Mechanism to Prevent Child Exploitation

[RunnyBabbit]

Issue:

How can a permissionless, FLOSS, distributed marketplace prevent the most egregious type of commerce — ie, child exploitation (specifically, child porn & trafficking)

The child exploitation market uses frequently-changing code-words & symbols, which are impossible to filter using administrative controls (which would require volunteers, funding, active monitoring & centralization), and are impracticable to filter with engineering controls, due to aforementioned changing code-words, and, picture-based advertisements

Solution:

In addition to filtering searches, require all sellers of all products & services to post a bond, which any other user can match with a sacrificial bond, on at least a 1:1 basis (but not requiring the full amount), that permanently burns both the seller's bond, and the censoring party's bond

This mutual cost ensures that any party wishing to take down a listing must sacrifice their own Monero, & disincentives abuse on the censorer's part, and also disincentives spam advertisements on any offending provider's part

While the burn-bond ratio can never fall below a 1:1 ratio, to maintain properly-aligned incentives, it can be increased to 2:1 (or more) to address any counterparty abuse concerns

Much like Ross Ulbricht filtered out products & services that harmed other people (or their property) on the Silk Road marketplace, NeroShop (as the flagship Monero ecommerce platform) will never achieve substantial parity with Amazon, Alibaba or Ebay, for average merchants & buyers, as a decentralized, private, tax-free, free-market alternative, if it's brand is primarily one of being a haven & market-maker for child trafficking & child torture pornography

In the voluntaryist spirit of Ross Ulbricht & the Silk Road, this trustless, decentralized, crowdsourcing, proof-of-work 'burn-bond' mechanism puts a high economic disincentive on moral actors (whatever their morals might be) intent on persecuting arbitrary malum prohibitum 'crime,' while creating free-market recourse & prevention of actual, real, malum in se crime

Addressing Objections:

Competitors — Providers of legitimate goods & services (eg, beef jerky, arts & crafts, cocaine, 3D-printed guns) would run very little risk of competitors using bond-burning to censor them, as it is mutually disadvantageous to both parties, and bankrupting a competitor is just as likely to bankrupt the censorer

There is no economic advantage or incentive, but there is an added benefit that new entrants into the market who haven't had a chance to establish a minimal amount of customer reviews still can signal trustworthiness to potential customers

State-Actors — State agencies cannot print Monero, and therefore must either acquire Monero on the open market (creating buying pressure on XMR market price), or by expending seized Monero

Regardless, bond-burning requires governments to use limited resources in a targeted & economized fashion, which makes enforcing arbitrary malum prohibitum bans impracticable (in addition to being a complete public relations & morale disaster for them, if they're prioritizing marijuana brownies over child exploitation)

(This adversary probably justifies the highest burn-ratio, especially in the beginning, while market capitalization & offerings are shallow, which can be stepped down to a minimum through experimentation later — perhaps a 16:1 ratio to start)

Disgruntled Customers — Incentives are such that disgruntled customers (ie, 'Karens') are disincentivized to abuse burn-bonds, in a similar fashion as Competitors are, but with the added benefit that if a customer feels ripped off in a small purchase, not worth triggering arbitration, they still have some recourse

Not recieving a jar of homemade strawberry jam, or recieving a broken crack-pipe which was not properly packaged, might not be valuable enough to engage arbitration, but ripped-off customers can still punish scammers, or, sellers who provided bad customer service

Developers — To avoid conflicts of interest, it's essential that the funds are permanently destroyed, and not put to some 'social good' or development fund

This can be accomplished by sending it to a wallet that no one could have a private key to (eg, "111111......et al.")

Permanently burning funds ensures no one can access the burn-bond funds, or be incentivized to burn seller's bonds, to launder Monero into a front organization, or corrupt an existing one (the 'General Fund,' for instance)

Competing Forks — Forks of NeroShop, comprised of bad actors, makes them targets for law enforcement agencies in a much smaller network (needles in a needle-stack, rather than a needle in a haystack)

Secondary Advantages:

Efficiency & Decentralization — Besides eliminating impracticable, centralizing administrative controls, and ineffective engineering controls, there is an army of people (especially wine-moms) who catfish & hunt down pedophiles on the internet with a passion, and would gladly purchase Monero in order to bankrupt child exploiters, all day long

Besides crowdsourced vigilante moms, any decent person (most people) who is simply browsing listings would also likely throw at least a few bucks at bankrupting the relatively small child porn industry as well

This bond-burning mechanism effectively creates a market-based solution to maintaining a desirable & maximally free market environment for both buyers & sellers, who don't want to be associated with child exploitation, & as an added benefit, offers an additional layer of recourse/protection for customers (in addition to separate customer review mechanisms, and arbitration mechanisms)

Proof-of-Work Anti-Spam Mechanism — Additionally, burn-bonds can serve as a proof-of-work (trustless, decentralized) spam filter, for both excessively negative reviews by customers, and for sellers spamming ads (like Craigslist is plagued with)

Proof-of-Work Reputation Rating System — The bond-burn mechanism can also function as a proof-of-work (trustless, decentralized) reputation rating & ranking system, which shows how much of the aggregate bond, of any seller's profile, has been burned

Public Relations — Any criticism leveled at NeroShop (and by extension, Monero) as being associated with child porn can be countered with "Put your money where your mouth is, and bankrupt them then" — ie, "Put up, or shut up"

[RunnyBabbit]

"Since neroshop and monero itself are presearving to be censorship-resistant and privacy-focused ecosystem..."

The bond-burn mechanism in no way effects Monero's 'privacy' (fungibility, privacy, or sound digital money use-case)

Monero's function as true, digital, sound money makes it a neutral tool, which can be used for either voluntary commerce, or facilitate violations of others' property rights

The 'censorship' concern is already addressed under "Addressing Objections>>Competing Forks'"

In short, FLOSS software is already a free marketplace, so there is no 'censorship'; there is voluntary association, and NeroShop (as the flagship Monero ecommerce platform) will never achieve substantial parity with Amazon, Alibaba or Ebay, for average merchants & buyers, as a decentralized, private, tax-free, free-market alternative, if it's brand is primarily one of being a haven & market-maker for child torture pornography

Importantly, exile is one of the most fundamental tenants of voluntaryism, & freedom of association

"...it is difficult to archive both preventing illegal transaction and privacy"

The bond-burn mechanism does not care about what Govt considers legal or not legal, & in no way compromises anyone's privacy (& in actuality, protects the privacy of victims of child exploitation)

In fact, burn-bonds put a high economic disincentive on moral actors (whatever their morals might be) on persecuting arbitrary malum prohibitum 'crime,' while creating a free-market for punishing actual, and real, malum in se crime

"...there are various perspectives on porn/nsfw cotents depending on each countries and regions"

This is addressed above; a bond-burn mechanism creates strong economic disincentive & punishment for 'moral actors' (regardless of their moral assumptions) to persecute victimless malum prohibitum 'crime,' while still allowing a mechanism to punish truly egregious, real malum in se crime

If abuse of a burn-bond mechanism, by bad actors, is truly a concern, this can be addressed by adjusting the economic disincentives from 1:1, to 2:1 — or higher

"Excluding contents recognized as illegal depending on specific perspective isn't wise decision in my opinion"

A burn-bond mechanism doesn't care what Govt deems 'legal' or 'illegal'; it creates an alternative mechanism to the illegitimacy of government, with a voluntary, free market in disincentivizing & persecuting real, truly egregious, actual malum in se crime

"For example selling or buying something like drugs and malware programs share same problem. Some countries are allowing them while others are not so."

Again, a burn-bond mechanism doesn't care what govt deems allowable or prohibited; it creates a voluntary market mechanism to punish & disincentivize real, truly egregious malum in se crime (adjustable from a 1:1 & up basis), and punishes & economically disincentivizes bad 'moral actors' from persecuting arbitrary, victimless malum prohibitum 'crime'

This is achieved not by censoring anyone, but through being one decentralized ecommerce platform option, among many, through the free market (as FLOSS is a free marketplace of forks & networks of voluntary association)