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Zero-knowledge proofs solve this problem. Hell, even simple private key cryptography solves this problem. Distribute private keys to anonymous individuals who s

Zero-knowledge proofs solve this problem. Hell, even simple private key cryptography solves this problem. Distribute private keys to anonymous individuals who somehow prove their eligibility and only allow key holders to participate in the community. Easy peasy.

taftster 6y ago
Just to challenge the easy part (or is this a challenge to peasy), can you please expand on "somehow"? What is your strategy here to ensure that only "real" people can get access to the private keys (and not real people proxying for an automaton)? How do you maintain this assurance for a long running period of time?
- Reelin 6y ago
  Web of trust (or something substantially similar) solves this on an algorithmic level. The problem is that, to the best of my knowledge, we lack friendly and accessible UI tooling to support such a scheme. Naive web of trust algorithms are likely to threaten anonymity in their own way though. Zero knowledge proofs might be able to facilitate a solution to that. > and not real people proxying for an automaton You can't prevent this under any scheme, only detect it after the fact. An authenticated individual will always be able to deliberately take actions on behalf of someone else.
  - amelius 6y ago
    > You can't prevent this under any scheme, only detect it after the fact. So do I understand correctly that if someone posts 100 messages "anonymously", and in the last one they accidentally reveal themselves, all the other 99 messages are traceable to that same person?
    - Reelin 6y ago
      The part of my comment you quoted was referring to preventing people from disingenuously proxying for another entity, not to maintaining their own personal anonymity. Regarding accidentally revealing oneself, that's always a risk. If you create an anonymous HN identity but then inadvertently link it back to yourself then all previous posts under that account are immediately traceable as well. Web of trust itself is easy and already widely used by many free software communities as a decentralized means of securing reputation based identities (anonymous or otherwise). The challenge is in allowing an established identity (established either via reputation, government ID, in person interaction, whatever) to perform an anonymous but trusted (ie authenticated) interaction with the network. In other words, to implement a web of trust scheme that supports anonymized but otherwise verified interactions via zero knowledge proofs.
- cosmojg 6y ago
  Heh, that's definitely the messier part of this. It all depends on your threat model and the scale of the community you're running. For a small group of trusted friends, one could distribute keys in person and enforce time-based key expiry. For larger groups of strangers... I'm not sure. Reelin's web of trust idea seems like a good start. The only ideas coming to my mind right now require burning down the community and starting over whenever compromised. This is definitely an interesting and difficult challenge! What ideas do you have in mind?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
acituan 6y ago
That solves the anonymity requirement part and I agree. But even if we made sure all account holders are humans, still we don’t have a way to test if the content was truly written by the account holder or created by a bot. Manual human labor requirement creates a rate limiting which is removed by automated content creation in the name of the human. Worse yet, as long as the bot content drives engagement and bot action on ads can be prevented, platforms would have little objection to this. Reddit would benefit from us thinking we are talking to humans while interacting with bot content if it keeps us on the site. Even worse yet, being controversial or scandalous tends to generate more engagement than being agreeable, which has been so far only exploited at the recommendation layer, now will poison the content layer itself. I wonder if we will look back and see that we have witnessed the creation of the nuclear weapons of information warfare.
- endgame 6y ago
  > I wonder if we will look back and see that we have witnessed the creation of the nuclear weapons of information warfare. I wouldn't be surprised. What's the point of reading anything on the internet, or arguing with someone on a forum? Gmail-style canned replies were the beginning, now the only way I can be sure that I'm talking to a real human will be by meeting him or her face-to-face (and we all know how easy that is right now.)
- cosmojg 6y ago
  > Manual human labor requirement creates a rate limiting which is removed by automated content creation in the name of the human. What if we impose artificial rate limiting with posting fees or some kind of proof-of-work requirement? > I wonder if we will look back and see that we have witnessed the creation of the nuclear weapons of information warfare. That's a terrifying thought.
  - pixl97 6y ago
    Proof of work can easily be farmed off on botnets.
    - 6y ago
amelius 6y ago
One problem is that you want anonymity and not pseudonymity. I.e. when you post A and later B, you don't want that these posts are traceable to the same origin even if the origin remains unknown.
- mirekrusin 6y ago
  There are schemes where you can prove authenticity without revealing identity.
  - amelius 6y ago
    That's not the point. What matters here is if you can still link messages to the same person, even if you don't know who that person is.
    - cosmojg 6y ago
      Right, again, get rid of public keys with zero-knowledge proofs, and you've solved this problem. The only way to screw up is by publicly disclosing which messages are yours. Although, I guess a large part of the problem is that some users might accidentally do this implicitly, and many may do it just by writing in some unique way. Any thoughts on a solution?
      - DennisP 6y ago
        Train your own GPT-3 on some other users' writings, and post the output from that instead of writing it yourself. You could have your public persona that you write yourself in your own unique style, but use GPT-3 for things you don't want attributed to you.
ncmncm 6y ago
First, you have to persuade people it is needed. But 100,000 fake people will crow that it's not. Now what?
- Reimersholme 6y ago
  The end of social media. Good riddance!

taftster 6y ago

Just to challenge the easy part (or is this a challenge to peasy), can you please expand on "somehow"? What is your strategy here to ensure that only "real" people can get access to the private keys (and not real people proxying for an automaton)? How do you maintain this assurance for a long running period of time?

Reelin 6y ago
Web of trust (or something substantially similar) solves this on an algorithmic level. The problem is that, to the best of my knowledge, we lack friendly and accessible UI tooling to support such a scheme. Naive web of trust algorithms are likely to threaten anonymity in their own way though. Zero knowledge proofs might be able to facilitate a solution to that. > and not real people proxying for an automaton You can't prevent this under any scheme, only detect it after the fact. An authenticated individual will always be able to deliberately take actions on behalf of someone else.
- amelius 6y ago
  > You can't prevent this under any scheme, only detect it after the fact. So do I understand correctly that if someone posts 100 messages "anonymously", and in the last one they accidentally reveal themselves, all the other 99 messages are traceable to that same person?
  - Reelin 6y ago
    The part of my comment you quoted was referring to preventing people from disingenuously proxying for another entity, not to maintaining their own personal anonymity. Regarding accidentally revealing oneself, that's always a risk. If you create an anonymous HN identity but then inadvertently link it back to yourself then all previous posts under that account are immediately traceable as well. Web of trust itself is easy and already widely used by many free software communities as a decentralized means of securing reputation based identities (anonymous or otherwise). The challenge is in allowing an established identity (established either via reputation, government ID, in person interaction, whatever) to perform an anonymous but trusted (ie authenticated) interaction with the network. In other words, to implement a web of trust scheme that supports anonymized but otherwise verified interactions via zero knowledge proofs.
cosmojg 6y ago
Heh, that's definitely the messier part of this. It all depends on your threat model and the scale of the community you're running. For a small group of trusted friends, one could distribute keys in person and enforce time-based key expiry. For larger groups of strangers... I'm not sure. Reelin's web of trust idea seems like a good start. The only ideas coming to my mind right now require burning down the community and starting over whenever compromised. This is definitely an interesting and difficult challenge! What ideas do you have in mind?

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

acituan 6y ago

That solves the anonymity requirement part and I agree. But even if we made sure all account holders are humans, still we don’t have a way to test if the content was truly written by the account holder or created by a bot. Manual human labor requirement creates a rate limiting which is removed by automated content creation in the name of the human. Worse yet, as long as the bot content drives engagement and bot action on ads can be prevented, platforms would have little objection to this. Reddit would benefit from us thinking we are talking to humans while interacting with bot content if it keeps us on the site. Even worse yet, being controversial or scandalous tends to generate more engagement than being agreeable, which has been so far only exploited at the recommendation layer, now will poison the content layer itself. I wonder if we will look back and see that we have witnessed the creation of the nuclear weapons of information warfare.

endgame 6y ago
> I wonder if we will look back and see that we have witnessed the creation of the nuclear weapons of information warfare. I wouldn't be surprised. What's the point of reading anything on the internet, or arguing with someone on a forum? Gmail-style canned replies were the beginning, now the only way I can be sure that I'm talking to a real human will be by meeting him or her face-to-face (and we all know how easy that is right now.)
cosmojg 6y ago
> Manual human labor requirement creates a rate limiting which is removed by automated content creation in the name of the human. What if we impose artificial rate limiting with posting fees or some kind of proof-of-work requirement? > I wonder if we will look back and see that we have witnessed the creation of the nuclear weapons of information warfare. That's a terrifying thought.
- pixl97 6y ago
  Proof of work can easily be farmed off on botnets.
  - 6y ago

amelius 6y ago

One problem is that you want anonymity and not pseudonymity. I.e. when you post A and later B, you don't want that these posts are traceable to the same origin even if the origin remains unknown.

mirekrusin 6y ago
There are schemes where you can prove authenticity without revealing identity.
- amelius 6y ago
  That's not the point. What matters here is if you can still link messages to the same person, even if you don't know who that person is.
  - cosmojg 6y ago
    Right, again, get rid of public keys with zero-knowledge proofs, and you've solved this problem. The only way to screw up is by publicly disclosing which messages are yours. Although, I guess a large part of the problem is that some users might accidentally do this implicitly, and many may do it just by writing in some unique way. Any thoughts on a solution?
    - DennisP 6y ago
      Train your own GPT-3 on some other users' writings, and post the output from that instead of writing it yourself. You could have your public persona that you write yourself in your own unique style, but use GPT-3 for things you don't want attributed to you.

ncmncm 6y ago

First, you have to persuade people it is needed. But 100,000 fake people will crow that it's not. Now what?

Reimersholme 6y ago
The end of social media. Good riddance!