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What externally-verifiable ID verification mechanism are you willing to participate, in order to demonstrate that you are not a sockpuppet? Phone numbers are cr

What externally-verifiable ID verification mechanism are you willing to participate, in order to demonstrate that you are not a sockpuppet? Phone numbers are crossed off the list, so at least we don't have to debate whether they're acceptable or not, and email addresses obviously aren't useful for preventing sockpuppets either. What else is left that is acceptable to you?

matheusmoreira 6y ago
> demonstrate that you are not a sockpuppet Why is this necessary in the first place?
- floatingatoll 6y ago
  I do encourage you to post your comment further upthread with more details about your view, but I won’t be participating in that thread. My focus here is solely on the question of which ID verification mechanisms are acceptable, as the parent comment only rejects one method without completing the thought by specifying the acceptable alternatives.
- alisonkisk 6y ago
  Because spammers spams spam that ruins everything.
dheera 6y ago
> preventing sockpuppets Focus on preventing abusive usage patterns, not sockpuppets or robots. Sometimes I do want a sockpuppet to help me access information and reformat or deliver it to me in an alternative form that is better accessible to me.
- floatingatoll 6y ago
  There’s two ways to look at this. First, we can say “let’s not verify identities, anyone can be as many people as they want”. We have that today. It’s killed a lot of businesses and has deeply harmed society. Swell. we can of course redouble our efforts and refuse to take other steps, which is certainly a popular choice. Or we could discuss the pragmatic path: verifying identity. Phone numbers are popular. Email is a tire fire. SMS is simple to hack. So, what’s next to try? What should this startup be using instead of phone number verification? What platforms exist to build revenue with clearly-identified customers on the internet? The folks refusing to consider the question here seem to only care about the former, but I’d like to see pragmatic verified-identity solutions that address the firestorm of hate that anonymity has brought down upon us, and I’d like to see someone make a billion dollars from it. I’m here for a pragmatic discussion, not for another retread of the same boring “everything must tolerate sock puppets” that we’ve been living with for the past two decades, and I’m not going to waste productive time and energy in idealistic debates that have failed to deliver what they promised at ETcon’03. We owe society better. We owe ourselves better. At least this startup is trying.
  - someguyorother 6y ago
    In an ideal world, the governments of the world (or other trusted parties) would provide identity providers based on zero-knowledge proofs. These would have the property that when a person joins a platform, the platform can check what other users on it is controlled by the same person, without revealing the meatspace identity of the person in question; and without revealing the usernames to the trusted entity. (Well, ideally the platform would only get to know the number of users, not who they are; but I don't think that can be done.) Then a platform could just put a hard limit on how many users any given person can have, while still retaining the users' pseudonymity. Or it could place a soft limit, for that matter: every subsequent user receives an automatic penalty (e.g. 10 downvotes on every new message). It wouldn't stop state actors, and it'd be horrible in places where the government isn't held accountable, but otherwise seems to solve most of the problems of anonymity. Perhaps you could replace the trusted entity with something peer-to-peer, but it would have to be very carefully designed.
    - eitland 6y ago
      I've been thinking about the same albeit more limited: it would still be useful in very many cases even if it wasn't so watertight. As long as it is audited, I get a warning and it has to pass a judge to not be punished I'd be fine in most contexts even if it was technically possible to look me up. Of course I am keenly aware that this is a privilege that not everyone has.
  - eitland 6y ago
    Please note that HN basically works this way. Anyone can basically create an account anytime. Still HN is one of the nicest and most thoughtful places I am aware of on the internet.
    - floatingatoll 6y ago
      Anyone can create one account for their use anytime, but if they create and use multiple accounts, they get shutdown by the site admins. HN became what you praise in part by emplacing defenses against sock puppets, an approach that’s loudly contested elsethread. That HN has remained at all nice is in part due to that “one account per person” enforcement, and the reason why is clearly stated in the guidelines: Throwaway accounts are ok for sensitive information, but please don't create accounts routinely. HN is a community—users should have an identity that others can relate to. I don’t mind if people keep their identity secret from the other users of the sites that verify identity. I don’t mind if people keep their identity secret from the site admins, as long as they only have one identity. Enforcing that is very hard at scale, and only works at HN due to the small size.

matheusmoreira 6y ago

> demonstrate that you are not a sockpuppet Why is this necessary in the first place?

floatingatoll 6y ago
I do encourage you to post your comment further upthread with more details about your view, but I won’t be participating in that thread. My focus here is solely on the question of which ID verification mechanisms are acceptable, as the parent comment only rejects one method without completing the thought by specifying the acceptable alternatives.
alisonkisk 6y ago
Because spammers spams spam that ruins everything.

dheera 6y ago

> preventing sockpuppets Focus on preventing abusive usage patterns, not sockpuppets or robots. Sometimes I do want a sockpuppet to help me access information and reformat or deliver it to me in an alternative form that is better accessible to me.

floatingatoll 6y ago
There’s two ways to look at this. First, we can say “let’s not verify identities, anyone can be as many people as they want”. We have that today. It’s killed a lot of businesses and has deeply harmed society. Swell. we can of course redouble our efforts and refuse to take other steps, which is certainly a popular choice. Or we could discuss the pragmatic path: verifying identity. Phone numbers are popular. Email is a tire fire. SMS is simple to hack. So, what’s next to try? What should this startup be using instead of phone number verification? What platforms exist to build revenue with clearly-identified customers on the internet? The folks refusing to consider the question here seem to only care about the former, but I’d like to see pragmatic verified-identity solutions that address the firestorm of hate that anonymity has brought down upon us, and I’d like to see someone make a billion dollars from it. I’m here for a pragmatic discussion, not for another retread of the same boring “everything must tolerate sock puppets” that we’ve been living with for the past two decades, and I’m not going to waste productive time and energy in idealistic debates that have failed to deliver what they promised at ETcon’03. We owe society better. We owe ourselves better. At least this startup is trying.
- someguyorother 6y ago
  In an ideal world, the governments of the world (or other trusted parties) would provide identity providers based on zero-knowledge proofs. These would have the property that when a person joins a platform, the platform can check what other users on it is controlled by the same person, without revealing the meatspace identity of the person in question; and without revealing the usernames to the trusted entity. (Well, ideally the platform would only get to know the number of users, not who they are; but I don't think that can be done.) Then a platform could just put a hard limit on how many users any given person can have, while still retaining the users' pseudonymity. Or it could place a soft limit, for that matter: every subsequent user receives an automatic penalty (e.g. 10 downvotes on every new message). It wouldn't stop state actors, and it'd be horrible in places where the government isn't held accountable, but otherwise seems to solve most of the problems of anonymity. Perhaps you could replace the trusted entity with something peer-to-peer, but it would have to be very carefully designed.
  - eitland 6y ago
    I've been thinking about the same albeit more limited: it would still be useful in very many cases even if it wasn't so watertight. As long as it is audited, I get a warning and it has to pass a judge to not be punished I'd be fine in most contexts even if it was technically possible to look me up. Of course I am keenly aware that this is a privilege that not everyone has.
- eitland 6y ago
  Please note that HN basically works this way. Anyone can basically create an account anytime. Still HN is one of the nicest and most thoughtful places I am aware of on the internet.
  - floatingatoll 6y ago
    Anyone can create one account for their use anytime, but if they create and use multiple accounts, they get shutdown by the site admins. HN became what you praise in part by emplacing defenses against sock puppets, an approach that’s loudly contested elsethread. That HN has remained at all nice is in part due to that “one account per person” enforcement, and the reason why is clearly stated in the guidelines: Throwaway accounts are ok for sensitive information, but please don't create accounts routinely. HN is a community—users should have an identity that others can relate to. I don’t mind if people keep their identity secret from the other users of the sites that verify identity. I don’t mind if people keep their identity secret from the site admins, as long as they only have one identity. Enforcing that is very hard at scale, and only works at HN due to the small size.