These two recent conversations got me thinking about “Organised FUD”(*). The use of narratives to discredit legitimate compeditors.
When the Safe Network becomes successful it will attract powerful enemies with the financial incentive to discredit it and the access to push those narratives into the mainstream. The unfortunate inevitability of illegal content being hosted will be used to attack and discredit the Safe Networks purpose. The Freenet Project has long suffered this fate, even using their about page to try and defend the ideals of the project. The founder fled the US (in 2003!) out of fear for his safety from the authorities.
The Maidsafe foundation will come under fire with the same manner and methods. How to prepare for the negative media narrative to come? Setup a savvy media desk with experience discerning FUD from facts, bad self interested media actors serving narrative of little substance from the good? Methods to deliver consistent message on why the Safe Network is important and worth existing despite the few bad actors using it to host questionable content? Or just ignore it all and wing it… which may just lead to the same fate: Free-Net == child porn in the public consciousness. Hopefully there are lessons to be learned from those projects that have gone before.
(*) Think! Organised FUD series of posts investigating and exposing the methods and connections of some well known troll farms such as Bitfinexed, used to discredit legitimate operations.