Publicity or Privacy: which do you want?

The concept of KYC in crypto sometimes feels Counterproductive, because it sometimes defeats the idea of privacy. Many people choose crypto because they don't want to be doxxed, pay tax or have their money traceable to them.

There are crypto exchanges that requires you to do the most stupid things all in the name of KYC. Some will ask you to hold your ID close to your face, which feels like a mugshot, and you may feel powerless to resist them.

On the other hands the exchange will say they're trying to stop any attempt to use crypto for criminal activities.

Of course, we know that the concept of Blockchain, like anything else in life, can be abused, but there are regular people who simply want to avoid the spotlight, not because they are criminals, but because they prefer it that way.

Take a look at Ethereum for example, you can easily tie an identity of an Ethereum wallet address to an individual, especially if you've seen such address used by that person. You can now use etherscan to track their address. I understand that this is not as simple, unless you can prove that a wallet address belongs to an individual.

My point is we cannot get 100% privacy on this space, once an identity is tied to an account, it's easy to predict the behavior of that account in respite to whoever owns it.

On Hive, anyone can choose to or not to share their picture especially if they don't want to be doxxed or they don't want their faces associated to their on-chain personality. However, this is not the only way to dox someone. Hive creates complicated and complex ways of identifying, and it does not even require your face.

The on-chain footprint or activities of everyone is visible and the statistics is how you can tie a peculiar behavior to an account. For example, we can predict an individual's Curation pattern based on what they do with their Hive, who they transfer it to and where they send it, whether they are gaming on Hive, keeping their stake, or simply powering it down. These activities can have an impact on curation, downvoting, and even on-chain shaming and association. This is a method of doxxing that does not even require anyone to reveal their face.

A few days ago a certain metric became available on Hive, anyone could just open up your profile and see it, and that metric alone might decided if they want to do what they came over to your profile to do.

Someone immediately messaged me and asked me to explain what that metric means; I quickly drafted accounts and explained it to her.

This metric has elicited mixed feelings among Hive users. Some people want it; others don't. Some people believe it exposes their nakedness, while others are simply relieved that they do not have to undress another Hive user to see them for who they are.

I have read a lot of arguments, and some of them make me laugh.

In reality, more people dislike this. It appears that there is a lack of privacy; people want to be able to do their business without being seen; however, the Blockchain has the ability to dox people's behavior, and some individuals want to take full advantage of this.

There is no on-chain privacy on Hive, but the privacy it provides is off-chain.

Although you can choose to keep your identity completely private, you cannot hide your on-chain footprints, and this is often exploited, especially since an action can be linked to an individual account by simply looking through. With this new metric, some users are realizing that there is nothing hidden from the Blockchain's god-like eye.

This fear is mostly because of questions like "can I still get upvoted? Will I attract a downvote, will I lose engagement or supporters?" A lot of people are asking these questions and it simply makes them panic.