Lorenzo's Blog About me

So long, and thanks for all the fish, IPFS!

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If you are using Orion, Siderus’ IPFS desktop client, you might have noticed that the app has not received any update during the last year.

Around a year ago, after noticing an extensive amount of misusage of our IPFS Gateway to share illegal content, I have decided to redirect the traffic to the official IPFS Gateway. We took down the servers and IPFS nodes and gateways from every continent.

The decision was difficult, especially after spending money and a lot of time building it. I feel there should be an explanation. A few days ago, after reading Alessandro Segala’s article, I had personally decided to officially stop working on Siderus and Orion project and move everything under Qm64 as part of experiments worked on.

IPFS logo
IPFS logo

To clarify, the IPFS network will be stronger than ever, thanks to Filecoin, but I decided to step out for multiple reasons. One of these is expressed in Alessandro’s article is the Freedom of Speech. More specifically, even if a lot of illegal content bombarded Siderus’ gateway, some of those can not be classified under Free Speech. The strong censorship resistance of the network helps the spreading of content that is illegal. I am referring to the Copyright content and things that range from revenge porn, websites promoting racism, xenophobia, and homophobia, to even zoophilia and child pornography. Being part of the LGBTQ family, I take this matter very seriously as it disturbs me a lot. It made me think twice about the ethical effects of my projects. I took down the IPFS Gateway.

Today I am doing even more. I am taking down the download links of Orion binaries and builds and redirecting the traffic to my website. I hope that Protocol Labs will take this seriously and implement some restrictions for Filecoin and IPFS. I wish to stop the network and cryptocurrency misusage and to respect human rights and at the same time keep the noble intent behind the decentralised technology. As for today, I don’t want to be associated with IPFS, Filecoin, nor with Protocol Labs, and I don’t want to help to spread misinformation, fake news, and content that might hurt other humans like me.

The good part is that I am taking home a lot of experience with Go, JavaScript, and decentralized networks. I have met amazing people, amazing contributors and I am pretty sure that they are already aware. De gustibus non disputandum est as my mother would say. The Internet, like IPFS and like a knife can be used for doing good or to harm. I choose to do good and stop using IPFS and Filecoin.

Thanks for understanding

Originally posted: https://blog.siderus.io/so-long-and-thank-you-for-all-the-fish-ca9060f32df6