True, but we already have google alternatives. The point is that what you are asking for is some kind censorship of indexing. I don’t think SAFE developers want that. If they do they should be clear about this because that changes things.
How does choosing a data indexing provider differ from choosing yandex or duck duck go instead of google? A SAFE network that censors the indexing is no different to the current internet, or using mastodon instead of twitter on the clear net
Welcome Jane,
Come in and take the weight off your feet.
Tea, coffee or a wee mulled wine?
With the greatest respect that may be because you have been a user here for a small number of hours and as such, you most likely have not yet had time to dissect in detail the voluminous debates we have already had on this subject.
I expect that independent parties will do this for the sake of those who want to use their indexing service.
Aside from the NRS (the naming service on Safe) I am unaware of any plans of Maidsafe to develop any indexing service. Even if they do, my aim would be for a social networking service not the whole of Safe.
I expect there will be a few but I think they will have specific aims - for instance an index for scientific posts, or an index of news posts. You would then subscribe to the ones you like and not to the ones you don’t like. So one won’t accidentally come across info they find offensive.
This is all speculative of course. Just ideas in my head.
The network wouldn’t be censoring anything I hope. My aim here is for independent indexers to simply categorize data then people can subscribe according to their interests.
There have been many discussions about exactly the issues you raised, including on this forum in some very long threads and I think on Reddit.
I acknowledged your concerns because I do understand them, but I think I did give an answer to the philosophical question you posed. It’s ok for you to ignore that if you want but if so there’s no more for me to respond to.
btw this is just future you can accept it or not, I am pretty sure that if doesnt exist yet, it going to be exist anyway in future, I mean, if maid will not be created, then going to be created simple decentralization single webpages from others, in my opinion.
Ive read some of the discussions but found the answers lacking.
this reply for example:
‘There is a tendency to think banning or censoring something will stop it happening, but it simply isn’t the case. It just happens in an even darker place instead’
But the difference is that proliferation of ideas changes culture. Ideas that are normalized and prolific and easily accessible effect culture and attitudes. If child pornography is found everywhere on SAFE it wil have harmful effects in a way that it won’t if it was harder to access. This has already been shown to be the case with the proliferation of free easy access to 'legal 'pornography.
SAFE is playing with fire. The team needs to explain the harms and risks of Perpetual web up front on its main webpage rather than just glossing over it with all the benefits. The harms could be catastrophic, there needs to be some accountability to the public BEFORE it is released.
So internet child porn will stay forever on SAFE network and it can spread as much as it likes? Then normal people won’t use SAFE net. If we have to trust 3rd party filters we might as well use the internet we have already. I also don’t think SAFE will be allowed to exist once the child porn starts to proliferate. It really doesn’t matter if you think it should or shouldn’t, the laws will ensure it will be a crime to use it.
Ok, but all this does is reduce the SAFE network into a place thats like the normal internet for normal people and the dark web for people with illegal content. ie safe network only becomes useful for dark web stuff. Might as well not bother. We already have that.
Smells like FUD.
Mair FUD
I don’t think it’s FUD at all. It’s a hard problem to solve and if it’s not solved the team risk prosecution with the way things are going legal-wise. I would hope that even though technology can said to be morally neutral we try to our best to make sure we’re not actively harmful, otherwise we’re off down the Zuckerberg route. I don’t have the answers but I know the team are actively engaged in looking at alternatives. None of them are simple though.
There is no way to solve this problem effectively without compromising the original goals. Only sick people want to view that material and they will find a way just like they do now. The safe network is a tool and how that tool is used depends on the user, not the network and definitely not the creator/creators of that tool. However I still believe like I have from the moment I found out about this project that when it works and is released David and the team will be in for a torrid time 
Hi all,
Good mood to all in the upcoming holidays and the new year. 
I would like to try to refresh the topic of data storage eternity in the SAFE network. The latest 50GbStatic Testnet results also prompted me to start this discussion. Most likely, it has risen in one way or another before, it would be great if you point to it and at the same time brush up all such problems once again.
The question is as simple as a kettle, is the Perpetuity really a MUST? But what about spam? What to do with intentional malicious usage, such as uploading child pornography content? What to do with data that is potentially required only for a fairly short time? Like transactional database logs? What to do with DoS-like attacks by malicious competitors who will flood the network with huge meaningless content, regardless of possible costs?
If we aim to create a network that will actually work for a very long time, years or decades, automatically, without technical intervention by editing the content in all such cases, we must provide storage longevity moderation at the semantic level.
Moderation has to be provided by the core. I understand that the current model exists, which is chosen by the elders and adults, dedicated to this purpose. But sometimes it is not enough. It is necessary to provide another kind of moderation. In order to determine the “degree of perpetuity” of certain types of data, manual or human moderation is also necessary. I do not want to go into the details of how this is implemented now, as far as it corresponds to or contradicts the idea that was originally declared when creating the SAFE network. Of course, this type of moderation should be placed on top of the network, which can be applied or not applied.
Another kind of self-moderation should be provided at the beginning of data load to SAFE The participant or node may don’t want to keep it forever initially.
Then we can come to the conclusion, it needs to embed the mechanisms into the engine core to mark some already loaded data as not actual and tending to be wasted.
What am I suggesting? As an addition to the existing classification of data types - private/public/etc. - one more orthogonal concept to coin, namely the Degree of Eternity.
As the first step, let’s introduce the concept of Storage Time Type - 1) Eternal and 2) Temporary. By loading, the Actor/Node has to set this attribute. If it is expected that the data will not necessarily be stored forever. The Temporary attribute should be given along with the expected retention period.
This attribute can and should affect tokenomics. The longer it is supposed to store data on the network (in the edge case - forever), the more expensive the download will be.
For example, an indexing dump required for a database engine that does not fit in RAM will cost an order of magnitude or two less for a few seconds than data intended for permanent storage.
It is necessary to provide for the possibility of changing the Storage Time from Temporary to Eternal and vice versa.
If we take the example of a database engine, then a page that was originally supposed to be Eternal may become irrelevant and, accordingly, deleted after a while. The price for the Storage Type change should be charged and is flexible, it is clear that when translating a file Temp → Eternal, a commission should be taken at the current rate of Eternity Storage. Translation Eternal → Temporary, in theory, also should be rewarded in tokens. But still, need to take into account the transaction fee and other (spread/etc.) costs.
As a benefit of such an approach - Eternal Data can be treated as Most Secure Data and tended to be saved/cloned at a high level like on most Elders/Adults nodes. By network degradation/dysfunctioning of net nodes risk of its unavailability will be going to zero.
The introduction of the concept of Storage Time into the core of the network engine, in my opinion, will allow the building of a stable and efficient system for a very long time, regardless of equipment instability and nodes’ activity, if not for centuries
What do you think about it?
This Has been discussed at length here and on Reddit in the past as you suspected, but there’s also a current discussion which has been going on in recent days.
You might like to join that rather than start a new topic:
honestly, I’ve missed it, sorry. But nevertheless, I think it could be a slight bit of another idea… will read it from the beginning!
is there a link, please? thanks in advance 
Hi guys,
I’m a bit late on the party and didn’t catch this thread from the beginning, then accidentally tried to start a new one. But it pretty much conforms with concerns by the initial topic and forum admins move it as a chain to this topic. Thanks!
I have similar ideas and thoughts regarding perpetual fire and playing with it. And maybe the solution with Content Longevity as a first-class citizen of Safe network could give the solution in the trade-off of accessibility, anonymity, law enforcement, tokenomics, and other similar topics.
My vision is that the Safe network engine niche is not the ubiquitous replacement of the Whole Internet. Rather it will be a basis to establish multiple communities led by some common governing. @jlane you are worring about perpetual porn in the internet? But what about adult sex funs? They will have the possibility to build their own closed community with restricted access. And it will be online till governments not be able to catch the hardware and prohibit using it in their own manner. But you agree, it’s honest to respect the rights of the old man, who loves playing with something spice. But if we imagine appearing sich kind of content in other communities, like schools/ or ever childs ones, the policy of those will prohibit uploading in one or another way. Like with a community-led policy with pre-moderated content.
Then regarding perpetual and optional perpetual content… This is maybe not a usual example. In Germany places on the graveyards are not perpetual. Places are rented, ie. for 10 years for the first time. If somebody is interested, he/she could continue to lend for the same fee. A similar could be applied to the Safe.
It could allow us to make a prediction of which requirements for Safe-based infrastructure will be satisfied in the future if for example most of the used storage will be freed after 1, 5, 10, … years and make appropriate actions of the network governance.
It also allows keeping the content mean and lean without compromises. It could allow us to effectively resist flood attacks without manual intervention as far as we may put the rule to keep threat suspicious upload as short live living.
And so on…
This is the very question that Maidsafe had to answer to the body setting up the foundation.
The real issue is how is the network perceived by the authorities. Is it along the lines
Now who controls what is to be censored on SAFE? The US government, the Russian government, the UK government, the Chinese government, the Nth Korean government? OR maybe the body that makes he list of the worse of the worse for the international police to distribute to all hosting/storage cloud people.
Now some suggestions to respond to the body controlling the set up of the foundation for that very question were
Remember the BTC blockchain was reported to have CP stored in it, and what happened there?
At this stage the foundation is being setup, the answer to the questions that had to be answered has not been given to us yet as this is a sensitive time for the establishment of the foundation and not appropriate to be made public.
But you have to consider that for ANYONE to be able to view any of the illegal material they need to be given the datamap to it. Otherwise it is impossible for the material to be read due to chunking and encryption. It is not like oh lets search it and it appears, no it has to be given to the search engine, like any safe material not on a public safesite that is crawled already.
The same can be said for Pi where any binary/text/image can be reconstructed by simply specifying the start digit and length. The same can be said for all the encrypted cloud storage where only the uploader holds the keys and those they share the keys with.
This is not a problem that only Safe will have as cloud storage providers like mega etc have the same problem while they exist. Its a problem that exists with any site/storage with encrypted files that is not known to the authorities or the providers.
bottom line
And as a person involved with advising Google on the setup for their storage said, the laws only require the provider to knowingly be storing the material. If the provider cannot reasonably know that the file exists on their systems then they have no requirements in the matter. Safe nor Maidsafe nor node runners (see note below) can have any reasonable way of knowing what is stored on their node. Safe like the internet is will not know what is stored, has no way to reveal what is stored unless its made known it is stored. Safe itself will not be able to do anything and the search providers on safe will implement the removal of datamaps for any material on the list of “worse of the worse” which is the list currently used to censor such material on cloud/hosting providers.
*The client is the only place where the file can exist as a file whether before it is chunked & encrypted or when it has been reconstructed from the chunks retrieved.
you got me thinking of an idea of a meta system of managing “safe networks”!!!
like this:
i think this way it will be easy for anyone to set some rules and make his own “party” (his own “safe network”) and maybe the meta system could handle a genesis with custom algorithm for the farming and the % of the value that goes to the creator/producer/put/get/etc!
will make a thread of this if anyone wants to talk about this idea and maybe we could develop it!