Jake Gilbert's 50N Blog

It was fun discussing the positives and potential of Bitcoin in class, though Bitcoin has many negatives to discuss as well. We did touch upon them, but I thought I’d highlight them here. Although Bitcoin seems to be the talk of the town these days, it comes with imperfections.

I will note that only 4 hours ago, an article was posted in Coindesk with a Columbia economist’s opinion on Bitcoin. Joseph Stiglitz argued that Bitcoin should actually be outlawed, because it “it doesn’t serve any socially useful function” and exists solely to circumvent regulation. Stiglitz believes in digital currency, but he believes it should be government-controlled.

Stiglitz remarked in an interview that Bitcoin is “only a bubble” and that we “ought to go back to what we always have had.” I see merit in the former statement, but I often find that the latter statement is one of the most harmful sentiments made in our political landscape.

To Stiglitz’s point, Bitcoin does seem like a bubble right now. As Stiglitz remarked, “The value of a Bitcoin today is expectations of what the Bitcoin is going to be [worth] tomorrow.” Right now, Bitcoin has very little intrinsic value that would bring sense to its absurd price; very few things can be purchased with BTC, and most purchasers of Bitcoin during this excitement don’t actually plan to use or spend it. It is simply being bought as stock on hype.

Like any bubble, the Bitcoin bubble may burst. I think it’s overly bold for Stiglitz to assert that it must burst, and I think his interviewer calling Bitcoin entirely “smoke and mirrors” seems like a bit of a Luddite.

What do you all think? Is Bitcoin safe? Is it at all valuable? Does it have a future, or are we fooling ourselves?

I was upset to have had to miss class last week, but I look forward to our blockchain discussion on Monday!

On the topic of online communities, let’s talk about net neutrality.

For those of you who don’t know, the FCC recently released a statement detailing their plans to rid of the laws that ensure equal and fair access to the internet for everyone. ISPs like Comcast and Verizon are forbidden from charging more for access to specific websites, censoring certain pages, and throttling your connection to many websites because of these laws.

The first red flag that should make the American people wonder if the FCC’s plan is actually to the benefit of the consumer is the fact that the plan was released the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. Seemingly, the FCC was hoping no one was paying attention — they were wrong, and the internet has been in an uproar.

Before we delve into why net neutrality is being threatened, let’s talk about what exactly net neutrality is. The Merriam-Webster definition is:

The idea, principle, or requirement that Internet service providers should or must treat all Internet data as the same regardless of its kind, source, or destination

In 2013-14, Comcast greedily demanded a direct payment from Netflix for a “fast-lane” access for Comcast’s customers to Netflix. Since Netflix takes up so much bandwidth for movie streaming, Comcast felt justified in asking Netflix to pay up, whereas other companies remained unscathed. That led to this scary graph:

EDIT: The image I included isn’t appearing, I suggest you check out the graph HERE.

Comcast essentially held Netflix hostage until people could barely access Netflix, in Jan 2014 when speeds bottomed out, and Netflix caved and offered to pay Comcast. This interaction is the perfect example of an internet without net neutrality.

There are many key players in the destruction of the right to fair access to the web.

Politicians

You may wonder: how does a politician choose whether to support the censorship of the internet? It’s easy!

Ted Cruz has come out in vehement support of slashing net neutrality, which would allow Comcast and other ISPs to make a lot more money. He hilariously called net neutrality  “Obamacare for the internet.” I wonder if he’s pandering to a voter-base.

At first, I was shocked that anyone could support this policy. Then I poked around and saw that Comcast donated $36,148 to Cruz’s Senate campaign.

Take a look at this list of politicians Comcast has supported and see which of them support net neutrality!

Ajit Pai

Pai, the current head of the FCC, is spearheading the gutting of net neutrality. Read about him here. You may be interested to know he’s a former lawyer for Verizon!

ISPs

Verizon recently released this video regarding net neutrality. The Verge released this article fact-checking every statement made in the video. ISPs have essentially been asking that we remove the open internet laws and they’ll just…”voluntarily agree” not to take advantage of the lack of regulations until better ones can be agreed upon.

If you want to learn more, I really like John Oliver’s segment on NN, although there are better ways to learn more. Know that I’ve barely scratched the surface in my blog post here, and know that I have presented an argument that would be considered very partisan and/or biased in structure by some, although I have not presented any false information.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

On the topic of cyber crime with our class on the blockchain approaching, I thought I’d write a little about the malicious side of cryptocurrency mining.

As of September of 2017, 1.65 million computers are mining cryptocurrencies without the knowledge of their users. This is a result of viruses using CPU power of victim networks to mine; however, there’s an even darker side to mining without permission. Many websites, even major ones like the Pirate Bay (in a deviation from their typical classiness & good practices), use your computer to mine cryptocurrency while you browse.

There are even concerns that smart devices, or “the internet of things” as we discussed in class, could be hacked and used to mine cryptocurrency. Over 185 million devices may be mining cryptocurrency without their owners’ knowledge right now. Newsweek quoted John McAffee:

“The attacks are slowly escalating, similar to the way America developed the atomic bomb,” McAfee, who created the eponymous antivirus computer software but is now longer connected to it, said in October. “Clearly there are weaknesses. Anticipate that these will be exploited in a big way.”

The Pirate Bay initially experimented with cryptocurrency mining in place of their less than savory advertisements. Here’s a question for you: would you rather your favorite website show ads, or slow your computer a bit by using it to mine Bitcoin? Personally, I use uBlock Origin as an ad blocker. Like many ad block users, I have a little guilt visiting my favorite websites and not supporting them — but I’ve become spoiled, and I can’t stand ads. Now, some people have already begun making mining blockers, but I don’t know if I’d get one. If Reddit was transparent and truthful about mining Bitcoin through their users, and there was no noticeable effect on my device — perhaps I’m misled, but I think I’d prefer that to ads.

Do you think it’s unethical for a website to mine Bitcoin through their users’ computers, even if the website tells the users? Would you avoid a website for fear of being used for mining? Looking forward to hearing your thoughts. Unfortunately, I won’t be in class Monday, but I will be blogging & I will email any tech news I find to you all before Monday since I won’t be there to discuss in the beginning of class. Thanks!

We heard in class from Prof. Zittrain that the internet began as a “collective hallucination” — a beautiful (in my opinion) idea that represents a decentralized collection of connections that has no governance and no owner. We also learned that the internet is now moving towards being privately owned; Facebook and Google, primarily, own the majority of the web that we use. Congress even called in executives from Facebook, Google, and Twitter for hearings on the Russia ordeal. It’s almost as if these companies represent the general internet, and when the internet is abused, it’s time to turn to them.

The idea of the internet becoming privately owned is, to me, scary. My question to all of you is: is it inevitable? Also, where else do we see this pattern?

Prof. Zittrain drew a wonderful comparison between the movement from browsers to apps and the corporatization of the web. I would like to examine some of the history we learned in class: telecommunication began as privately owned by the phone companies (or company), and the internet represented the subversion of monopolistic ownership over communication. Then, corporate ownership began creeping back up on us, and now we have giants like Google that own far more than we know.

Personally, I believe we are seeing this same pattern in its early stages with media streaming. Netflix blew our minds with its near ability to allow us to “cut the cord” with cable. And, pardon my French, but cable stinks. Netflix was a release from the monopoly of Comcast in many areas, a break from terrible customer service from cable companies, a break from ads, a break from overpaying to have channels you don’t watch, and more. But, what is happening now? Netflix is relying mostly on its original programming, and ABC, FOX, and NBC are slowly pulling their shows from the service. Why? They own a little website called Hulu.

And now there’s talk of Disney (which happens to be owned by ABC) starting its own streaming service, just for Disney programs. Then we see HBO GO/NOW, another streaming service for just HBO shows. Amazon Prime Video pops up. Showtime has a streaming service. Starz. YouTube TV. Suddenly, if we want to watch all of the shows we like, we’re paying for multiple streaming services — many of which laughably have commercials — not unlike paying prices similar to cable in the first place.

The question is: someday, will some service come along and say, “Here’s an idea: I’ll bundle all these streaming services together for you, and you just pay me $X/month!” And there we have it: cable is back, just disguised as streaming. At that point, however, there is a natural check that keeps streaming services at bay: many people will go back to torrenting after a certain point (not me, though, and never on the Harvard WiFi!).

Just recently, Uber started allowing tip jars and online tipping — one of the major draws of Uber in its origins was that it advertised that it paid its drivers a fair wage, and tipping wasn’t required. Are Ubers just going to become the same as old school taxis (that’s right, I called them old school)?

So, what do you think? Is the privatization of the internet inevitable? Will industries always come full circle, eventually becoming the things we hated to begin with? Where else have you seen this? Is Amazon becoming anything like major retailers? Looking forward to your thoughts.

Apologies for the late post; it’s been a crazy week to say the least. But at least I got to have lunch with Prof. Waldo!

I wrote last week about online voting, so I’ll focus on something else this week. In the past few days we’ve seen multiple big internet company executives testify in front of congress. Facebook, Twitter, and Google sent lawyers to speak about Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

A WIRED article summarizes the most revealing pieces of testimony in the hearing, I really recommend you all read it. Here is their introduction to the current situation:

“Russians have been conducting information warfare for decades,” said Democratic Sen. Mark Warner in his opening remarks. “But what is new is the advent of social-media tools with the power to magnify propaganda and fake news on a scale that was unimaginable back in the days of the Berlin Wall. Today’s tools seem almost purpose-built for Russian disinformation techniques.”

The hearing revealed new and startling insight into the ways in which Russians pitted Americans against each other, and reinforced the notion that social-media ads are only a portion of the threat from foreign actors. Senators also forced the tech execs to explain how they police content on their platforms in different parts of the world.

Much of the hearing consisted of congresspeople telling executives that it’s their responsibility to get misinformation on their platforms under control; Sen. Diane Feinstein said:

“You’ve created these platforms, and now, they’re being misused, and you have to be the ones to do something about it. Or we will.”

What do you think? Should platforms be held responsible for misinformation campaigns, or is it a violation of free speech? Should platforms be punished for working with foreign governments, and how? See you Monday.