THELOGICALINDIAN - Censorship has been a affliction on the bitcoin ecosystem It has acquired abounding bodies in the association to abatement casualty to the perils and pitfalls of animal attitude It has incited bitcoiners to accept halftruths falsehoods and arrant lies The censorship took advantage oftheir best primitivethought processes abstraction them into an army of conformists and lemmings
Also read: Banker: ‘I am Scared for the Banking Industry…Bitcoin could Knock Banks out of the Game’
Theymos and a Campaign of Censorship
For anyone alien with the censorship, actuality is some backstory. A user that goes by the handle Theymos has been active the r/bitcoin sub-Reddit as the arch adjudicator for several years. He additionally has access over the bitcointalk.org and bitcoin.org forums. Ever back the bitcoin ascent dilemma surfaced, Theymos and his agents accept been actively censoring opinions that accidentally chronicle to accretion the block sizes or bifurcation the bitcoin protocol, which was already called bitcoin advance angle 101 or BIP 101.
Theymos accepted to application censorship approach on November 4, 2015, saying, “You can advance BIP 101 as an idea. You can’t advance (on /r/Bitcoin) the actual usage of BIP 101. When the abstraction has consensus, then it can be formed out.(archive)”
He attempted to downplay the censorship by suggesting what he did was alone “moderate” rather than censor. In added words, he played word amateur to adulterate the force of his actions. Nonetheless, affirmation of censorship is countless on the r/bitcoin Reddit. For example, Brian Armstrong and aggregation Coinbase acerb accurate block-size extensions. Their agreeable was deleted and Theymos after banned them from r/bitcoin.
Compiling an all-embracing account of the censorship, bannings, and subterfuge allowable by Theymos over the years would booty abounding accessories to absolutely accurate (which it has). For added affirmation of censorship and ascendancy committed by Theymos and added absolute autocrats on r/bitcoin see John Blocke’s advisory two allotment article on the history of the subject.
How Censorship Manufactured Consent in the Bitcoin Ecosystem
Over time, Theymos and his attack of censorship bogus the bitcoin community’s consent. It prompted bitcoiners to acquire a plan of abasement to Segwit and emboldening anybody to alight from Satoshi Nakamoto’s original road map. Now the association agilely rejects larger block sizes and instead embraces a baleful advance against bitcoin centralization.
How did this happen, though? How could the smartest, brightest, and best avant-garde be audibly duped into abrasive bitcoin? It turns out they were manipulated rather easily. It did not booty any amazing cunning or conjuration of duke on allotment of Theymos. It aloof appropriate his politically-motivated censorship campaign.
As his campaign gradually adulterated the community, animal attitude did the rest. Certain individuals accepted Segwit and spun belief about its capabilities, while anybody abroad was finer tongue-tied by “moderation.” These Segwit supporters absorbed it as a superior advancement and collapsed abhorrence accent adjoin the few who managed to get a chat in edgewise on accretion the blocksize.
Informational Conformity and the Bandwagon Effect
Without dissenters able to allege out, bodies began to embrace Segwit. This occurred by way of what analyst Solomon Asche alleged advisory conformity. It is a cerebral aftereffect that suggests bodies accommodate to others aloof because they provided advice and no one refuted it. In the bitcoin space, it agency just because Segwit promoters said absolute things about Segwit, it assertive association associates it was actual and good.
The absence of countervailing opinions—due to the aggressive censorship—was abundant to actualize the above cerebral effect, leading to dark acceptance of Segwit and the accepted baneful aisle of bitcoin.
A adduce from Asche eloquently expresses how acute bodies in the association were acceptable led astray:
After so abounding in the association were indeed accommodating to alarm white black, what happened abutting was additionally natural. The appearance effect took hold. This cultural abnormality suggests people do article alone because others do it. It manifests aural fields such as backroom and customer behavior, which means the bitcoin ecosystem is absolutely affected to its influence. Jihan Wu, in his contempo allocution at The Future of Bitcoin Conference, said this is one of the arch biases that bodies in our tech-savvy ambiance accept to be alert of and acknowledge.
Arguably, advisory acquiescence powered by an advancing appearance aftereffect has abandoned the way bitcoiners anticipate about their admired protocol. It is the cerebral account why contrarily able bodies absitively to accept an “upgrade” that neuters bitcoin’s decentralized attributes and paves a alarming aisle for the network.
Consensus Trance and The Future of Bitcoin
The bitcoin community, then, is currently trapped in what some psychologists accredit to as a accord abstraction or accord delusion. This is a state of alertness area bodies irenic acquire what they are told, rather than what they themselves think. They are not reacting out of their own volition. They artlessly acquire what others say after analytical analysis.
This adverse actuality is what has apprenticed 
some of brightest in the association to support an unnecessary and annihilative implementation. It is the alley that has led to the accepted predicament, area centralized adaptations for a decentralized arrangement accept been heralded as innovative. And area bodies who appetite to advance bitcoin neutrality are afield accused of absent to ascendancy the platform. The irony is a tragic symptom of the accord apparition bitcoiners suffer under.
If the association wants to survive this aggression adjoin bitcoin, they charge breeze out of their drunken haze and appear to the facts. They charge bethink the alley map Nakamoto designed, and anamnesis that on-chain ascent solutions and block-size expansions were a accustomed allotment of the advancement process. They should affected the addiction to accommodate and accede that aggressive censorship has placed bitcoin in the easily of usurpers who acquire motivations that are suspect.
No one wants aerial fees. No one wants apathetic affairs times. No one wants Fascist Coin. People appetite bitcoin, and not all is lost. The arrangement can be salvaged. The approaching charge not be dark.
Below are advisory videos illustrating abstracts in acquiescence and the appearance effect. Education is the best anesthetic for recognizing our own cerebral pitfalls.
How can we advice bitcoiners to deathwatch up to what is accident in the community? Let us apperceive in the comments below.
Images via Shutterstock
Bitcoin is cool, and you apperceive anybody wants in – alike the ones who say they don’t. Show the apple how cutting-edge you are with a bitcoin T-shirt, hoodie, bag, key-ring, alike a Trezor accouterments wallet. Shipping all over the world, affection commodity and, of course, a acquittal arrangement that makes bodies say “wow!”
