Follow an account which never posts? @the-canary tells a different story.
Canaries were often used by miners as early air quality warning systems. If the bird dies, it's time to get out.
Privacy focused digital service providers have taken to the use of Warrant Canaries.
From wikipedia:
A warrant canary is a method by which a communications service provider aims to inform its users that the provider has been served with a secret government subpoena despite legal prohibitions on revealing the existence of the subpoena.
The warrant canary typically informs users that there has not been a secret subpoena as of a particular date.
If the canary is not updated for the time period specified by the host or if the warning is removed, users are to assume that the host has been served with such a subpoena.
The intention is to allow the provider to warn users of the existence of a subpoena passively, without disclosing to others that the government has sought or obtained access to information or records under a secret subpoena.
It's a way of telling your audience that you aren't being coerced.
When you stop posting that message, you're letting your readers/customers know that you're not able to post freely and should be considered in some way compromised.
Of course, it's hard to keep track of the empty spaces you're supposed to be looking out for.
Also wikipedia:
It is often difficult for users to ascertain a canary's validity on their own and thus Canary Watch aimed to provide a simple display of all active canaries and any blocks of time that they were not active. In May 2016, it was announced that Canary Watch "will no longer accept submissions of new canaries or monitor the existing canaries for changes or take downs ... The Electronic Frontier Foundation also noted that "the fact that canaries are non-standard makes it difficult to automatically monitor them for changes or takedowns"
Rather than encouraging a tag/topic or yet another footer at the base of posts, both of which would need to be committed to indefinitely in order to be useful, I figure a standardised method by which everyone can claim to be posting freely is to have an account the unfollowing of which would constitute the death of the canary, alerting readers/followers that the poster is no longer blogging or commenting freely, whatever the source of that coercion might be.
Enter @the-canary
I won't be blogging or commenting from this account.
It doesn't exist to post content.
Its here purely as a standardised alert signal, so those concerned they may be silenced, or that their silencing might be silenced, have one simple way to let us know that hasn't happened yet.
Please encourage your favourite authors to follow @the-canary, and if they start, watch closely for the day they stop.
To spread the word, I'll be using the following footer:
As long as I follow @the-canary, you'll know I'm posting freely.
And encouraging others to do the same, until it's common knowledge.
- Copy/paste:
<center><h2>As long as I follow @the-canary, you'll know I'm posting freely.</h2></center>
Hi @mattclarke, this is a neat idea but I think it's a bit dangerous as implemented.
Canaries are a great idea but by definition, they should not require any action to "fire," but rather inaction.
Unfollowing @the-canary is an action that a Steemian could be ordered not to take. For example, if someone living in the United States were served a National Security Letter, they could potentially be barred from publishing the "unfollow" transaction under penalty of law.
It is extremely difficult, on the other hand, to force an unwilling party to publish a fraudulent canary (at least in jurisdictions with protections against state-compelled speech), and that's why they work. In the same situation noted above, the Steemian could simply refuse to update the canary. Since compelled speech is a big no-no under US constitutional law, the "refusal to update" method seems to be on solid theoretical ground in legal terms, but has not been tested thoroughly in court.
Perhaps a better implementation would be to publish a monthly @the-canary post on which subscribing accounts should publish comments reaffirming their integrity.
Of course, no canary is torture-proof. The closest thing would be keeping a key that is only for signing your canary on some sort of easily destructible medium, which can then be destroyed in some way (chewed, ingested, crushed, etc). This has its own set of problems, but you get the idea.
That's true, and experiences may vary from country to country.
US authors could perhaps include a footer until they don't.
Ultimately, following an author is a form of association, and freedom of association should permit them to end a relationship.
This was the only reason I could find to justify posting occasionally.
I could post an annual slur of some description, so those who don't want to be associated with the account have a valid, compelling reason to unfollow.
I'm very much open to suggestions, though.
Dear @mattclarke, nothing to do with your neat idea for a "canary" but I noticed that you both have witness slots available and have some approval for dead witnesses (such as @cryptwo).
On the other hand, @lux-witness is a cool witness struggling for more votes. Here is our latest published update: I will never let you down - Witness Update. We'll publish another one soon, because many things have happened in the past 10 days.
Here is what we want to stand for (our original application)
And here is our latest accomplishment: we are one of the only 6 (six) active witnesses to have NEVER missed a block (despite the hiccup in the blockchain last week, what with the negative vesting withdrawal transactions)
Thanks for your time and consideration
Thanks for bringing that to my attention. I'll audit my witness selections in the near future. Appreciate your help.
Thank you !
Your always up to something man, what a great idea.
I do not know if I must say HUH?? or laugh but how ever I think it is brilliant. I will resteem that others can also be part of the silences, or the not silence, or not noise.... I don't know
Thanks, appreciate it :)
Interesting :)
I am a follower of @the-canary
They have a new follower: me! Thanks for the tip!
Excellent. Hopefully you never have to unfollow :)
Very simple but I don't know how effective it will be. Some people follow up to a thousand people or more, it might be quite difficult to know when they unfollow a particular account.
True. I imagine if it gets some traction and some high profile followers, somebody may build a tool to track/post/report when somebody unfollows.
They may build a bot which comments on the posts of those who've unfollowed, for example.
That would work perfectly fine. I think it's not that hard to make. Let's see how people will accept the canary account, I might talk to a few bot developers to take a look at it.
I would suggest people to send a small transaction to @the-canary with a public RSA key attached. It can be handy for so many things. You can sign messages as long as you are not compromised. It also allows us to send encrypted messages to the potentially compromised accounts.
I like this idea. A very simple solution to an ever present issue.
Thanks mate. Hopefully it's an over-reaction. That'd be great.
Doesn't hurt to play it safe though.
Hey @mattclarke is there a way to reach you off steemit? Can't find you on discord.
mattclarke#6202
My friend you are educating me. It's amazing the Hoops one must go through to enjoy a remnant of free speech. A great post though I truly enjoyed it @mattclarke