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iknowstuff
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dylan604
Calling it The Orb does not help anything but adding to the creepy factor. Also, Alex Patterson is not involved with this, and I refuse to accept it being called The Orb.
nickvec
Agreed. Gives me Palantir vibes.
p_stuart82
Let the bot mess get bad enough, then charge users to prove they're human. That's the business model.
tim333
>You need an offline/IRL verification step
That's what the orb thing is about. You go visit, meet humans, have a photo of your eyes. You can't just hold up an AI photo or scan your dog or whatever.
simonw
I tried to track down the original source of the news that World ID is being adopted by Zoom and Tinder and DocuSign and it looks like it's an event they hosted on April 17th. Here's their blog post about it: https://world.org/blog/announcements/the-new-world-id-and-th...
There were more logos on that title slide: Tinder, DocuSign, Zoom, Okta, Vercel, Shopify, Browsnerbase, AWS, exa, RAZER, Coinbase, VanEck
mahmoud420
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onetokeoverthe
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2ndorderthought
World id, meta verifier, how many other military funded establishments are pushing to require mass surveillance of everyone doing anything. Meanwhile their bots run rampant all over the Internet without any concern for anyone else's infrastructure, copyright, or ip. The irony...
pocksuppet
You'd be silly not to, if you think about it. There's demand for ID verification, and don't you want to be the one with copies of everyone's documents, instead of the other guy? Do you want to make the money, or do you want Peter Thiel to make the money?
Andrex
The prisoner's dilemma of stupidity.
red-iron-pine
so take down the internet. or take down their company. or just stop using the internet
will posting this on forums that are run by these same people actually be able to drive change?
jochem9
Yes.
Your message needs to find other people. The how is irrelevant, it just shapes and transmits it.
ArcHound
You mean to tell me that companies that got rich by hoarding data are excited to hoard more data? Never would have guessed.
Also, why wouldn't anyone want to have data about everyone? Seems like a valuable asset.
2ndorderthought
Defense contractors can sell it to the military and related agencies for top dollar. That's probably number 1, number 2 is higher fidelity correlations to other data.
filoeleven
It's only considered an asset because companies are allowed to externalize the cost of breaches.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CS9ptA3Ya9E (Mitchell and Webb on "identity theft")
theplatman
so we're trusting the guy who created tech to make it easier for bots to exist on the internet to then sell us the solution to fix the problem he made worse?
llbbdd
I've seen this take a lot and I don't really understand it. IMO if there's anybody to blame here, and I don't think there is, you could go back and assign blame to the authors of the Attention is All You Need paper, or Google as its publisher.
Once that was out in the wild it was only a matter of time before someone productized it, but there was no conceivable world in which nobody decided to, and there was no guarantee that it was going to be public in all cases. The basis for LLMs is so simple in hindsight that it's not even impossible that it'd been independently discovered and privately weaponized for many years before 2017.
demorro
> Once that was out in the wild it was only a matter of time before someone productized it, but there was no conceivable world in which nobody decided to...
By this logic, we cannot blame anyone who is the agent of anything that we deem to be inevitable. Just because it is eventually going to happen, that means you are completely non-culpable for being the person who does it. This could obviously be extended into justifying pretty much anything.
llbbdd
Yeah but I think that's precisely what makes it fuzzier than a zero-sum blame game. Given that this technology was going to be in public hands no matter what, the how matters more than condemning the first visible target. Instead of ChatGPT, the first wide use of this tech could have been a private endeavor to secretly kill the internet. The fact that anyone can see and use it, and learn it's hallmarks, arguably helps innoculate some of the populace against the worst things it could be used for. We're able to sit around and complain that the discourse has been poisoned by robots instead of blindly wondering why otherwise-indistinguishable fellow humans are all saying "delve" suddenly.
I'm not sure I have a specific point here other than that I think it's interesting that he became a target, not necessarily that he's actually blameless.
HSO
he didnt create anything
stefan_
Ironically, of the only thing he did create (ostensibly), a copycat never went anywhere "social network", its claim to fame was the app (preinstalled by paying carriers) spamming your entire contact book with SMS invitations to join their failing network. Splendid privacy record!
wmf
I guess it would be worse if he was doing nothing to address the problem.
estimator7292
Incorrect. Completely and utterly.
Trying to make money on selling the solution to the problem you caused (while also probably tracking literally everyone with the solution) is much worse than causing the problem and doing nothing about it.
Teever
I saw someone in another thread put it quite succinctly:
Shit in the pool then sell the nets to clean it up.
taeric
This is an odd topic. On the one hand, we do seem to have a problem where attention is hijacked by engagement farming. On the other, we also know of problems from draconian management.
I would actually like it if we had something that could say, only promote things on my feeds that are "liked" by people within a geographic radius of me. At the least, mute things that are getting pumped from hostile regions.
I just don't know that I see how this can get us there, though? Seems far more likely that it would lead to more abuse.
dylan604
> only promote things on my feeds that are "liked" by people within a geographic radius of me
Ugh, really? I live in a part of town where I speak a different language than the vast majority of the people in this "geographic radius of me" which means I'd see very little content that I could understand.
Where do people come up with these wild ideas of anything other than show me the content of people I want to see in the order it was posted? If you want a "Feeling Lucky" type of feed, make it available. Otherwise, you're sending people content they don't want and are only too lazy to stop using it.
ryandrake
$trillions of global brainpower is spent yearly trying to answer "How do we get people to consume things they didn't ask for?" whether those things are products, services, ads, or online content.
taeric
I mean, I don't think it has to be quite so literal that you can't work with it. Translate is also a thing.
And if you are building your own list, that is still perfectly fine for how this would work. My suggestion was not to remove the ability to do that. It is to add the ability of ignoring "liked" things where the "likes" are not from people near me. And, I realize that "near" is not necessarily geographic.
Similar problems exist with "trending." It is far too influenced by bots to be at all a reliable indicator of what is actually trending.
watwut
Or like, have chronological feed of accounts user follows. Simple. Produces less outrage tho, so it is a no go.
taeric
This assumes that most people would choose that feed? Which, I'm less convinced.
That is, this sounds like the idea that telling people if bad things happen when you eat too much candy, then people will eat less candy. Just flat not the case at large.
Yes, you also have to document the downsides of candy. Such that I'm also all for having that feed. But I don't see it being enough to move the needle much, on its own.
chucksmash
> That is, this sounds like the idea that telling people if bad things happen when you eat too much candy, then people will eat less candy. Just flat not the case at large.
Seems like there's an effect but it just takes time. The younger generations are smoking and drinking less.
Maybe the trend will be to abstain from social media feeds and chronological feeds will be their Zima.
Terr_
I'm not even remotely-interested unless there is legislation that creates civil-liability and criminal penalties for abuse or mishandling of the data.
Also, companies shouldn't be able to refuse service just because the prospective customer's biometric data was leaked/stolen/duplicated in the past. I mean, when you think about it that's some Twilight Zone or Black Mirror territory.
thesurlydev
Since when has that stopped companies from mishandling of data? :)
izzydata
Perhaps it is time to return to meatspace for verifiably real interactions.
red-iron-pine
bring back PGP in-person signing parties
dzhiurgis
Yes it's cute on small scale, but also rhymes with decel movement.
iugtmkbdfil834
The interesting thing is that the issue is real, but that issue is artificially created. If we had the will, we could technically stop it today. Separately, there is too much money to be made ( or ,at least, people with the money think there is, which effectively amounts to the same thing ) and, unless corrected, it is obvious which way corporates will pick.
The good news is: this is the one tech that can be relatively easily stopped, if we so choose. Compared to data centers, this is easy. And yet, I am not sure, if it will be easy enough for most to care about.
int32_64
Is there any technical solution to these centralized ID authorities doing sybil attacks and minting identities out of nothing to manufacture consensus on supposedly "human verified" sites?
2001zhaozhao
An effective naive defense would be requiring ID to be verified with multiple sites
bradleysz
The axiom here is that both AI and the human internet are worth keeping.
Tech like World ID is scary. Agreed.
What is the better alternative? AI isn't going away and a human internet is worth preserving.
karl42
> What is the better alternative?
One alternative is https://self.xyz . It generates ZK proofs from the digital signature on your e-passport or national ID card. That allows you to prove "human" or "over 18" or "not on the OFAC list" without revealing your name, date of birth or nationality.
Disclosure: I'm an advisor for Self
skybrian
I imagine that in the future we will have less trust in strangers on the Internet and whether they're human or AI will be a side issue. Knowing that a correspondent is human will be neither necessary nor sufficient.
goolz
The blind leading the blind. These companies and Sam are both devoid of any sort of ethical code aside from C.R.E.A.M.
red-iron-pine
protect ya neck is also one of their main ethical concerns
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Judging solely by their FAQ, this is not enough. Iris photos can be fabricated client-side, including by AI, and can be shared.
So it's invasive AND worthless? Why is this getting support?
You need an offline/IRL verification step and measures to prevent sharing/cloning. AND you need to never phone home revealing services you're using.
Total garbage
Your device sends the fragments to the AMPC service to confirm you have never verified before. Your World ID is verified.