Thursday, January 25, 2018

Just say no to 'RapeCoins'

from here

There's something deeply disturbing about the idea of recording sexual consent on the blockchain. On the surface it seems to combat the 'problem' of people changing their minds after the fact, but have the designers never once stopped to consider those might actually be cases of people changing their minds during? The capability for consent to change and be fluid like that seems to get forgotten a little too easily.

You know what else gets forgotten? Coercion. If someone is willing to coerce another into submitting to a sexual act, is it really that big of a stretch to imagine they'd also be willing to coerce the other into recording their so-called consent?

About the only thing this scheme could actually combat is instances of sexual misconduct where the victim isn't capable of giving consent because they're unconscious or otherwise incapacitated, and that's only if you ignore the possibility of the attacker cracking the device on which the victim's app resides.

There have been a lot of bad ideas for ways to use the blockchain but this one is one of the worst I've ever heard of and the fact that the idea has gotten as far as it has is equally disturbing because it means there are that many people who don't understand consent or coercion.

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