FaceDeer

That'd be nice. Personally, I think the tech is just about ready - Ethereum has solved its environmental issues with proof-of-stake, and has solved its transaction cost issues with rollup-based "layer 2" blockchains. At this point I think the main obstacle is the knee-jerk popular reaction to anything blockchain-related as being some kind of crypto scam. I'm actually quite pleasantly surprised that I haven't been downvoted through the floor for talking about this here so perhaps there's a light at the end of the tunnel.

It's a matter of trust. A random instance can always lie and you can only determine "that was a malicious instance that was lying to me" in hindsight after it's broken that trust. Since a malicious instance-runner can spin up new instances almost as easily as creating new fake accounts you end up with a game of whack-a-mole where the malicious party can always get a few bad actions through before getting whacked. Whereas if user account creation was recorded on a blockchain you don't need to ever trust the instance in the first place. You can always know for sure that an account is X days old.

A malicious instance-runner could still spin up fresh instances and fake accounts ahead of time, but it forces them to do it X days in advance and now if they want to keep attacking they have a longer delay time on it. A community that's under attack could set the limit to 30 days, for example, and now the attacker is out of action for a full month until their next crop of fake instances is "ripe." As always with these sorts of decentralized systems there's tradeoffs and balances to be struck. The idea is to make things as hard for malicious users as possible without making it harder for the non-malicious ones in the process. Right now the cycle time for the whack-a-mole is "as fast as the attacker wants it to be" whereas with a trustworthy account age authentication layer the cycle time becomes "as slow as the target wants it to be."

Searching for "the five requisites for blockchain use" isn't finding anything relevant, what requisites do you mean?

This wouldn't be storing more data, it would be storing existing data. It would just be putting it somewhere that can be globally read and verified.

The issue that was being discussed was blocking accounts from posting if they were younger than a certain age. The blockchain has an unspoofable timestamp on its records.

And here's the spot where I point out that using a blockchain for recording accounts would be a good technological fit for a decentralized system like the Fediverse, and then get pilloried for being a "cryptobro" or whatever.

Seriously, all that you'd need to use the blockchain for would be a basic record of "this account holder has this name on that instance" and you get all sorts of unspoofable benefits from that. No tokens, no fancy authentication if you don't want it, just a distributed database that you can trust.

I don't see where capitalism came into this at all.

or at least that’s how it’s supposed to be when our prison system is working correctly

Opinions on whether it's "working correctly" is likely going to vary depending on whether you're running a factory that depends on prison labor. Right now I think those factory owners would agree that it's working correctly.

"You can work and spend your entire pittance on ramen noodles, or you can go stir-crazy in your cell and eat stewed cardboard" is a voluntary choice only in the most strictly pedantic sense.

Also, gosh, there sure are a lot of repeat offenders in there. What a coincidence. It's almost like prisons do the opposite of reforming the people that are sucked into the system, or like once you've got a criminal record there's a lot fewer non-crime options for you once you're back out on the street.

Which dovetails well with the famous quote from C. S. Lewis:

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

A lot of Christian slaveowners "justified" themselves as helping their slaves by "saving" them, or whatever. White man's burden and all that rot.

I'd be surprised if they called it that, even the most extreme tend to be aware that the word is taboo.

And even if someone is in the prison system for entirely correct reasons, forcing them to work is still slavery. I don't care if they're the most guilty awful person ever, if they need to be put in prison then put them in prison. That's the purpose of prison.

Trying to get economic benefit out of holding people in prison is not a slippery slope, it's a slippery cliff. The moment you try to justify it for anyone you're opening the door to a moral disaster.