We have been ringing alarm bells about invasive surveillance technologies like facial recognition and electronic surveillance in multiple blog posts and podcast episodes over the years. Two of the biggest offenders, Clearview AI and NSO Group have come under a lot of fire recently and are getting banned and sued as a result.

Clearview AI and NSO Group’s technology was allegedly built to enable legitimate law-enforcement and government to do their jobs, what happened?

Should hackers be allowed to create private companies out of their technology and market to the highest bidder?

Join us on this episode of The Decentralists as we discuss hacker technology and how our governments and law enforcement makes them legit.

To open Season 4 of The Decentralists we are joined by a very special guest, Dr. Agnieszka Rychwalska, Assistant Professor of Psychology and researcher at the Center for Complex Systems and New Technologies at The Robert Zajonc Institute for Social Studies at the University of Warsaw.

Among other things, Dr. Rychwalska studies the application of complex systems in psychological and social processes (modelling and analysis of social networks, experimental study of social impact mechanisms, analysis of large data sets from social networks mediated by new technologies), in particular to study the impact of new information technologies on social processes.

Data accumulation by a few global actors, surveillance capitalism and manipulation of public opinion – all leading to greater social inequalities – are, in a way, a result of the fact that individuals share so much about themselves online. Is this a result of some unchangeable human trait? Or is Big Tech, forcing their users to divulge too much about themselves in order to make money from advertising?

Why do people seem so willing to share so much of their identity online, especially on social media platforms?

What are the dangers of creating multiple identity profiles online in order to be social with friends and family?

Join us this week for part one of a discussion about the psychology of identity and why it is important for all of us to understand who we are and how we identify ourselves online.

2021 was a good year but also a bad year for cryptocurrencies.

On January 1st 2021, Bitcoin was trading for approximately USD $29000 per coin and its value has more than doubled over the year reaching USD $66000 at one point. Bitcoin’s largest ‘competitor’ , Ethereum, has been on an even better run in ’21 starting the year at USD $737 per token and hitting a high of USD $4800 - a 6.5x increase.

These types of returns would make any investment manager blush yet crypto still struggles to go mainstream, why?

Join the Decentralists as we explain why cryptocurrencies could be a risk for everyone!

Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of Twitter recently announced that he was resigning as CEO of Twitter - again. This is not the first time Jack has departed Twitter’s CEO role, but at least this time it was his choice, apparently.

Just like Steve Jobs when he was ousted as the CEO at Apple, Jack again proved his tech visionary credentials by forming the online payments firm, Square (now named Block).

Unlike Steve Jobs however, Jack Dorsey will not oversee the potential renaissance of Twitter…but maybe that’s a good thing.

Why did Jack Dorsey resign from Twitter? Will this time be the last time? Henry, Mike and Geoff have a few ideas.

Great ideas can be Game Changers and we talk to the people who made them great!

On this episode of The Decentralists we speak with Scott Chu, a 2nd year Masters student in Management Information Systems at the Sauder School of Business at the University of British Columbia. 

Scott’s research interests are focused on investigating how organizations can harness advances in technology to realize certain business benefits. His research as an intern with Manyone this past summer, involved comparing annual financial performance measures between firms that experienced different types of data breaches, to highlight problems that blockchain technology could solve. How much could a credential-based data breach cost your company? and how decentralized, user-centric identity and access could reduce your risk?

Scott’s final research report, Evaluating the Financial Impact of Data Breaches Involving Account Credentials, is available for viewing from the Peer Social and Manyone websites under a new content category we call  Game Changers.

Great ideas can be Game Changers and we talk to the people who made them great!

On this episode of The Decentralists we speak with Sadaf Ahmadbeigi, a candidate for Dual Master of Archival Studies and Library and Information Studies, class of 2022. Sadaf is a recipient of the current Association of Research Libraries/Society of American Archivist - Mosaic Award, for their leadership role in gathering and processing oral history accounts from queer Iranian communities.

As a member of the Blockchain Faculty at UBC, Sadaf is exploring ways to guarantee safety and transparency of personal identities and records in an ever-rising number of unstable states and economies worldwide.

Many human rights organizations including the UN, are searching for a way to document identity, possessions and return a sense of dignity and stability to refugees after they’ve fled a broken homeland. Sadaf and The Peer Social Foundation believe this can be accomplished by utilizing the inherent trust, traceability and immutability of blockchain technology.

Sadaf’s whitepaper, Trusted Records in Tapestry Approach: A Background Study to Inform System Design is available for viewing and download from the Peer Social and Manyone websites under a new content category we call Game Changers.

The Decentralists are introducing a new segment called Game Changers. 

Great ideas can be Game Changers and we will talk to the people who made them great!

On this episode we talk with Ali Farahbakhsh, Master of Applied Science student at the University of British Columbia. Ali has dual degrees in Electrical Engineering and Mathematics, with a broad range of research interests including: Communication networks, information theory, and distributed systems. 

This past summer, Ali was a research Intern with the Peer Social Foundation, designing a purpose-built blockchain for digital identity using a new, self-sovereign consensus model.   

Ali’s whitepaper, Self-Sovereign Identity Based on Blockchain -  A Design Roadmap is available for viewing from the Peer Social and Manyone websites, under a new content category, Game Changers.

This week on The Decentralists we have a very special guest, Dr. Jon Unruh, Transitional Justice advocate and Associate Professor of Geography at McGill University in Montreal. 

Dr. Unruh has over 25 years’ experience in developing and implementing research, policy and practice on war-affected land and property rights in the Middle East, Latin America, Africa, and Asia - and has published widely on these topics. His specialty is housing, land and property (or HLP) restitution claims in war-affected scenarios. Most recently, he has assisted the UN in HLP restitution programs in Sri Lanka, Iraq, Syria and Yemen; and he’s currently working on a digital media approach for mass HLP restitution claims for refugees and internally dislocated persons in Syria and Iraq.

What Transitional Justice and what role does it play in helping displaced people and refugees?

What is Home Land and Property data? and why is documenting it so critical to refugees and displaced people? 

Join us the week for an engaging and illuminating discussion about Transitional Justice and why it is important to healing the wounds of war.

* in this episode we call it Home LIFE and Property data, our apologies but after listening to this episode you might agree with us that HLP is more about life than just land.

Dr. Nigel Dodd is Professor in the Sociology Department at the London School of Economics. He obtained his PhD from the University of Cambridge in 1991 on the topic of Money in Social Theory, and lectured at the University of Liverpool before joining the LSE in 1995. Nigel’s main interests are the sociology of money, economic sociology, and classical and contemporary social thought. He’s the author of The Sociology of Money and Social Theory and Modernity. His most recent book, The Social Life of Money, was published by Princeton University Press in September of 2014. 

Professor Dodd currently teaches courses at the LSE at the Masters level in Classical, Modern and Contemporary Social Thought, and co-founded the MSc in Economy, Risk and Society.

How can Sociology help us better understand traditional money, and its digital counterpart, Cryptocurrency? Join us on this episode of The Decentralists as we explore what money means to society - and what cryptocurrencies mean to money.

A little over a year ago on The Decentralists - Store Wars, we talked about the looming legal battle between Apple and Epic Games, maker of Fortnite.  

In a high profile trial, Epic Games had challenged the up-to-30% cut Apple takes from purchases - and argued that the App Store was monopolistic. 

Epic games declared victory when Judge Yvonne Gonzalez-Rogers Issued a permanent injunction, stating that Apple could no longer prohibit developers linking to their own purchasing mechanisms.

Apple also claimed victory when the Judge ruled that with the evidence provided, the court could not consider Apple a monopolist

Epic is appealing the decision.

What does this decision mean for iPhone users and for Epic?  In this episode The Decentralists will unpack this decision and explain why it might be the beginning of the end of the App Store monopolies.