Ver, Voorhees Combat Bitcoin's Reddit-culous Censorship

Censorship and disillusionment were two major topics of conversation when Roger Ver and Erik Voorhees met to discuss the future of Bitcoin live this week.

Also read: Konrad S. Graf: Bitcoin Block Size Political Economy

Voorhees: Censorship ‘Ridiculous’

The two industry pioneers, who first met in fall 2011 when bitcoin was worth $8, were speaking on a special edition of the Liberty Entrepreneurs Podcast devoted to the topic.

In the wake of the now years-long debate on blocksize, both Ver and Voorhees were keen to point out the detrimental effects of so-called ‘in-fighting’ between different sides.

“If you’d told people back in the day that a few years down the road there’d be censorship of topics in the Bitcoin community, [they would’ve said] that was ridiculous,” Voorhees said.

“Specifically in the case of Bitcoin and the blocksize debate, anyone who was proposing ideas not in alignment with what the Core development team was doing was labelled an altcoin supporter – and altcoins are not allowed on the Bitcoin subreddit [r/bitcoin].” He added:

A lot of topics which are really important for this industry don’t ever end up on the Bitcoin subreddit.

Ver also voiced a more personal perspective on the blocksize issue in wake of the “polemic” nature – as Voorhees puts it – of community discussion.

“When I first got involved and for the first couple of years everybody just knew that the blocks are going to get bigger, that’s how we’re going to scale,” he said.

“Now suddenly a new group of people have come in and said, ‘We’re not going to let the blocks get any bigger’ and I feel really betrayed on this because that’s not what was promised to the original Bitcoiners…”

Speaking more broadly on the future for Bitcoin as seen from 2016, Voorhees advocated a consolidation of priorities for developers.

“What’s the bigger risk to Bitcoin: that a lack of free market will cause hashpower to decrease a few decades from now, or that if Ethereum keeps growing and people start using that for transactions instead of Bitcoin, Bitcoin will just fall to zero and be part of the cryptocurrency history books?”

Human Nature?

Following the podcast, Voorhees himself was ironically caught up in a case of accusation of in-fighting.

When attempting to post a link to the podcast, which is available on news resource CoinTelegraph among others, the podcast itself was blocked. Voorhees accused Reddit moderators of censorship, before learning that none had in fact occurred.

“Today I did what I’ve long denounced – I made assumptions of ill-intent, and vilified a group of people over what amounts to merely a misunderstanding on my part,” he wrote in a blog entry.

“The post which appeared censored today, was not censored by any mods at r/Bitcoin. It turns out that the link itself, which went to a page at CoinTelegraph.com, was blocked wholesale by Reddit itself – apparently CoinTelegraph as a domain is blocked across the entire Reddit platform.”

CoinTelegraph’s Reddit domain meanwhile appears to be functional.

Listen to the full podcast below:

What do you think about what’s been discussed on the podcast? Do you agree with Roger and Erik’s views? Let us know your opinion in the comments section below.

Images courtesy of libertyentrepreneurs.com