would reveal the true author and anonymity would no longer be strict.
This consequence says a lot about how Hive currently works. The reality is that usually only a small percentage of those who vote for a post have actually read it. The rest are automatic votes, curation trails (where, at best, only one curator read the post), votes from friends who kindly leave their rewards but didn't have time to read it, and so on. Having good rewards on Hive is not so much about the quality of a specific post, but more about the connections and trust that builds up over time under a pseudonym. Is it wrong for it to be that way? Sometimes, if I focus on the quality of a specific post, it seems to me an unfair system: why does this very good post get so few rewards and that other post made in a hurry gets so many? But if, on the other hand, I focus on all the work that this second user did over the years to get high rewards, even for a post that may not be of the best quality, it is not so clear. Outside of Hive the same thing happens, how many excellent writers die without even earning a penny while others, very mediocre ones, get great publicity and profits? In today's world, network and trust, and track record are often worth more than the quality of a publication. Anyway, it is a fact that quality is not the only reason why a post is voted on Hive and, to tell you the truth, I can't think of a better system.
But then, if votes and rewards would practically disappear, why would anyone want to publish anonymously on Hive? This is where the "evil" Rumpelstiltskin appears again, who refuses all the riches offered to him by the queen, but treasures something that is extremely valuable to him: anonymity. Anonymous publication is not for everyone. For some, however, anonymity is a value. The history of literature demonstrates this with countless cases (just look at Wikipedia's list of anonymous works).
As history teaches us, the reasons why someone would want to publish anonymously (or pseudonymously) are varied. Generally, it has to do with people who are vulnerable for some reason, which varies from era to era and culture to culture: women, sexual or ethnic minorities, groups suffering political or religious persecution. Things for which you could end up dead, in jail or covered by shame or reprobation.
But there are also other reasons, not so extreme. Someone could use anonymity to avoid the cult of the author and, justly, let the work be evaluated only for its intrinsic quality. Not all authors want to be famous; some rather the opposite. A line from a poem by Pessoa (who, by the way, liked heteronyms, which would be like the multiple accounts in Hive) comes to mind: "I only want the gods not to remember me". Paradoxically, anonymity can also be used to create a cult around an author, a Satoshi-like guessing game, which ends up being, willingly or not, a kind of marketing action. This is more common with pseudonyms, but could also be achieved through anonymous publication. In current literature there is a very interesting case, that of Elena Ferrante, a woman, man or imp about whom almost nothing is known and about whom there is much speculation.
So, if anonymity could be a value for some people, why not guarantee it in Hive? A decentralized, distributed, censorship-resistant social network should guarantee anonymous publishing... Well, it's not that simple. Because anonymity also has its detractors. Anonymity is prone to diatribes, trolls, spam and personal attacks. Especially anonymity in comments has brought countless headaches to many Web 2.0 publications (I found the article "The Evolution of Anonymity in the Internet Age" and its discussion very interesting). Is it possible to guarantee anonymity without assuming these negative consequences? I guess not entirely. In principle, the discussion over anonymous posts could be separated from the discussion over anonymous comments: accepting one does not imply accepting the other. On the other hand, communities could decide whether or not to accept anonymous posts, and those that do accept anonymous posts could define what kind of posts they are willing to allow in their communities. A poetry community could allow anonymous poems (and I see no objection to this), but it could mute a defamatory text about, for example, another Hive user (and, in fact, would have to do so even if the author of the defamatory text was not anonymous). On the other hand, nothing currently prevents someone from creating a new account to publish a defamatory text in verse in a poetry community…
Mental experiment 2: temporary anonymity
In 1818, the novel Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus was published anonymously (according to this article, 66% of the novels published that year in the United Kingdom and Ireland were anonymous). In 1821, in the second edition, Mary Shelley's name already appeared on the title page.
Cover of the first edition of Frankenstein. Image in public domain.
What interests me about this is that the anonymity may be temporary. I won't go into the possible reasons. I prefer, rather, to imagine that, next to the fictitious checkbox that allows you to post anonymously on Hive there is a calendar that allows you to choose until what date the posting will be anonymous (or simpler, a checkbox that says something like "post anonymously until payment date"). As above, a random alias would be generated, but now that alias would automatically change to the actual username on the date indicated. In this case, the rewards would be maintained (paid on the anonymity expiration date).
What purpose could this serve? This is where it comes back, I think, to the issue of publication quality. There is at least one case where anonymity is critical. It is something that happens in the "real" world, so to speak. It is no longer the case as in the 19th century that most novels are anonymous, but there is one area where it is common to demand that all works be anonymous: literary contests. These contests are supposed to evaluate the quality of the works, not the background or connections of the authors. In addition, they have to ensure the greatest possible transparency in the choice to avoid winning, for example, friends of the jurors or some person who is famous for various reasons (say, a great actor or a famous athlete), but who writes very poorly. If anonymity did not exist, the friends of the jurors would be suspected even if their works were the best (who would not be suspicious of a tender won by the president's son, even if it was the best proposal?). In these contests the works are usually sent with a single-use pseudonym and the real name inside an envelope. The envelopes with the entrants' real identities are supposed to be opened after the jury has chosen the winners.
There are lots of contests on Hive, but they do not reach this level of transparency, precisely because the postings are not anonymous. We can trust more or less this or that jury, but we have no way of limiting the influence, conscious or unconscious, of that network of connections and trajectories. In my thought experiment, on the other hand, Hive would be much more reliable than the envelope system. The contest rules would specify the expiration date for the anonymity required to participate and, once that date arrives, the opening of the "envelopes" would be done automatically by an algorithm.
Temporary anonymity could also have other uses. Although, in principle, all automatic votes would be lost, we can imagine communities that, in their eagerness to reward only the quality of the publications, could require that the posts be anonymous until the payment date. AnonPoetry, for example, could be a community in which only anonymous poetry is posted. Something like that could be profitable if there are curators, passionate about poetry, who agree with the idea and leave good rewards; that way, it would compensate for the loss of automatic votes. It also occurs to me that great curatorial projects or whales could emerge, which, again, for reasons of transparency and quality, would vote only anonymous publications.
Or perhaps nothing of the sort would happen and anonymity would be lost, anonymously, in the immutable past of the blockchain, as a vain attempt. Evolutions are full of forgotten paths. I would be happy, simply, if this article would serve to generate a healthy discussion about anonymity in Hive. I'm not sure what all the implications would be. Maybe it's a lousy idea or it's technically unfeasible. Maybe it would serve to make some communities or curators choose to value quality over connections, or to make contests more transparent. I don't know. I return again and again to the story, as I did when I was a child. I imagine the room full of gold and straw, the imp split down the middle. And I think that maybe it could be used for someone to sing in the darkness of the forest without the palace servants hearing his name.
Illustration in public domain.
Publicación anónima en Hive: un experimento mental
Cuando era chico, estaba fascinado con el cuento de Rumpelstiltskin. Pedía que me lo contaran una y otra vez y, quién sabe por qué, sentía cierto aprecio por aquel enano grotesco, el malo del cuento. Hace unos días releí la historia. Para quienes no la conocen, comienza con un molinero que, para congraciarse con el rey, no tiene mejor idea que decirle que su hija es capaz de convertir la paja en oro. Los ojos del rey brillan, después de todo tiene enormes cantidades de paja y le vendrían bien mayores riquezas. Así que, sin más, se lleva a la chica al palacio y la encierra, junto con una rueca, en una habitación llena de paja. Muy amable el rey le cuenta el trato: si al día siguiente la paja no está convertida en oro, matará a la chica y al padre por mentirosos. La chica, claro, no tiene ningún poder especial, por lo que no le queda más que llorar ante una muerte segura. Es entonces cuando aparece un pequeño duende y le ofrece un segundo trato: él mismo convertirá toda la paja en oro a cambio del collar de la muchacha.
Ilustración en dominio público.
La chica acepta, el duende hace el trabajo y el rey queda maravillado al ver tamaña proeza. Pero el rey, tan codicioso, quiere más oro. Llena una habitación más grande aun con paja y le vuelve a plantear el reto: a ver si todavía fue una casualidad. Se repite entonces toda la historia, con la hija del molinero dándole un anillo a cambio al duende. El rey empieza a hacer planes más grandes: será la hija de un molinero pobre, pero vaya si tiene una dote… La lleva entonces a una tercera habitación: si logra repetir la hazaña, se casará con ella. El duende vuelve a aparecer, pero ahora surge un problema: la chica ya no tiene que ofrecerle. Al duende se le ocurre una idea: transformará la paja en oro, la chica se casará con el rey y le entregará su primer hijo. Trato. La paja se convierte en oro, una boda a todo trapo, noche de bodas, y a los nueves meses nace un príncipe pequeñín, con los cachetes coloraditos. Esa misma noche se presenta el duende para retirar su paga. La chica, que ya se había olvidado del trato, llora y llora, ofrece enormes riquezas, pero el duende no quiere nada de eso: ¿qué son las riquezas comparadas a una vida? Pero bueno, tanto llanto lo ablanda, y le plantea un desafío: si logra adivinar su nombre durante los siguientes tres días, podrá quedarse con el niño. La chica prueba cuanto nombre se le viene a la cabeza, pero ninguno es correcto. Así que manda a los servidores del palacio a recopilar nombres por todo el reino. Uno de ellos le cuenta a la reina que ha visto a un extraño enano bailando y cantando alrededor de una hoguera. La letra de la canción revela el nombre: Rumpelstiltskin. Así que la princesa se burla un poco diciendo nombres comunes y, en el último intento, le espeta el nombre correcto. El duende se enfurece, golpea el piso tan fuerte, que se le hunde un pie y, al tratar de sacarlo, su cuerpo se parte al medio.
Al leer el cuento, sigo sintiendo simpatía por el duende. Un molinero codicioso entrega a su hija a una muerte casi segura para congraciarse con el rey. Un rey codicioso dispuesto a matar a una mujer por no saber convertir la paja en oro. Una mujer que entrega su futuro hijo a un duende. Esos son los “buenos” de la historia. Del otro lado, un “malvado” duende, enano, feo y gruñón, que es el único al que no le importa el dinero. Prefiere una vida (no es claro que va a hacer con ella, pero bueno) a las riquezas. Y, más importante para este post, guarda algo de mucho valor: el anonimato. Tanto valor le da al anonimato que termina muriendo por ello.
El anonimato en Hive
Hace un tiempo que vengo pensando sobre la publicación anónima en Hive. Cuando hablo de esto con alguien suelo recibir dos respuestas, opuestas y lapidarias: o bien no se puede publicar anónimamente, o bien la publicación en Hive ya es anónima. Las dos, creo, tienen su parte de razón. Cualquiera puede crearse una cuenta en Hive, elegir un nombre de usuario y publicar sin revelar nunca su nombre real. La publicación en Hive es seudónima. La diferencia entre seudonimato y el anonimato en sentido estricto es que en el seudonimato muchas publicaciones pueden ser adscritas al mismo usuario. El seudónimo se transforma así en una especie de “marca”, que se puede hacer crecer publicación tras publicación, ganando cada vez mayor reputación. Esa marca puede ser igual al nombre real, puede tener ciertas similitudes o, como en mi caso, puede ser completamente diferente. (Teóricamente el anonimato en sentido estricto podría lograrse en Hive creando una cuenta nueva por cada publicación, pero no sería nada práctico y no creo que nadie se moleste en hacerlo). El anonimato y el seudonimato impregnan el mundo cripto y se encuentra en carne viva en su mito fundacional. No me importa particularmente saber quién es Satoshi Nakamoto: me basta con imaginarlo como un duende cantando y bailando alrededor de una hoguera en un bosque oscuro.
Al menos hasta donde conozco, hubo dos intentos de llevar el anonimato en sentido más o menos estricto a Hive. El primero de ellos fue AnonRamblings, creado por @emrebeyler “in one Friday night”, en mayo de 2020. Consistía en una web desde la cual se podía postear en Hive de manera anónima. Los post se almacenaban a nivel de comentario de un post principal diario en la comunidad Anon Ramblings. Como todos los posts se publicaban bajo la cuenta @anonramblingscom, los autores no recibían recompensas. La última publicación en la comunidad es de febrero de 2021 y la web ya no está disponible. Como el mismo creador se encargaba de aclarar, fue solo un experimento realizado para un hackathon, y quedaban muchísimas cosas por pulir, pero tiene el mérito, creo, de abrir la discusión sobre la pertinencia o no de permitir la publicación anónima en Hive.
El segundo proyecto fue (¿o es?) Proof of Blind, creado por @trostparadox. El objetivo de este proyecto era “to help high-quality content creators get rewarded and recognized, based solely on the quality of their work”. En esta definición se ve una gran diferencia con AnonRamblings, ya que aparece explícitamente el tema de la calidad (volveré sobre esto más adelante). Para participar en Proof of Blind, había que enviar el post mediante un formulario. El contenido era luego revisado para evitar plagios y, si todo estaba bien, era publicado en la cuenta @proofofblind con el autor como beneficiario al 85%. El autor, entonces, no era completamente anónimo (solo había que revisar la lista de beneficiarios para averiguarlo), ya que el objetivo del proyecto no era permitir la publicación anónima, sino establecer un mecanismo para que los autores nuevos pudieran ser recompensados por sus artículos de calidad. En efecto, la idea era publicar luego estadísticas con los nombres de usuario de los autores para que los curadores pudieran seguirlos. Desconozco si aún se puede publicar en Proof of Blind. La última publicación es de abril de 2022.
La publicación anónima en Hive, entonces, es todavía bastante rudimentaria. Ahora bien, ¿debería existir la posibilidad de publicar anónimamente? No lo sé. Seguramente habrá opiniones a favor y en contra. Tampoco sé cómo se podría implementar. No soy de la parte técnica. Más bien quiero hacer un experimento mental filosófico.
Experimento mental 1: anonimato en sentido estricto
¿Qué pasaría si Hive tuviera una casilla de verificación para publicar de manera anónima? Al marcar esa casilla, se generaría un alias aleatorio y específico para ese post.
La consecuencia inmediata sería, probablemente, el silencio. ¿Dónde están mis votos? ¿Dónde están las notificaciones? Todos los votos automáticos desaparecerían. También las ganancias, ya que pagarle a alguien las recompensas del post revelaría al verdadero autor y el anonimato ya no sería estricto.
Esta consecuencia dice mucho sobre cómo funciona Hive en la actualidad. La realidad es que, usualmente, solo un porcentaje pequeño de los que votan un post lo han leído. El resto son votos automáticos, trails de curación (en los que, en el mejor de los casos, solo un curador leyó el post), votos de amigos que amablemente dejan sus recompensas pero que no tuvieron tiempo de leerlo, etc. Tener buenas recompensas en Hive no tiene tanto que ver con la calidad de un post específico, sino más bien con las conexiones y la confianza que se va generando con el tiempo bajo un seudónimo. ¿Está mal que sea así? Algunas veces, si me centro en la calidad de un post específico, me parece un sistema injusto. ¿Por qué este post tan bueno tiene tan pocas recompensas y aquel otro hecho medio a las apuradas tiene tantas? Pero si, en cambio, me centro en todo el trabajo que ese segundo usuario hizo a lo largo de los años para obtener recompensas altas, incluso por un post que quizás no sea de la mejor calidad, la cosa no está tan clara. Fuera de Hive ocurre lo mismo. ¿Cuántos escritores excelentes mueren sin siquiera haber ganado un centavo mientras que otros, muy mediocres, obtienen gran publicidad y beneficios? En el mundo actual, la red de conexiones y confianza, y la trayectoria suelen valer más que la calidad de una publicación. En fin, es un hecho que la calidad no es la única razón por la que se vota un post en Hive y, a decir verdad, no se me ocurre un sistema mejor.
Pero, entonces, si los votos y las recompensas prácticamente desaparecerían, ¿por qué alguien querría publicar de manera anónima en Hive? Aquí es donde aparece de nuevo el “malvado” Rumpelstiltskin, que rechaza todas las riquezas que le ofrece la reina, pero atesora algo que para él es extremadamente valioso: el anonimato. La publicación anónima no es para todos. Para algunos, sin embargo, el anonimato es un valor. La historia de la literatura lo demuestra con innumerables casos (solo miren la lista de obras anónimas de la Wikipedia).
Como nos enseña la historia, las razones por las que alguien querría publicar de manera anónima (o seudónima) son muy variadas. Generalmente, tiene que ver con personas que son vulnerables por algún motivo, que varía según las épocas y las culturas: mujeres, minorías sexuales o étnicas, grupos que sufren persecución política o religiosa. Cosas por las que podrías terminar muerto, en la cárcel o cubierto por la vergüenza o la reprobación.
Pero también hay otras razones, no tan extremas. Alguien podría usar el anonimato para evitar el culto del autor y, justamente, dejar que la obra sea evaluada solo por su calidad intrínseca. No todos los autores quieren ser famosos; algunos más bien todo lo contrario. Me viene a la mente un verso de un poema de Pessoa (a quien, dicho sea de paso, le gustaban los heterónimos, que serían como las cuentas múltiples en Hive): “Quiero de los dioses solo que no me recuerden”. Paradójicamente, el anonimato puede usarse también para crear un culto alrededor de un autor, un juego de adivinanza a lo Satoshi, que termina siendo, voluntariamente o no, una especie de acción de marketing. Esto es más común con los seudónimos, pero podría lograrse también mediante la publicación anónima. En la literatura actual hay un caso muy interesante, el de Elena Ferrante, mujer, hombre o duende de la que se sabe casi nada y sobre la cual se especula mucho.
Entonces, si el anonimato podría ser un valor para algunas personas, ¿por qué no garantizarlo en Hive? Una red social descentralizada, distribuida, resistente a la censura, debería garantizar la publicación anónima… Bueno, no es tan sencillo. Porque el anonimato tiene también sus detractores. Y es que el anonimato es propenso a las diatribas, los trolls, el spam, los ataques personales. Sobre todo el anonimato en los comentarios ha traído innumerables dolores de cabeza a muchas publicaciones de la web 2.0 (el artículo "The Evolution of Anonymity in the Internet Age" y su discusión me resultó muy interesante). ¿Es posible garantizar el anonimato sin asumir esas consecuencias negativas? Supongo que no del todo. En principio, la discusión por los post anónimos podría separarse de la discusión por los comentarios anónimos: aceptar una cosa no implica aceptar la otra. Por otra parte, las comunidades podrían decidir si aceptan o no publicaciones anónimas y, aquellas que sí las aceptan, podrían definir qué tipo de publicaciones están dispuestos a permitir en sus comunidades. Una comunidad de poesía podría admitir poemas anónimos (y no veo inconvenientes en ello), pero podría mutear un texto difamatorio sobre, por ejemplo, otro usuario de Hive (y, de hecho, tendría que hacerlo aunque el autor del texto difamatorio no fuera anónimo). Por otra parte, nada impide en la actualidad que alguien cree una cuenta nueva para publicar un texto difamatorio en verso en una comunidad de poesía…
Experimento mental 2: anonimato temporal
En 1818, fue publicada de manera anónima la novela Frankenstein o el moderno Prometeo (según este artículo, el 66% de las novelas publicadas ese año en el Reino Unido e Irlanda fueron anónimas). En 1821, en la segunda edición, el nombre de Mary Shelley ya aparecía en la portada.
Portada de la primera edición de Frankenstein. Imagen en dominio público.
Lo que me interesa de esto es que el anonimato puede ser temporal. No voy a entrar en las posibles razones. Prefiero, más bien, imaginar que, junto a la casilla de verificación ficticia que permite publicar de manera anónima en Hive hay un calendario que permite elegir hasta qué fecha la publicación será anónima (o más simple, una casilla que diga algo como “publicar de manera anónima hasta la fecha de pago”). Como en el caso anterior, se generaría un alias aleatorio, pero ahora ese alias cambiaría automáticamente por el nombre de usuario real en la fecha indicada. En este supuesto, las recompensas se mantendrían (se pagarían en la fecha de caducidad del anonimato).
¿Para qué podría servir esto? Aquí es donde vuelve, creo, el tema de la calidad de las publicaciones. Hay al menos un caso en el que el anonimato es fundamental. Es algo que ocurre en el mundo “real”, por decirlo de algún modo. Ya no sucede como en el siglo XIX que la mayor parte de las novelas son anónimas, pero hay un ámbito en el que es común exigir que todas las obras lo sean: los concursos literarios. Se supone que en estos concursos se evalúa la calidad de las obras, no la trayectoria o las conexiones de los autores. Además, tienen que asegurar la mayor transparencia posible en la elección para evitar que ganen, por ejemplo, los amigos de los jurados o alguna persona que es famosa por variadas razones (digamos, un gran actor o una deportista famosa), pero que escribe muy mal. Si no existiera el anonimato, los amigos de los jurados estarían sospechados incluso si sus obras fueran las mejores (¿quién no sospecharía de una licitación ganada por el hijo del presidente, aunque fuera la mejor propuesta?). En estos concursos las obras se suelen enviar con un seudónimo de único uso y el nombre real dentro de un sobre. Se supone que los sobres con la identidad real de los participantes se abren después de que el jurado haya elegido a los ganadores.
En Hive hay montones de concursos, pero no alcanzan este nivel de transparencia, justamente porque las publicaciones no son anónimas. Podemos confiar más o menos en tal o cual jurado, pero no tenemos manera de limitar la influencia, consciente o inconsciente, de esa red de conexiones y trayectorias. En mi experimento mental, en cambio, Hive sería mucho más confiable que el sistema de los sobres. En las bases del concurso se especificaría la fecha de caducidad para el anonimato que se requiere para participar y, llegada esa fecha, la apertura de los “sobres” la haría de manera automática un algoritmo.
El anonimato temporal podría tener también otros usos. Si bien, en principio, se perderían todos los votos automáticos, podemos imaginar comunidades que, en su afán por recompensar únicamente la calidad de las publicaciones, podrían exigir que los posts sean anónimos hasta la fecha de pago. AnonPoetry, por ejemplo, podría ser una comunidad en la que se publique solo poesía anónima. Algo así podría ser redituable si hay curadores, apasionados de la poesía, que comulguen con la idea y dejen buenas recompensas; de ese modo, se compensaría la pérdida de los votos automáticos. También se me ocurre que podrían surgir grandes proyectos de curación o ballenas, que, de nuevo, por razones de transparencia y calidad, votaran solamente publicaciones anónimas.
O quizás no ocurriría nada de eso y el anonimato se perdería, anónimamente, en el pasado inmutable de la blockchain, como un intento vano. Las evoluciones están llenas de caminos olvidados. Me alegraría, simplemente, si este artículo sirviera para generar una discusión sana sobre el anonimato en Hive. No estoy seguro de cuáles serían todas las implicancias. Quizás es una pésima idea o es técnicamente inviable. Quizás sirva para que algunas comunidades o curadores elijan valorar la calidad por sobre las conexiones, o para hacer concursos más transparentes. No lo sé. Vuelvo una y otra vez al cuento, como cuando era pequeño. Imagino la habitación llena de oro y paja, al duende partido al medio. Y pienso que tal vez podría servir para que alguien cante en la oscuridad del bosque sin que los sirvientes del palacio escuchen su nombre.
Ilustración en dominio público.
Original in Spanish. Translated to English with Deepl.
The screenshots are my own. The rest of the images are in public domain.
Original en español. Traducido al inglés con Deepl.
Las capturas de pantalla son de mi autoría. El resto de las imágenes se encuentran en dominio público.
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I don't like the idea of blind posting. If some doesn't want to be associated with a post, they probably should not be posting it.
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Thanks so much for commenting! It's true, in most cases you probably shouldn't publish something if you don't want to be associated with its authorship. The idea of the article is to show some (I think legitimate) use cases of anonymity and also its negative consequences. greetings!
Un post de excelente elaboración, desde el recurso ficcional empleado en su inicio como en su argumentación y ejercicios mentales. Me parece un esfuerzo intelectual de sumo interés, más allá de su factibilidad o no. Diría que es un ejercicio muy cercano a la ironía, incluso, casi borgeano. Saludos, @agreste.
¡Muchas gracias por la lectura y el comentario! Sí, la idea era pensar qué pasaría si se hiciera un cambio de esas características en Hive, sin prejuzgar y sin preguntarme por la factibilidad técnica. El ejercicio me llevó a lugares que me sorprendieron y que no había vislumbrado en un comienzo. ¡Saludos!
The American founders posted under pseudonyms in the Fedaralist Papers and Anit-Federalist Papers. It took scholars a while to be able to say they could positively identify the actual writers, and by that time the writers were dead. If I wanted to get really controversial or subversive, I would just create a new account with a distinct pseudonym. True anonymity, as Edward Snowden revealed, is dream now--a nice dream, but nearly impossible. !CTP
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Indeed, anonymous publication was the norm rather than the exception in other times. Sooner or later, in most cases, the author of these works becomes known for sure (as happened to Rumpelstiltskin). Absolute anonymity is probably a dream, at least for now. But some degree of anonymity can be achieved and may be sufficient for many publications (if the identity of American Founders was discovered when they were already dead, surely their level of anonymity can be considered to have met the goal). And yes, as I say in the article, it is possible to do this on Hive currently by creating a new account for each publication and getting someone (not oneself, to avoid being identified) to fund it with some resource credits, just not a very practical solution. thanks a lot for the comment!
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The @proofofblind project is not currently active, because the students who originally started the project have moved on to other things, and it is at present a time-intensive process. However, the mechanics could be automated. I still believe it has merit.
While the project was active, the students made numerous attempts to boost participation, but none of their efforts yielded significant results.
The project suffers from a major inherent flaw -- the people who can most benefit from the project (newbies to Hive) have no way of knowing about the project.
One way to fix this, I suppose, was that if one or two whale accounts were aggressively upvoting Proof of Blind content, then @proofofblind would be showing up at the top of the trending list, so newcomers would quickly see those posts and the link for submitting their own original content.
So, in summary, one or ore whale sponsors is probably needed to make it viable.
Too sad that it is no longer active. I really liked the idea of the project, but, yes, you are right, without the support of some whales it is difficult for it to prosper. Greetings and thanks for stopping by!
I have long pointed out that curation rewards derange curation, substituting pecuniary interest for interest in other qualities of content. For that substantial part of the community in which financial interest is their primary concern in almost every facet of their lives, the various metrics which govern curation rewards are the reason for their votes, and these metrics are largely unrelated to any other quality of the content. It has always been the case that Trending is garbage, and this financial incentive to upvote posts is most of why Trending is garbage.
Anonymity would not completely fix the problem, because various metrics that increase curation rewards for particular posts would apply regardless of the authorship, although some of the most profitable reasons for financialization of curation would be eliminated, such as circle jerks. Elimination of circle jerks is extremely desirable from my perspective, which is entirely focused on the values content can have besides being a source of income for authors, publishers, and boosters. I consider society incomparably more valuable than money, and have often quoted Mike Tyson to illustrate that far greater value. He said Don King, the boxing promoter, would sell his mother for a dollar, and this is a point regarding curation rewards on Hive because it is the same principle behind the upvotes of users that only consider curation rewards when upvoting content.
It is quite possible to produce such anonymity on Hive while enabling rewards. An NFT token would be created for each post, and all upvotes would attach to the token, which would only be available to the account that authored the post. While the account could eventually be identified when the rewards were extracted from that NFT, there are a few ways anonymity could be maintained, the most obvious anonymization of wallets, which would substantially change Hive (I'm not sure that would be a bad thing. It would decrease the incentives for having multiple accounts per user, for example).
No HF would be necessary if this was undertaken via layer 2 (except for the wallet anonymity). RC's make downvotes almost unnecessary today, because they make spam expensive, which is all downvotes do. Downvotes are not equivalent of saying no in a debate, BTW. In normal elections no votes are unnecessary, as failing to say yes is a no. Adding downvotes is like adding an option to recommend candidates in an election be prosecuted for corruption, or instead of merely voting to fund a political proposal measure or not, to fine those that propose it. Downvotes do not merely fail to increase reputation, as not upvoting does, but actually decrease it, enabling posts from accounts with negative reputation to be 'greyed out'.
Curation rewards are completely unnecessary to promote content quality, actually opposing curation for content quality by providing financialization as a reason for curation. Downvotes further derange curation by specifically being a mechanism for censorship, and literally have no other curative purpose. Anonymity is a poor mechanism to reduce the derangement of curation curation rewards effect, improving things but little. Anonymity does provide other benefits, however, that are separately desirable from financial considerations by preventing censorship through other means than downvotes. Since NFTs could be used on a second layer to make anonymity quite practical, the benefits and harms of anonymity could be usefully considered on their merits alone. Given the rise of censorship today, and the existential danger it poses to everyone (censorship clearly prevents danger from being signalled, leaving potential victims of dangerous things unable to prevent themselves from being harmed) enabling catastrophic harm.
Despite obvious drawbacks, eventually anonymity may be the only means of preventing such catastrophic harm. That is certainly something Hive should consider.
Thanks!
Thank you very much for your detailed comment. I agree, the reward system has no incentive to vote for quality posts. To maximize curation gains you have to take into account things other than quality. To vote quality posts, then, you have to put at least two things at stake: part of the earnings and time to read the posts (the good and not so good ones) and choose which ones, from a personal point of view, will be voted. Less earnings and more time is a lousy deal for those who value money above everything else. I don't think anonymous publishing is a solution for that, but it could help in some cases like the ones you mention, and as I tried to show in the post it has an intrinsic value, sometimes overlooked in societies where there is a more or less wide freedom of speech. Tokenizing each post is an interesting idea and I saw that there are some platforms that are already doing it. I admit that I had not thought of that, I will study it more carefully. Greetings and thanks again!
Muy buen análisis del anonimato y proyecto, y me alegra recibir la historia de “Rúmpeles Tíjeles” una vez más. !PIZZA !LOLZ
¡Muchas gracias! Siempre se encuentran cosas nuevas en esas historias de la infancia. !LUV !PIZZA
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