Danny O’Brien in conversation with Suji Yan: How to reclaim the torch of digital sovereignty with the power of Web3?

Source: Web3 Revolution Podcast

Compiled by: JC, Alice Fang, Hana Huajiang, and Chain Catcher

Introduction to Web3 Revolution:

This is an English podcast exploring the Web3 space, connecting the most cutting-edge participants, actors, innovators, investors, and KOLs in this social experiment through dialogue. You can subscribe to and listen to this program on Xiaoyuzhou, Spotify, Apple Podcast, and other general podcast clients. This episode is sponsored by Mask Network (Mask.io), hosted by Hana (Twitter: Hanachanweb3) and Nick.

"People are blinded by this commercial possibility. They start to miss its essence—the power of transformation. If there’s a new tool on the horizon, if there’s a new capability available for humanity, if there’s new knowledge, if there’s a new idea, you should embrace it, utilize it, take it. If a bad person is using it, you should use it too. I think the biggest mistake revolutions make is thinking they are not bound by the lessons of previous generations of revolutionaries." ------Danny O'Brien

Hana: Today I’m excited to have Danny O'Brien and Suji Yan with us to record this episode. Let’s start by introducing our guests.

Over the past twenty years, Danny's career has intersected with journalism, lobbying, and social activism, making him a veteran in the movement for digital rights. Last year, Danny joined the Filecoin Foundation from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). The EFF is worth mentioning; it is an international non-profit digital rights organization based in San Francisco, where Danny served as its leader for nearly a decade. As Danny describes it, his career has always been "around issues of privacy, free speech, and human rights in the digital space."

We also welcome another guest, Suji Yan. Suji is the founder of Mask Network, a Web3 company aimed at building various Web3-related social products to create a more open web ecosystem. Mask is dedicated to developing identity protocols and open-source browser plugins, bringing data privacy and the openness and economic attributes of Web3 to Web2 social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Similar to Danny, he has also been a journalist and activist. Welcome to the show, Danny O'Brien and Suji.

Hana: This year marks nearly 26 years since John Perry Barlow published the Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace. I know this declaration is very important to both of you and has inspired your careers. The core message of the Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace is that—governments should not and cannot regulate the internet, because technically it is impossible, and from many moral perspectives, governments should not interfere.

What John Perry Barlow asserted is that cyberspace is inherently beyond the reach of sovereign nations, and it should forever remain so.

However, fast forward to 2022, we live in this age of surveillance, in this era filled with "walls," within so many barriers constructed by tech giants. I believe both Danny and Suji have repeatedly stated this point in different contexts. Danny, you have a very interesting statement on your Twitter that says, "They stole our revolution, and now we’re going to steal it back." This resonates greatly with the theme of our podcast, Web3 Revolution. Can you elaborate on this? Do you still hold onto John Perry Barlow's statement as you did in the 90s?

Danny: Yes. Let me provide some background: John Perry Barlow was one of the co-founders of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), where I worked for many years and gradually got to know him. This is a very American-centric declaration, partly because it was a response to a law passed by the U.S. Congress that attempted to introduce a government-sanctioned censorship regime over the nascent internet.

Hana: The Communications Decency Act?

Danny: It was a response to the U.S. Telecommunications Act, and it was a special moment. I think John Perry would agree that the Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace is a calm, powerful rhetorical weapon rather than a simple description. You have to give a vision to your goals, especially when they are under threat. You need to put out the strong words, "You cannot touch us," even though the focus of the issue is to raise enough action.

So, this declaration was not entirely done in our way; it was like, "We are going to push back because this is the possibility we see in this space." I think its downside is reflected in my motto, which is—they stole our revolution. Now we are stealing it back.

It’s always like this: you have a grand desire to create a better world. Then, there are always some problems that arise, and you have to regroup your forces. While we lost that battle, we are still the torchbearers. For me, it’s really about watching that spirit being co-opted by corporations, but perhaps more like what we are seeing now in the Web3 space, where people are blinded by this commercial possibility to the extent that they start to miss its essence and transformation.

So that’s the relationship between the two. As John Perry said, "There is a revolution," and I said a year later: "Well, this revolution is not as perfect as we imagined. So perhaps it is understanding another revolution."

Hana: So basically, we need to initiate revolutions over and over again.

Danny: It’s like a motor; you have to keep it running, initiating 60 revolutions per second for the whole thing to really move forward. Haha.

Hana: Alright, I know Suji was born in 1996. That year, the declaration was written by John Perry and sent to the first mailing list. Can you tell us about your connection to the Declaration?

Suji: I was born in 1996. But I read this declaration when I was young. When I was 6 or 7 years old, my mom worked at a state-owned telecom company, and maybe she learned some basic coding during her work, but she wasn’t a core tech person.

When I was very young, she gave me an old, bulky computer. At that time, I loved staying at home browsing websites. Around the age of six or seven, I found an official translation of the Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace by a Chinese academic organization. I thought even now, it’s quite astonishing. John mentioned that the governments of great powers, not just the U.S. and China, could threaten the mountain of freedom.

Later, in high school, I devoted all my energy to open source and journalism. At that time, I didn’t delve deeply into the Declaration; I always knew it existed as an academic text.

But I have known about it for many years. I also knew about the EFF. At that time, I donated my $10 or $15 to their website using my Bitcoin. I knew there were many other organizations fighting for this cause. Until I graduated from high school and truly entered what is called Silicon Valley. When I was in the U.S., all my friends would say, "I want to start a new company and get recognized and invested by VCs." At the same time, it was also a crazy period for most startups in China. Regarding Web2, I just naturally felt something was wrong.

The second thing is, from my journalist perspective, Web2 did not lead us to a better world; it actually resulted in worse outcomes. Personally, I discovered many other interesting things. During that time, I found writing and journalism to be very interesting. I also found technologies like Bitcoin and others to be very intriguing.

That’s why I entered this industry. In fact, all the businesses I’m involved with related to Web3 are very much connected to John’s Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace. And I think, unfortunately, for my generation, when people come into contact with cryptographic technology, open-source technology, or any technology they use, they don’t really consider this revolution. They think about other things.

Nick: This peaks and valleys phenomenon has been widely present in various industries. Journalism also has a cyclical nature, when it rises, when it declines, when there is censorship, and when people can regain certain rights to free speech and try to push back. I’d love to hear your thoughts on whether you both feel optimistic that we are in a peak period trying to restore these rights.

Do you think this is not a particularly good time? For me, it’s about funding these efforts, which is also an important part of Danny's work. I’d love to hear his response to that.

Danny: Yes, I don’t feel there’s a peak moment; I think it’s an opportunity window. And I also think the general consensus is that we need to have a big action, which might be a mistake. It’s like timing is more important than mathematical ability or anything else. I think sometimes it’s just a small thing; you can make a small push, but it can really change the scope of everything. And sometimes it’s just that kind of text (with rhetorical significance), like John Perry wrote this piece and sent it to a mailing list, and then it spread on its own.

From my experience at the EFF, we had a moment where we gently encouraged people to use encryption on https, so the EFF and many other organizations formed something at that specific moment that allowed you to get a free certificate called "Let’s Encrypt." This means that now if you look at the top of your browser, it might show a lock. It seems like a small thing, but the impact of 5%-10% of internet traffic going from unencrypted to encrypted is huge because it makes large-scale surveillance super unprofitable.

Nick: So do you think this is not a particularly good time? This is also an important part of Danny's work, and I’d love to hear his response to that.

Danny: The current moment is definitely interesting; people feel anxious, and they don’t like what’s happening on the internet, so they are looking for something better.

I don’t think they can articulate what it is or how it is. People have many theories, but there’s a sentiment, a dissatisfaction. Another thing is that, aside from money, there are actually a bunch of really interesting technologies developing beneath all the hype around Web3, cryptocurrencies, and blockchain. This is also an opportunity window, like one of the examples I often cite is zero-knowledge proofs (ZK). Part of the reason is they are making progress, and a lot of funding is being poured into them.

With these tools, no one can predict the possibilities of the future, just like when the internet emerged in the 90s. And it was similar earlier when public-key cryptography was the foundation of everything we did; I think it was the cryptographers who first discovered this opportunity.

Hana: Danny, you started to talk about some specific technologies and concepts that people are more broadly applying in the Web3 world. I read one of your talks where you mentioned adversarial interoperability, which is a very, very difficult English term to read. Can you explain this term to us and why you think this concept is particularly important?

Danny: Yes, I think this goes back to the idea of "they stole our revolution, and now we’re going to steal it back." I firmly believe in John Perry Barlow's view of intellectual property. When people say, "I own this idea," I feel a bit frustrated; it sounds like you can’t do that. But when people say, "We can’t do this because there are bad people who have this idea too," that frustrates me even more.

I definitely saw this in the early internet; many people did a lot of work, and they would feel, "This comes from the U.S. military; it’s American, and I think it’s bad." Later, when it became commercialized, people would say, "This is just something companies do to make money; I’m going to ignore it." Of course, you see this pattern in Web3 as well.

And I think if there’s a new tool on the horizon, if there’s a new capability available for humanity, if there’s new knowledge, if there’s a new idea, you should embrace it, utilize it, take it. If a bad person is using it, you should use it too. It’s not the technology that corrupts you; maybe it does, but at least you should explore it and see what it looks like.

So, adversarial interoperability here is a narrow, almost policy-oriented thing. But if you know about net neutrality, it’s in the same space; we had to come up with this incredibly clumsy term to describe something new in the world.

There’s an example that can clarify this issue. When I use YouTube, the front end of the webpage doesn’t show a download button for YouTube, but in fact (from a technical perspective), my computer is downloading the video, and the progress bar at the bottom is loading; the video doesn’t stutter because my computer is downloading it, and my computer is storing it.

There are also situations where they really don’t want you to do anything with it—like Facebook. In principle, I should be able to rearrange the information Facebook provides me in the way I want. For example, to get rid of algorithmic pushes for junk, block ads, prioritize my real friends. If you try to do this on Facebook, they will come after you. This behavior is problematic.

Hana: I have a specific question for Suji. As a tech practitioner and entrepreneur in Web3, how do you use the methods Danny just described to build your own products that are completely different from Facebook?

Suji: I think it all comes down to the question of responsibility and obligation of companies or entities. Suppose another Suji somewhere builds software that is a hundred times better than Facebook, but they somehow intrude into Facebook's network; then the police in the jurisdiction will come knocking, saying, "You better shut this down, or you’ll be in trouble."

But if I make this product a decentralized public infrastructure, the only thing the police can do is arrest me, but I really don’t have the private key and can’t actually shut it down. And unfortunately, I’m just exercising the rights granted to me by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution or other constitutional rights I believe in. I’m not really benefiting from this software; like Satoshi, it’s public software.

You can see that more and more tools are somehow replacing the jurisdiction of nation-states. And they are still self-developing and very revolutionary. I’m curious to see what happens next.

Hana: When we really start talking about "bad people," they design mechanisms that know you better than anyone else in the world. Do you think those so-called Web2 giants, like Twitter or Facebook, can do some self-transformation? Or do you think the Web3 revolution can happen within Facebook or Twitter? We all know about Twitter's bluesky project. We’ve all seen Jack Dorsey express regret on Twitter about turning Twitter into what it is now instead of another form.

I want to ask Suji and Danny, do Facebook or Twitter need a complete self-destruction to achieve this radical decentralization goal?

Danny: So I think the point of John Perry's document is interesting in many ways, which is the economy of ideas. If you look at the Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, it’s on the left. It’s like what the boundaries and borders in cyberspace look like.

One of the things that make the internet or the digital world attractive and revolutionary is that people never discuss where their boundaries are, while intellectual property is the point people discuss. For example, someone creates something, and then I copy it. So what is the relationship between us under ideal intellectual property? It’s to some extent that the person who created this thing still owns it.

I think we would all be afraid of such a society, where external actors, whether states, religious groups, or companies, can read or influence our own thoughts. This seems like a very dystopian or completely different world. But the fact is, the devices and digital technologies we use, which Steve Jobs called bicycles for the mind. They are tools you can use to express your thoughts.

I used to share some things through my notebook. But I might not directly talk to others to share. I would look for what I wanted through Google or other search engines, sharing my thoughts. But I would never go to others and say, for example, that I feel unwell and worry about being sick; I would search for some related content on Google, but I wouldn’t share this with my partner, child, or even doctor. Therefore, the radius of this way of sharing information is constantly changing. You can almost know what I’m thinking through my notebook and phone.

At the same time, we must also expand our defenses, especially as these devices become increasingly connected to our thoughts. Just like when Elon Musk's Starlink or anything similar connects to my phone. It’s always there, always listening, knowing everything about me, and constantly learning things about me.

Suji: There’s a person named Robert Owen, who came from Britain and was a super capitalist, also regarded as one of the earliest utopian socialist thinkers. In 1824, he came to Indiana, USA, bought 1,214 acres of land, and wanted to conduct an experiment called the New Harmony immigrant community. He ended up spending all his money before he died, and everything failed. This was one of the early utopian attempts in America and the world.

Another thing I learned from Bitcoin and Ethereum is that I don’t think their early members were 100% right. There were also some very foolish people, and of course, some who made money and ran away. But at least I learned something from the Free Software Foundation. These people can maintain stability and sustainability. They didn’t develop based on one person’s wealth, unlike those who became rich after selling their company. Unfortunately, Telegram and Signal became rich in this way. That’s what I want to say, just like Jack Dorsey had no choice but to be like today or be another punk in Los Angeles.

Danny: I love reading about utopias. Many countries start with a revolution, and perhaps that revolution didn’t play out as many imagined, but as a movement, successful things exist, and failures disappear.

I know a lot of the foundational knowledge of Bitcoin and blockchain; these elements are not very fresh, but the combination is new. One of the things that makes Bitcoin super interesting is that all the incentives are aligned to create and maintain this immutable distributed ledger. The key is that you have to spend some money to pay certain people to maintain this ledger. This can be very costly, and this practice is also strange. But for projects that want to sustain themselves, this is an absolute factor.

Many founders of companies have a sincerity inspired by the value systems of others. I’m sure Jack Dorsey has read the Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, and I feel you don’t need to read it. When people realize that just using a technology can enable them to speak freely, it spreads like a virus.

I feel some people’s ambitions are not big enough; they think there are some bad things now, and after they build something good, people will naturally turn to them. But I don’t think revolutions work that way because then you wouldn’t need them. I think what you need to do is create a world that attracts people, not just because you’re trying to do something better.

I think that’s one of the challenges of current Web3. We are building all these interesting things with tools, but have we really used them? Just like people are building Web3 tools, have they really used Web3 tools to build something? For example, you are building something, and I am building something, and then you invite me to GitHub and invite me to Discord. Both of these things are very Web2, and there are some very "bad" things in them; Discord collects various information, and GitHub is owned by Microsoft.

In Microsoft’s terms, we need to do "Dogfood" testing because if it’s not good enough for us, then we won’t attract people to a morally better world.

Host: That’s very true. I feel very fortunate because what I wanted to express is very similar to your point; you pointed out some key points. All these commitments come from this Web3 experiment. I think this is a huge opportunity, partly because people have been deprived of rights in Web2, and more capital is entering this space, allowing people to do things that were difficult to achieve a decade ago. As surveillance systems develop more rapidly, snitching will also become more terrifying than today.

But I worry that the progress we think we are making isn’t actually happening; it seems we are missing an opportunity.

Danny: I’m not that old, but I’ve experienced these things. I experienced the early internet, which was a decentralized environment. And it was precisely because it was decentralized that it succeeded. The early internet had a lot of competition; there were many state-driven projects in Europe and Russia, and many companies in different regions of the U.S. were creating similar projects. But because it was decentralized, it beat all those alternatives.

But then it became centralized. This was a revolution that was stolen. To bring it back on track, we need to rethink why people ultimately chose a centralized path.

I think there may be three reasons: first, a centralized internet is safer because people don’t like maintaining their own servers; for individuals, it’s hard to keep putting effort into maintaining services. So people choose "feudal security," willingly entering Mark Zuckerberg’s castle, where the walls will protect them.

Second, privacy is also a factor. It’s strange that everything built on the internet at first was either public or super private; you couldn’t just share with your friends. When Facebook came along, people could finally talk to friends, and anyone, including Zuckerberg, could see all your updates. That’s why people moved from the internet to these social media platforms.

The last issue is that I don’t have a better solution. I can solve computer security issues; I can solve privacy issues, but I can’t solve usability issues. For example, Apple designed a very decentralized PC market, with different factories making their own things. But Shenzhen is a centralized place where parts are produced and everything can be assembled together; everything is operable and compatible. People buy these things because they are practical. We used to call it "the crystal prison" at the EFF. They are very beautiful; you just have to go in.

And these are the challenges of the Web3 revolution. People want to have security, privacy, and usability all at once. It sounds strange, but we have huge momentum in the first two areas. Because if it’s not secure, then in the coming time, everyone will suffer losses; we have millions of people working for security. So we at least have to try to get this right.

Moreover, how to (make products) beautiful, how to make them usable, is something that has never existed in a decentralized world; all the initial attempts will fail, and more people need to consider this.

Suji: I have a personal question for Danny. The trend of more and more people entering Web3 is growing, and I wonder what your colleagues or crypto-punk friends say when they hear you want to "wade into this murky water"? Do they say, "I’m glad you’re here to save the world?" I was once part of the open-source community, and I spent a long time explaining that Web3 is not just about open code or simply facilitating the GBL open-source protocol; I’m not taking RMB or USD, but rather for something newer. After many recent geopolitical events, they seem to be starting to understand what I’m saying. So what was your experience?

Danny: I think one of the challenges we face now is understanding technology and being honestly changed by it or seeking groups that can change the world. I’m very opposed to using the term Web3. It should be something decentralized. And Web3 seems to be in opposition to Web2 and Web1, trying to mean a replacement for the latter two. This indeed leads to a lot of tension. When I entered this space, my friends were skeptical.

There’s also an interesting idea of a volunteer society. The idea is that you would donate your spare time to build Wikipedia or open-source software. But money has corrupted that. Anyone who has worked on an open-source project, received funding, or found some form of income will feel pressure; getting paid is no longer "volunteering."

So I think the idea of free information and public goods should be accompanied by "this is a space without monetary compensation." We have different forms of incentives in this space, and this contrasts sharply with Web3. Because Web3 takes the idea of monetization or monetary incentives as a premise and center, rather than any broader political discussion. This is the fundamental difference between the two.

Looking back, where did we go wrong? The rise of advertising and monetization caught everyone off guard and distorted everything in a harmful way. But the reason it emerged is that there were no other resource ways. For example, Google didn’t find a suitable way to make money and ultimately just absorbed the entire industry to pay itself (through ads). There are questions that need deep reflection: How do we sustainably resource a public good, whether it’s Linux, Wikipedia, or any similar kernel product?

Thousands of Wikipedias and Linuxes should emerge, but the reality tells us: that hasn’t happened. How do we properly utilize these resources? How do we not just purely rely on the goodwill of strangers? How do we not depend on those who might make enough money out of preference or obsession to do these things? Everyone draws nourishment from the idea that we can build a better world through this decentralized platform, which exists outside of states and commerce.

Hana: My personal observation of these spaces is that there are too many entrepreneurs, investors, and speculators in Web3, but not enough social activists. The crypto incentive economy you mentioned has already emerged, and perhaps in the future, it can combine different goals and actors as well as organizations.

Danny: When you are building a new utopia, one of the fallacies people will fall into is that only good people are inside; if bad people come in, we will find them and kick them out—but that will never happen. Bad people are very clever at seeking loopholes, and good people can also become bad when they have power.

Rather than excluding bad people, it’s better to say that bad people will almost do good things out of bad motives. Just as you see in many areas on Web3, for example, some people join for profit motives. But the challenge is, how do you instill basic motives in them?

Hana: I think you are absolutely right. You can’t judge people for their deep study of speculation because there’s a pile of money there, but how do you, as you said, create something good out of it?

Danny: How do we solve this problem? I don’t know; maybe Suji knows.

Suji: I don’t know. But going back to the previous point, I agree with what you said about feudalism; it’s like if you want to move out of Zuckerberg’s Facebook kingdom, you will lose a lot.

If you dare to go back to the Linux system, you will become a freak and lose all your (linked) friends online. Regardless, it’s a curse. But I think now, the whole trend is like we call it feudalism, and we are kind of adding free market on top of it. It’s a crazy Western capitalism. From a historical perspective, this is not all good. To be honest, more than half of it is bad. The early versions of capitalism are likely the reasons many historical disasters happened in our real lives, and the cyberspace might also create one through the same revolution. But this time, the personal sovereignty revolution is collaborating with the cyberspace capitalism revolution, forming an alliance in the token economy.

That’s my thought. Ultimately, the question still lies in whether we believe in free markets. If we believe in this, why not improve the work of free markets in cyberspace? If we really believe this, we might later establish our own government systems in cyberspace.

But before this process, there might be a large outflow of capital from global markets. For places like Europe, China, and the U.S., there might be such a situation before truly establishing something like the United Nations. You could say we would like the OGs in Web2 or some of the most powerful governments to jump into this space and ultimately become the rulers of this domain. To find this new ruler and government system, it’s best to have an open market that allows everyone to participate in this competition. That’s my thought.

Hana: I want to ask how your work at the Filecoin Foundation distributes grants and promotes projects that are doing good work in advocating for internet rights, creating better incentive models for public goods. I want you to talk about one of the projects, especially Starling Lab.

Danny: I think Starling Lab aligns quite well with the spirit of Web3. In fact, there are two foundations: one is the Filecoin Foundation—similar to a traditional blockchain foundation, aimed at maintaining the ecosystem for future success.

We also have a practical non-profit organization, the Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web, whose goal is to develop the entire decentralized ecosystem while also preserving the world’s most important information, as this is one of the original ideas behind IPFS and Filecoin. One of the questions is: what is the most important information? Who is trying to stop us from preserving it?

One category of "most important information" is records of genocide, which is extremely important and must never be forgotten. But almost everyone will forget them in a haze. At least decades later, those who experienced them often don’t want to think about them anymore and want to move on. And those who committed these crimes want to ensure that the atrocities they committed leave no record.

Thus, Starling Lab collaborates with the USC Shoah Foundation, and part of their core work is to protect the historical records of genocide and personal testimonies. Their initial model was to document the genocide of Jews during World War II and the accompanying genocides and data. Unfortunately, that was not the first nor the last genocide, so they have been collecting the same undeniable historical records that cannot be denied in the future.

How do we store this information? How do we ensure this information is not forgotten? We store it on the Filecoin network because part of the design philosophy of that network is to allow such data to be stored long-term under an incentive model, meaning that those who want to make money suddenly find themselves able to preserve the world’s most important information.

We collaborate with all types of organizations, such as another great organization, Witness, which is also storing video news content on the Filecoin network. We have some truly exciting new places where we are not just preserving things that are already digitized but are more like absorbing the analog world into cyberspace.

Hana: This reminds me of a quote from the Italian communist Gramsci, who said, "The old is dying, and the new cannot be born," but I think we can see new things about to be born.

Danny: I’ve always loved that sentence. Maybe I understand people using GitHub because you are taking existing things to build the new things you want to see. I think the biggest mistake revolutions make is thinking they are not bound by the lessons of previous generations, previous revolutionaries. That’s why you need to study history, even the recent history of the internet.

Just like the big problem in the digital world is that if you don’t work hard to defend it, not only will what you are trying to build evaporate, but you will also lose history. We as revolutionaries must continuously preserve the knowledge of the past as we move toward the future.

Hana: Thank you very much. Danny and Suji, thank you for your time.