I think a precise way to explain why I felt like adding “at all” is because I had already restricted myself to thinking about the most extreme spiral-of-silence cases. The Evergreen State-Bret Weinstein fiasco is a salient example. These kinds of situations are where a solution to spiral of silence-type phenomena would have the greatest impact, but I suppose there could be cases where the group dynamic is not as hostile, but still unforgiving enough that people will essentially want to test out ideas in front of their peers before publicly endorsing them, as ring signatures allow. I don’t know where such a group could be found or created.
I guess I am having difficulty imagining a group that would be heterodox enough to agree to talk about whatever “unpopular” ideas get endorsed on their ring signature, but would still be orthodox enough that individuals would feel the need to use the ring system in the first place—it seems to me like that would require holding contradictory beliefs about how one’s peers would react if you expressed support for a “toxic” idea. I’ve noticed I have an easier time than most being that person though (and if I’m totally honest, it’s a part of my personality that I like, and I probably consciously turn it up), so maybe this is a failure of imagination on my part.
I’m not sure I quite understand you, but I think you may be underestimating the protocol.
Wikipedia says:
In the original paper, Rivest, Shamir, and Tauman described ring signatures as a way to leak a secret. For instance, a ring signature could be used to provide an anonymous signature from “a high-ranking White House official”, without revealing which official signed the message. Ring signatures are right for this application because the anonymity of a ring signature cannot be revoked, and because the group for a ring signature can be improvised.
It seems to me that this should straightforwardly generalize from the White House staff to Evergreen professors, Megacorp employees, etc. The only requirement is that there are enough public keys available that you can put together a decent crowd to hide in. If you know someone’s public key, they cannot stop you from signing their name next to yours (which leaves both of you with plausible deniability).
If you run an organization, you can just require that all employees generate a key pair. Boom. Spiral-proof organization, right? The emperor of such an organization is less likely to end up walking around naked, right?
I think a precise way to explain why I felt like adding “at all” is because I had already restricted myself to thinking about the most extreme spiral-of-silence cases. The Evergreen State-Bret Weinstein fiasco is a salient example. These kinds of situations are where a solution to spiral of silence-type phenomena would have the greatest impact, but I suppose there could be cases where the group dynamic is not as hostile, but still unforgiving enough that people will essentially want to test out ideas in front of their peers before publicly endorsing them, as ring signatures allow. I don’t know where such a group could be found or created.
I guess I am having difficulty imagining a group that would be heterodox enough to agree to talk about whatever “unpopular” ideas get endorsed on their ring signature, but would still be orthodox enough that individuals would feel the need to use the ring system in the first place—it seems to me like that would require holding contradictory beliefs about how one’s peers would react if you expressed support for a “toxic” idea. I’ve noticed I have an easier time than most being that person though (and if I’m totally honest, it’s a part of my personality that I like, and I probably consciously turn it up), so maybe this is a failure of imagination on my part.
I’m not sure I quite understand you, but I think you may be underestimating the protocol.
Wikipedia says:
It seems to me that this should straightforwardly generalize from the White House staff to Evergreen professors, Megacorp employees, etc. The only requirement is that there are enough public keys available that you can put together a decent crowd to hide in. If you know someone’s public key, they cannot stop you from signing their name next to yours (which leaves both of you with plausible deniability).
If you run an organization, you can just require that all employees generate a key pair. Boom. Spiral-proof organization, right? The emperor of such an organization is less likely to end up walking around naked, right?
That’s the thing, this is all based on the assumption that the people running an organization want people to express themselves.
That is a very poor assumption in a lot of organizations. Silence spirals gotta start somewhere.