25 ms·

Sam Altman’s Worldcoin promised them free crypto for an eyeball scan

335 points by donohoe 5y ago

jackvalentine 5y ago
Has Altman had his eyeballs scanned and added to the dataset?
th340d 5y ago
[dead]
schizopathch 5y ago
verisimi 5y ago
What's with the orb gimmick - a spherical metal camera? Why not use a normal camera? Slurping up biometric data, on the promise of free money - lol PS Apparently the orb is for: Our approach relies on a custom biometric device - we call it the Orb - that verifies the uniqueness of a person through iris recognition, while ensuring their privacy through zero-knowledge cryptography. https://worldcoin.org/how-the-launch-works#field-tests https://worldcoin.org/how-the-launch-works#field-tests But I thought people's irises can in fact change colour and pattern.. maybe there's some special software that updates that too with zero-knowledge... what do I know?
- helge9210 5y ago
  The Orb itself is actually a remarkable piece of technology (considering what is available in a package of this size). "Normal camera" won't do for the same reason Face ID won't work without PrimeSense.
  - th340d 5y ago
  - AlexandrB 5y ago
    I think the OP is referring to the form factor. It seems impractical and gimmicky. Why not stick the same technology into something shaped like a DSLR or video camera - i.e. something easier to hold? Making a shiny orb betrays an obsession with the technology and not the problem they're ostensibly trying to solve. Edit: The article includes 2 pictures of orb operators using the orb. In both cases it seems like a more traditional form factor would be better. The first picture shows an orb operator balancing the orb in his hand - seems like a handle would be useful. The second picture shows the spherical orb awkwardly strapped to a flat platform on top of a monopod or tripod. I'm guessing that the orb does not have a tripod mount, but it really should.
    - helge9210 5y ago
      I had an interview with the company and the interviewer was kind enough to show me the device. When I was solving this class of problems in 2016 (image acquisition, object detection, identification, measurement etc.) with same kind of limitations (everything has to happen within the device itself, no uplink to the cloud) I managed it with a box of 100 kg and a size of really big suitcase. Seeing this (sensor package and computation) within small device impressed me personally.
- micromacrofoot 5y ago
  It's literally an "oooh shiny" tactic
  - th340d 5y ago
- katmannthree 5y ago
  > What's with the orb gimmick - a spherical metal camera? How are you supposed to start a cult with a normal camera though? At least that's the vibe I'm picking up from how they revere the Orb in their copy.
  - th340d 5y ago
  - axus 5y ago
    Maybe they could include an E-meter?
timcavel 5y ago
grnmamba 5y ago
New day, new crypto scam.
- AlexandrB 5y ago
  I thought this comment was being glib, but I think you're right. It has all the hallmarks of a crypto scam: "Operators" being pain in coins instead of money[1], a pyramid/MLM like structure where operators hire other operators, and using Discord for tech support. > They are encouraged to hire sub-operators to work under them so they can cover more ground. > Orb operators were normally paid a flat rate of $3 per sign-up in tether, a cryptocurrency pegged to the US dollar. It doubled to $6 for every additional sign-up beyond their targets. At the time, Worldcoin blamed the payment delays on back-end problems as the company updated its technology, according to screenshots of a Discord where executives communicated with Orb operators. [1] To be fair it's USDT which is, at least, pegged in value. But why make operators go through the hassle of finding and using an off-ramp? Reminds me of employees in some industries being paid with special cards that have transaction fees to take money out.
  - imtringued 5y ago
    >It has all the hallmarks of a crypto scam It also took the name of an existing coin from 2013.
soared 5y ago
I don’t see how this could ever be legitimate. Giving out an unlaunched shitcoin and a t shirt in exchange for the biometric data of people who very clearly don’t understand crypto or biometric data (read: random person in a mall, regardless of country). This is pretty clearly taking advantage of people. My question is, couldn’t you do this fairly without even spending that much money? Say you need 5MM scans to build your database (that you’re going to delete the data from anyway). With shitcoins it’s close to free, but you had to pay a bunch of engineers and marketers. Why not give each person $5 USD converted to their local currency? For $25MM you are actually having a positive impact, don’t get dragged through the mud in articles like this, and it didn’t even cost that much.
- captn3m0 5y ago
  Giving real money escalates the fraud potential (as noted in the article - the frauds reduced when they switched away from BTC).
- micromacrofoot 5y ago
  Because it's not about making an impact, it's performance art meant to accumulate investment money.
  - nopenopenopeno 5y ago
    “Performance art” is exactly right. Likewise, it’s not a coincidence that the actual field of contemporary performance art is increasingly resembling the entrepreneurship/startup industry.
    - micromacrofoot 5y ago
      It's funny, because people tend to think performance artists are the ones full of shit... I suppose life really does imitate art.
  - bmitc 5y ago
    You are right, but I think it's performance art plus narcissism and greed.
axg11 5y ago
I had a few interactions with employees at Worldcoin. At a high level they're trying to solve a worthy problem: proof of personhood for crypto. HN is very anti-crypto so I expect any conversation on this topic is an uphill battle. If you're generally sceptical of crypto, Worldcoin will seem outright useless to you. I tend to believe there are some great ideas embedded in the cryptocurrency world alongside a lot of noise and speculation. Eventually the "signal" and core ideas will rise through, perhaps after a long period of pain. There are a whole class of ideas in crypto that require one wallet/address to correspond to one single person. Like all powerful ideas, there are ways that this could bring great value to the world and unfortunately also ways that this could be horrifically abused. Proof of personhood for crypto could enable verifiable UBI for the world. It could also enable mass surveillance if widely adopted. Given the interesting potential of the idea, someone was going to eventually work on it. Worldcoin should have approached the problem slightly differently. First, testing the concept in lower-income countries has a "colonial experimentation" look to it. Since the idea is controversial, they would have gained more goodwill by initially launching in the EU/North America under the more strict legal frameworks. Second, make the orb look less dystopian. Third, launch with a non-economic use case. Worldcoin won't solve UBI or inequality in one shot, so why not launch with a lower stakes use case such as an online forum or community that requires proof of personhood to post? Sadly I think because of all the missteps, I can't see Worldcoin tackling the proof of personhood problem in the longterm. I hope another project comes along and makes an attempt more "sensitively".
- runako 5y ago
  > Proof of personhood for crypto could enable verifiable UBI for the world. This kind of statement breeds skepticism of crypto. Does anyone think "proof of personhood" is among the top 25 barriers for verifiable UBI for the world?
  - ChicagoBoy11 5y ago
    I think so. Every other attempt I have ever heard of governments providing some sort of subsidy is always met by all sorts of schemes and incentives to try to game them. It would seem "being a person" is such a basic and unassailable standard that SURELY governments would be able to get a handle on that, right? Except, well, if you look at any discussion about election security, benefits payments, etc., in any area decently complex nation, it will quickly reveal that the devil is in the details when it comes to stuff like that, and that even in standards like that all sorts of fraudulent schemes abound. This is all, of course, not taking the context of a sort of GLOBAL UBI approach, where the possibilities to fake/forge "personhood" would be even easier.
boeingUH60 5y ago
It baffles me that Altman picked up such a creepy, woo-woo tech project. It's not like the guy is desperate for cash, he's already really rich and has a stellar reputation from running Y Combinator (formerly) and OpenAI (currently) as well as investing in many other startups...it's just weird
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- JeremyBanks 5y ago
- verisimi 5y ago
  Have you seen the creepy interview of Altman and Zuckerberg? Upright posture, hands on thighs... the borg talking with itself... https://www.facebook.com/YCombinator/videos/10153993693829107/ https://www.facebook.com/YCombinator/videos/1015399369382910... its on Facebook, but no need to log in
- tomatowurst 5y ago
  Not so far off when Paul Graham also vouched for Coinbase, which CFTC ordered it to settle on its False, Misleading, or Inaccurate Reporting and Wash Trading. It's quite unbelievable that this type of grift is defended by YC. When the crypto mania ends and the obvious consequences from tens of thousands of people who have been destroyed by Coinbase are realized, they will be just as quick to distance themselves. I'm really disappointed in YC, especially in its founders. When Paul Graham mentioned that he specifically looks for Founders who break the rules but not outright illegal, I had no idea he meant a break from moral ethics and brushing very close with US securities law. I just don't get how some people can look away at what's truly happening in crypto—it is a systematic wealth transfer via digitized ponzi. any money you make in crypto comes directly from somebody's loss and this is NOT at all like the financial markets where pricing mechanism are enforced and regulated for price discovery on real world assets that is widely adopted. Yet this will not stop thousands of applicants who apply to YC for their chance at riches. It's a shame how we glorify grift and enrichment through the destruction of others. It is this specific culture that we chose not associate ourselves with YC, others are already aware of the grift that YC founders have publicly supported, invested, and vouched for. What saddens me is that many YC hopefuls and commenters will look the other way because of what they seek to gain. If you drink from water that others had muddied, you too are dirty.
manholio 5y ago
They say they scan irises so that each person is unique and "nobody gets more than their fair share". Why then not use the clasic identifiers: name, date of birth, proven with a state issued document, and a facial picture holding some sign. These are easy to do remote and are the current standard for financial KYC, which any "world currency" needs to take into consideration in the post-Bitcoin world. Sure, some people don't have access to government issued IDs, but they are a minority in the world population. The economic benefits of having a government capable of issuing IDs are so great, that Worldcoin, if successful, could provide technical and financial assistance to those states directly to implement such systems, instead of pushing dubious "Orbs" onto the world. The whole "nobody gets more than their fair share" trope is dubious. What will the typical person from DR Congo do with $20 worth of altcoins on his phone? 99% of them will sell it for $20 minus fees and pocket the money. A very small investor minority can afford to hodl, select few will purchase and accumulate w-coins, and those will earn the speculative appreciation Worldcoin founders are really after. The whole populist act is a ruse to get the bubble going.
- oneoff786 5y ago
  Yeah the fair share comment felt scummy as hell. I presume the coin founder’s “fair share” is quite sizeable.
manesioz 5y ago
> People may never receive the money they were promised. “We make no warranty … that we will be successful launching the Worldcoin network or issuing WLD tokens,” says a contract distributors must sign before receiving an Orb, which was viewed by BuzzFeed News. “We are providing the Orb to you for experimental purposes, to advance our objectives, including to gather data on the use of the Orb by end users, and for no other purpose.” So they're taking advantage of people in poor countries to collect their biometric data. Yikes. The people who made this are the same people who talk endlessly about the virtue of innovation and technology.
- AlexandrB 5y ago
  What are the odds this will end with Worldcoin being sold off for parts - namely the "orb" technology and the biometric database? I'm sure a company like Palantir could find a use for this stuff.
  - boeingUH60 5y ago
    Ever since I heard of Worldcoin, I've been thinking that's the plan...gather enough biometric data and sell it off to a larger player (likely a surveillance company), while pumping some shitcoins on the side. Or maybe they'll monetize the database themselves...the whole thing is just creepy
  - TotempaaltJ 5y ago
    (I work for Palantir but any opinions are my own) Palantir is not in the business of collecting data, and as such would have no use for this data. Here's an official blog post explaining this: https://blog.palantir.com/palantir-is-not-a-data-company-palantir-explained-1-a6fcf8b3e4cb https://blog.palantir.com/palantir-is-not-a-data-company-pal...
    - AlexandrB 5y ago
      I don't like Palantir, but I'm not sure why you're being downvoted. You are correct that Palantir probably would not want to acquire a bunch of biometric data. My mistake.
nradov 5y ago
So if you lose your eye in an accident or something do you then lose your coins?
d--b 5y ago
- So how can we do UBI? - Well we don't have the political capital to do it in real world currencies, but we can spawn crypto from nothing, so that could work. Obviously we'll need to have a way to make this crypto currency actually valuable, and stable, but let's figure that out later. - Ok, ok, so technically, what do we need to make this work? - Well, the main problem is surely that people are going to want to claim their UBI several times, so we need a way to control that. - Ah, ok, we have AI to do that right? - Well yeah, but we need to send an army of people everywhere on the planet, each with a specially created device that scans everyone eyeballs. - Uh? Can't we do this with a webcam? - No people will cheat. - But that's going to cost an awful lot of money, how are we going to fund that? - We'll go to VC, they'll give us the money, and well that crypto money is going to raise in value, so we'll have that, and otherwise we could monetize the planet wide authentication scheme that we created. - And you are sure this is going to solve the world's poverty problem?
propter_hoc 5y ago
This is horrifyingly dystopian. Glad that the media is starting to cover this critically, I bet the fallout will cause the VCs to pull away soon.
qchris 5y ago
I've heard that there's been pressure to shut down or significantly reduce BuzzFeed.News in order to lower the cost[1], but I really hope that they manage to keep the organization running and effective. I struggle to think of many other newsrooms, let alone an upstart like this one, that are able to produce articles of this quality through investigative journalism, especially on a story involving topics like cryptocurrency and privacy ethics. [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/22/buzzfeed-investors-have-pushed-ceo-jonah-peretti-to-shut-down-newsroom.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/22/buzzfeed-investors-have-push...
IncRnd 5y ago
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simonswords82 5y ago
I believe the correct term for this is sketchy, and that's probably being too generous to Sam. This is some next level dystopia nonsense. There are plenty of KYC (Know Your Client) imperatives out there that don't require yet another blockchain driven platform and a scan of your fucking eyeball. It's a no from me. This is more than sketchy it's downright awful.
- schizopathch 5y ago
  You're putting it mildly. This is the most tyrannical technology in the history of humanity.
qualudeheart 5y ago
I trust Sam with my biometrics more than I would trust most other people.
- th340d 5y ago
me_me_mu_mu 5y ago
While I watched or read dystopian sci fi horrified at the twisted scenarios presented, these tech nerds on the other hand were furiously driven to be the villains in the story. I hope I'm wrong, but at least that is how it feels from the outside looking in. And now people (lesser level of the same kind) flock to their companies to be edgy. Trust me guys I know it’s called $nameOfSomeEvilItemHeldBySomeEvilCharacter but don’t worry we’ll be using it for $randomBenignSoundingThingButReallyAScam
asasidh 5y ago
Scam Altman should not have associated with these kind of scams. Lost any credibility he built till date.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
negamax 5y ago
Sama join the long list of shitcoin paddlers. Sad day
lazzlazzlazz 5y ago
Worldcoin isn't an effort to accumulate biometric data — Clear (the private company that competes with TSA PreCheck) does this at most airports in the US. Instead, Worldcoin uses sophisticated cryptography[1] specifically to avoid the collection of biometric data. The value appears to be in the ability to resist the Sybil problem[2] with this cryptographic proof of uniqueness[3] as well as the wide distribution of tokens (a play on Metcalfe's Law)[4]. Of course, I expect the usual unrelenting crypto skepticism from HN, and see that proudly on display today. :) [1]: https://worldcoin.org/privacy-by-design https://worldcoin.org/privacy-by-design [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sybil_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sybil_attack [3]: https://twitter.com/cdixon/status/1451204467815235587 https://twitter.com/cdixon/status/1451204467815235587 [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe%27s_law
- phphphphp 5y ago
  Except as the article states based on quotes and leaked presentations, they are collecting the data. The page you linked confirms it. You might be right that their aspiration is to not collect biometric data, but they are collecting it and that’s what this article is about: Worldcoin collecting 500,000 people’s biometric data. “Images of users’ body, face, and eyes, including users’ irises (visible, near infrared and far infrared spectrum)” “Three-dimensional mapping of users’ body and face” https://worldcoin.org/privacy-during-field-testing https://worldcoin.org/privacy-during-field-testing
  - lazzlazzlazz 5y ago
    You're making my point — Worldcoin's business isn't to collect biometric data, as alleged by many comments here.
    - phphphphp 5y ago
      Their business is whatever they’re doing, we can’t give organisations a free pass on bad behaviour because they aspire to be well behaved once they’ve extracted enough value from their bad behaviour. Your comment implies that the article is wrong: it isn’t.
Stampo00 5y ago
Okay, but does it have to be my eyeball?
- th340d 5y ago
1024core 5y ago
> concerns that the company is using its cryptocurrency as a way to amass millions of biometrics and perfect a new kind of authentication technology for the blockchain era. Isn't retinal scanning an "old" technology by now? I know we (the US) used it in Afghanistan to identify people years ago.
daenz 5y ago
This whole thing gives the impression that these tech gurus view the rest of us (particularly less developed countries) as cattle, to be identified, categorized, and allocated a pre-defined amount of resources.
- obeid 5y ago
  You are definitely beginning to 'get it'.
parkaboy 5y ago
I find the fundamentals and implications of Worldcoin to be a really neat idea, but moreso for the potential to have true online anonymity while simultaneously being a provable Verified Unique Real Human Being. The idea of just having a public/private key that is associated with your biometrics. If implemented and executed properly, you could put a big dent in online disinformation / troll farms / bot accounts and streamline all sorts of things. Obtaining biometrics is a critical component of this, though--and doing this in a non-dystopian way is tough. Hashing that data is needed (as the article mentions), but even that has a bunch trickiness under the hood to unpack. The Worldcoin/UBI narrative seems like it would be a smart play to spur rapid adoption for this, but--again according to the article, it sounds like that execution has been...challenging.
- daenz 5y ago
  >If implemented and executed properly, you could put a big dent in online disinformation / troll farms / bot accounts and streamline all sorts of things. No it won't. It will only ensure that certain people and groups can be the absolute final say in what information people can say and hear. Only an extremely generous and unhistorical interpretation is that this will "reduce disinformation." It will only consolidate who is allowed to have the loudest disinformation. This is disastrous for so many reasons. For example, suppose a whistleblower has damning evidence of human rights abuses. The powers involved decide to flip a switch and digitally quarantine all individuals who could possibly be whistleblowers, and everyone N-hops away from those people, so the story can't get out. The public never learns of it, and the abuses continue. This is not a novel idea, but now we've just made it push-button and absolute. How do you propose whistleblowers exist in the system you are advocating for?
  - parkaboy 5y ago
    Just blue-skying here, but you could have a process that allows the individual to revoke a previously used key pair and generate a new one associated with their biometrics whenever they want. The history of their online identity gets wiped as needed, but they're still a Verified Real Human Being online. Now of course, again -- the devil's in the details with this central entity and how it acquires/processes/stores those biometrics. And of course that central entity could be be morally/ethically dubious. It would be cool to have a more distributed way of acquiring and processing the biometrics instead of having a corporation run that part. Also to be clear: I'm not advocating all online communications need to have this identify verification in place. I'm envisioning something like Twitter badges, where you have some identifier that you're a guaranteed real-person, but people can still communicate without that. Like if I'm Reddit, I'm probably not going to care while perusing r/music if someone's a Real Human Being, and similarly if I get a whistleblower tip over an email. If I'm reading r/politics or r/worldnews where disinfo and troll accounts run rampant, I then might want to be able to filter the discussion or interact with Real Human Beings. I also readily admit my whole excitement for the concept assumes (and it's a big assumption) it's designed and implemented in a way such that it can't be abused. And I'm also not saying Worldcoin is taking the right approach to this overall concept.
nerdo 5y ago
> Orb operators in Africa, Asia, and Europe spoke to BuzzFeed News under the condition of anonymity because they feared retribution from Worldcoin as well as local authorities. Show that sentence to someone in 1995 it would blow their minds.
jollybean 5y ago
The solution to 99% of problems is conscientiousness and competency. Technology and provide some game changing opportunities - such as for example access to information, access to basic banking, maybe a couple of vaccines can re-shape a region ... ... but generally speaking there will never be a substitute to social organization at all levels. If people are corrupt and incompetent, they will have nothing. If everyone from the barber to the president act diligently and thoughtfully, for the most part, most social malaise would disappear. Many poor countries have ample natural resources with which to provide a foundation for a base economy, funny that places like Japan, Singapore, Germany etc. are able to provide very high standard of living without much in the way of 'free money in the ground' ...
- th340d 5y ago
f0e4c2f7 5y ago
Worldcoin talks about UBI which based on what Sam has said in the past I would take them at their word on. But beyond UBI what WorldCoin is going for is identity. In the nonblockchain world your identity is your Country ID, Passport, etc. In the blockchain world none of that stuff exists and people get uncomfortable when you start asking for it. This leaves a situation where a person is often just represented by a wallet. Well as you may know a person can make dozens or hundreds of wallets. This problem leads to all kinds of weird tricks that crypto projects get up to when trying to verify 1 wallet 1 person. For example in the idea of 1 person 1 vote on a project or for something like an airdrop early in a project where people on a discord get free crypto for being early adopters but you don't want one person registering with many wallets. Today that might look verification based on a phone number associated with discord or something. Real flimsy stuff. Worldcoin bases it on retina, which I admit creeps me out as well even if it's just a hash. But I can see what they're getting at. The need is there, maybe there is a better way. I used to work at crypto startup and we ran into this exact problem.
- drexlspivey 5y ago
  Proof of Work’s raison d’etre is to mitigate Sybil attacks so a naive solution to the problem would be to have people “mine” their airdrop.
  - zhoujianfu 5y ago
    Bitcoin/crypto solved the “proof of resources” problem in a decentralized trustless way, which is cool. What would be neat now is “proof of unique living individual” in the same way.. that would solve a number of problems, related to UBI and voting. In the past, or in dictatorships, resources == votes, but in democracies we want individuals == votes.
    - Melting_Harps 5y ago
      > What would be neat now is “proof of unique living individual” in the same way.. that would solve a number of problems, related to UBI and voting. So, there was a project called Aurora that tried to do exactly this during the financial crisis fallout in Iceland, it failed, mainly because it was way too early and the blockchain itself wasn't protected as well as Bitcoin: it was presumed that PoS could serve as a possible solution if it has a specific usecase. Unfortunately, we didn't gain as much info and data as we could have other than then from a security standpoint deviating from BTC was not tenable. Jack Dorsey is seeking ways to just this with Block, he did a recent talk on how UBI could work via Bitcoin's blockchain as a way to facilitate seamless txs, the biggest obstacle being that this would need to be a layer 2 or possibly layer 3 because of the ID component that ensures that this info is not retained: think zero proof knowledge protocol. It can be done on mainchain via a derivative for incredibly low cost (100 million sats/BTC), but just like colored coins was too early this may prove tricky. What we learned from the COVID unemployment debacle was that the payments system in the US is entirely broken and cannot function even at the best of times, much less under any strain without being subject to total collapse or perpetual grift so this needs to happen either way. Personally speaking, I'd really wish that we can derive more data from all the UBI test runs and then have this be a major part of layer 2/3 development: for all this talk about 'Web3,' a total boomerism if I ever heard one, and the money pouring into this space I wish some of it would be spent in this space. I'd offer to help get involved if it were the case as a former co-founder, dev and consultant in this space, if that were to happen.
deleted 5y ago
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eternalsept 5y ago
Reminds me of the United Nations using eyeball scan payment systems instead of cash to let refugees buy stuff from local stores.
- th340d 5y ago
dang 5y ago
Related: Crypto Startup That Wants to Scan Everyone’s Eyeballs Is Having Some Trouble - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30699327 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30699327 - March 2022 (30 comments) Edward Snowden Slams Sam Altman's Worldcoin: 'Don't Catalogue Eyeballs' - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28998065 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28998065 - Oct 2021 (298 comments) Sam Altman’s Worldcoin wants to scan eyeballs in exchange for crypto - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28947468 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28947468 - Oct 2021 (95 comments) Worldcoin - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28945557 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28945557 - Oct 2021 (101 comments) Sam Altman Wants to Scan Your Eyeball in Exchange for Cryptocurrency - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27674598 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27674598 - June 2021 (30 comments) Others?
- deleted 5y ago
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jdrc 5y ago
metaverse is such a scam, but at least it's a way to do random wealth redistribution
- th340d 5y ago
rurp 5y ago
"The data consent form says Worldcoin can share user data with third parties who can use the data as they see fit." Doesn't this completely undermine all of their claims about privacy and being responsible stewards of people's biometric data? You can't make promises about data that is freely given to third parties, and I'm sure the people involved here realize that. It's hard to see this company as anything other than sleazy when their public statements are completely contradicted by the legal terms.
alangibson 5y ago
I would love to meet whoever designed the Orb. That thing is insanely creepy. I'd be worried it would steal my soul and I'm a materialist. I can't imagine it goes over well I places where superstition is common.
NelsonMinar 5y ago
It's worth taking a step back to think just how awful this whole enterprise is. The article is mostly about their marketing and scanning affiliates feeling scammed in what looks like very direct labor exploitation. Also the biometrics they are collecting are not being collected with informed consent. There's a distinct air of colonialism about the whole enterprise. The cryptocurrency they promise will be the payment for those biometrics does not exist. And even if it did, it seems quite possible the whole thing is just another crypto scam. And financing all this perfidy is Andreessen Horowitz, Khosla Ventures, and Sam Altman.
johnsgresham 5y ago
I wrote a post digging deeper into the Proof-of-Personhood problem and Worldcoin's design here https://mirror.xyz/johnsgresham.eth/6lL5QT6UqW9VBCdUb6xK2gjhn1fXun8w0hyAYMSIKcM https://mirror.xyz/johnsgresham.eth/6lL5QT6UqW9VBCdUb6xK2gjh... Although many of the complaints seem like operators getting their hopes up and Worldcoin miscommunication, it's unfortunate to hear about the growing pains in the buzzfeed article, and I hope Worldcoin can work them out.
EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 5y ago
What a stupid idea. Of course, it's very simple (i.e. cheap) to create fake irises.
- th340d 5y ago
- cuteboy19 5y ago
  Someone thought about this before you, and made it true https://mobile.twitter.com/roelven/status/1452290703548166144?cxt=HHwWgMC5-eisyacoAAAA https://mobile.twitter.com/roelven/status/145229070354816614...
mdb333 5y ago
Basically the same article that ran ~6 months back... Anyhow, I happened to interview with these folks a year or two ago: 20% interesting concept 80% red flags At that time I could barely find anything more than tenuous links to Sam Altman. Seems like maybe he's upped his role as they're getting into bigger $$$ raises.
rdiddly 5y ago
Well this is a pretty good social critique, but I would like to tackle the technical side a bit more. 1) As the WorldCoin people know, there is no way a raw iris scan is going to be consistent enough to produce the same hash every time. Every scan of the same person's iris is going to have slight differences compared to previous scans. And a hash, as HN well knows, is designed to amplify slight differences, so it is, if you will, a "different-maker." (It makes two things more different from each other.) So to address this, they're saying "Wait, wait, we'll spread some ML in between like so much peanut butter," with the goal of transforming multiple slightly-different scans of the same iris into something "the same" enough to generate the same hash. So this part is a "same-maker," that makes different things more similar. Aside from how half-assed this sounds (a same-maker and a different-maker fighting each other[0]), now throw in what you already know from every "Turns Out Some Problems Came Up with This Particular Widely-Hyped ML Application" article in HN for the past 5 years. No ML model is perfect and they all have false positives/negatives and the like. Remember this is supposedly for identifying people. What if, before you apply your different-maker, your same-maker makes two different people's irises the same, such that they have the same hash and the different-maker can't tell the difference? Then your shit is fucked there, happy camper. I'm saying, not in this decade, will this work right. 2) If you're ever wondering whether a particular tool or piece of technology is something designed to serve humans and adapt and accommodate itself to humans, vs. something humans are supposed to serve and to which we're supposed to adapt and accommodate ourselves, just look for the handle. Obviously I'm being a little facetious but you get the idea. Someone brought this up elsewhere on the thread and I thought it was spot-on. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30932568 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30932568 [0] ...although it does sound like fertile ground for something GAN-like
BayAreaEscapee 5y ago
Regardless of the meritoriousness of Sam Altman's startup, I find at admirable that the admins allow these kind of discussions about Y Combinator to go on. There is so much outright censorship on the internet these days. It would be easy for YC to just have a policy of deleting any content or threads critical of YC, and it's good to see that's not what's happening.
Agnosco 5y ago
Andreessen Horowitz declined to comment on this story. Khosla Ventures did not respond to a request for comment. Just not good enough.
m3kw9 5y ago
Is a lazy way to ensure one wallet per person. Just look at how real world does this. There are layers and layers of checks throughout a persons life that verify they exist individually, sign off from nurses and docs at birth etc. Taking photos of a government id is one of them. Even that, it can still be faked if you go enough lengths, let alone a one time iris scanner.
Synaesthesia 5y ago
I like the concept, a lot, because I've always thought that money should be redistributed equitably. But can we maybe think of a better way of doing it? Like just giving everybody credit or smth?
walrus01 5y ago
The only valuable thing about Worldcoin is the eyeball scans with possible additional geolocation metadata for where the person was scanned. I can see something like Palantir buying the data when the company goes belly up. The fact that most of these eyeball scans have been collected in developing nations with little/no concern to data privacy laws (imagine doing this in a GDPR EU location) makes it extra-suspicious in my opinion.
deleted 5y ago
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awinter-py 5y ago
I like how someone definitely based the UX on vanilla sky (abre los ojos) and the scam part on minority report (stealing eyes) > “Face detected,” said the Orb in its robo-staccato voice when one of the men pointed it at Kudzanayi. “Open your eyes.” The machine stared back at him for about 30 seconds before the men fiddled with their phones and told him they were done. > “Its now more than 3 months, what did you do with our eyes?” one person wrote in a text to an Orb operator, which was viewed by BuzzFeed News. “This was all a lie this worldcoin is the same as other scams. Prove me wrong if l am talking lies,” said another. A third called the operators “thieves” for stealing their eyes. in theory there should be a cryogenics phase next? or switch to arnold and do like a free trip to mars
johnqian 5y ago
I think a lot of commenters here would benefit from adjusting their scam-radars. The way you scam people is by offering something that sounds great and plausible, but actually isn't. Consider Theranos, Bernie Madoff, etc. Worldcoin doesn't fit the pattern at all. To almost everyone that they need to sell to, it sounds ridiculous and dystopian. If Sam wanted to scam the poor to make himself richer, why would he make it so difficult for himself? There's far easier ways to do it that would escape public scrutiny. I don't know whether the approach will work, but we'd have a much more productive conversation if we assumed good intent.
- joe_the_user 5y ago
  To almost everyone that they need to sell to, it sounds ridiculous and dystopian. I've heard this kind of apology for scams before. If a "scam that sounds like a scam" still rips people successfully, well, the scammers are still guilty of fraud and I still view people who do it with contempt. And "scams that sound like scams" are marketed to desperate people. In many ways, finding a promise people want to believe is more important than finding a claim that you easily defend. The people who check out frauds in detail are never a fraud's target market.
nonrandomstring 5y ago
Reposting a comment I left here [1] after realising it will be totally eclipsed by this thread. This "defence of" post [1] is absolutely cringe-worthy, both in the poverty of its arguments and shameless apologetics. The arguments basically say, for each terrible, insecure and dehumanising act X: 1) Don't worry about us doing X because soon everyone will be doing X. 2) Everyone can safely do X because some people are already doing X. 3) We'll all definitely get very rich from doing X but don't worry, maybe some other people can get rich doing X2, X3, X4 too. 4) Please just ignore that X provokes visceral horror from everyone who encounters it. The association with dystopia is likely caused by those silly science fiction authors. 5) Don't worry about X creating a dystopian hell, because it will preserve privacy (hint: privacy is not the only dimension of human dignity and is barely relevant in this case anyway) 6) The track record of the team making X is unquestionable. They are already ball-deep in other projects of questionable merit to society. The masterminds of X are not interested in extracting profits from the project, they will have more than enough raw power from controlling them. They basically admit the whole thing is a scam to get people to accept the dystopian bait - proof of person-hood - "The Worldcoin coin only needs to retain value as an incentive to get people signed up". I guess the problem, from a simple philosophers point of view is that nobody who actually is a person needs or wants to prove that they are, because that self-evidently constitutes what a person is. But there are two other matters. One is that the very definition of "proof of person-hood" implies non-person-hood. That's the road that leads to the ovens at Belsen. The other point is that the only excuse you'd ever have for a "proof of person-hood" would be in a world where humans were so disconnected and disempowered that they'd have to compete within systems with AIs designed to be indistinguishable from people. And guess who is building those? Seriously, understand what iatrogenic means, and why a company that wants to "change the world for the better" [2] by making the poison and the antidote should worry you. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30935213 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30935213 [2] Anand Giridharadas. Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World
mcguire 5y ago
Ok, so here's a general notice to the techbros of the world: Most people, when you say "X is true" believe that you are saying that X is true. Not that you are saying X will be true in the future, not that X might be true at some point in time, and certainly not that you are asserting that X is physically possible. Anyone remember the argument that rather than waiting to recharge an electric car's battery, you can just drop the battery, bolt a new one in place, and be on your way? Yes, that is physically possible. Yes, it might be a way to do things sometime in the future. But no, it is not possible now, no one is building out the infrastructure required, and as far as I know no vehicle manufacturer is designing their vehicles such that the battery can be easily and quickly replaced. The possibility that something may be done in the future is not a solution to a current problem. This may be news to you, but most people who might exchange a iris scan for $20 in currency that you cannot access now, and may never be able to access, would consider that to be fraud. You have lied to them. But that's just the start of the craziness here. "The documents indicate that the true value of Worldcoin’s continent-spanning field test lies in its distinctive Orbs. Rather than just facilitating the company’s utopian promises, the Orb appears to be at the core of Worldcoin’s ambitions to dominate the emerging business of anonymous digital authentication: in other words, proving that an online avatar is a real person without revealing who they are. [...] Worldcoin says that once its systems are perfected, it will anonymize and delete users’ biometric data, thereby guaranteeing their privacy. But the company still has not committed to a timeline, even though it has captured and stored almost a half million iris scans to train its algorithms." Yes, they're simply lying about the reason they are collecting data. "Blania strongly pushed back on the suggestion that Worldcoin’s purpose was to harvest the world’s eyeballs in return for a cryptocurrency that may turn out to be worthless. That notion “is just very wrong. I don’t even know where to start, like this is just very wrong,” he said." Yeah, if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and spends its time quacking, it's probably a duck. Theranos!
brap 5y ago
I have yet to hear of a single crypto idea in the last 5 years that was either stupid, malicious, or both. “How do we print free money for everyone in the world? Oh I know, we’ll just make it virtual money! Also eyeballs!”
andreyk 5y ago
"“Ensuring a person is human, unique, and alive is an unsolved problem,” reads an internal Worldcoin deck marked as confidential, which was viewed by BuzzFeed News." I mean, this is true. But I don't get how this solves that - it's not like we'll scan our eye every time we need to login to something, so there will be a digital bit of data associated with the retina we'll need to log in with instead, and boom you have the same problem of identity fraud as could happen if someone stole you social security number. Except it may be worse, because you can't alter this unique identifier.

335 points by donohoe 5y ago

jackvalentine 5y ago

Has Altman had his eyeballs scanned and added to the dataset?

th340d 5y ago

[dead]

schizopathch 5y ago

verisimi 5y ago

What's with the orb gimmick - a spherical metal camera? Why not use a normal camera? Slurping up biometric data, on the promise of free money - lol PS Apparently the orb is for: Our approach relies on a custom biometric device - we call it the Orb - that verifies the uniqueness of a person through iris recognition, while ensuring their privacy through zero-knowledge cryptography. https://worldcoin.org/how-the-launch-works#field-tests https://worldcoin.org/how-the-launch-works#field-tests But I thought people's irises can in fact change colour and pattern.. maybe there's some special software that updates that too with zero-knowledge... what do I know?

helge9210 5y ago
The Orb itself is actually a remarkable piece of technology (considering what is available in a package of this size). "Normal camera" won't do for the same reason Face ID won't work without PrimeSense.
- th340d 5y ago
- AlexandrB 5y ago
  I think the OP is referring to the form factor. It seems impractical and gimmicky. Why not stick the same technology into something shaped like a DSLR or video camera - i.e. something easier to hold? Making a shiny orb betrays an obsession with the technology and not the problem they're ostensibly trying to solve. Edit: The article includes 2 pictures of orb operators using the orb. In both cases it seems like a more traditional form factor would be better. The first picture shows an orb operator balancing the orb in his hand - seems like a handle would be useful. The second picture shows the spherical orb awkwardly strapped to a flat platform on top of a monopod or tripod. I'm guessing that the orb does not have a tripod mount, but it really should.
  - helge9210 5y ago
    I had an interview with the company and the interviewer was kind enough to show me the device. When I was solving this class of problems in 2016 (image acquisition, object detection, identification, measurement etc.) with same kind of limitations (everything has to happen within the device itself, no uplink to the cloud) I managed it with a box of 100 kg and a size of really big suitcase. Seeing this (sensor package and computation) within small device impressed me personally.
micromacrofoot 5y ago
It's literally an "oooh shiny" tactic
- th340d 5y ago
katmannthree 5y ago
> What's with the orb gimmick - a spherical metal camera? How are you supposed to start a cult with a normal camera though? At least that's the vibe I'm picking up from how they revere the Orb in their copy.
- th340d 5y ago
- axus 5y ago
  Maybe they could include an E-meter?

timcavel 5y ago

grnmamba 5y ago

New day, new crypto scam.

AlexandrB 5y ago
I thought this comment was being glib, but I think you're right. It has all the hallmarks of a crypto scam: "Operators" being pain in coins instead of money[1], a pyramid/MLM like structure where operators hire other operators, and using Discord for tech support. > They are encouraged to hire sub-operators to work under them so they can cover more ground. > Orb operators were normally paid a flat rate of $3 per sign-up in tether, a cryptocurrency pegged to the US dollar. It doubled to $6 for every additional sign-up beyond their targets. At the time, Worldcoin blamed the payment delays on back-end problems as the company updated its technology, according to screenshots of a Discord where executives communicated with Orb operators. [1] To be fair it's USDT which is, at least, pegged in value. But why make operators go through the hassle of finding and using an off-ramp? Reminds me of employees in some industries being paid with special cards that have transaction fees to take money out.
- imtringued 5y ago
  >It has all the hallmarks of a crypto scam It also took the name of an existing coin from 2013.

soared 5y ago

I don’t see how this could ever be legitimate. Giving out an unlaunched shitcoin and a t shirt in exchange for the biometric data of people who very clearly don’t understand crypto or biometric data (read: random person in a mall, regardless of country). This is pretty clearly taking advantage of people. My question is, couldn’t you do this fairly without even spending that much money? Say you need 5MM scans to build your database (that you’re going to delete the data from anyway). With shitcoins it’s close to free, but you had to pay a bunch of engineers and marketers. Why not give each person $5 USD converted to their local currency? For $25MM you are actually having a positive impact, don’t get dragged through the mud in articles like this, and it didn’t even cost that much.

captn3m0 5y ago
Giving real money escalates the fraud potential (as noted in the article - the frauds reduced when they switched away from BTC).
micromacrofoot 5y ago
Because it's not about making an impact, it's performance art meant to accumulate investment money.
- nopenopenopeno 5y ago
  “Performance art” is exactly right. Likewise, it’s not a coincidence that the actual field of contemporary performance art is increasingly resembling the entrepreneurship/startup industry.
  - micromacrofoot 5y ago
    It's funny, because people tend to think performance artists are the ones full of shit... I suppose life really does imitate art.
- bmitc 5y ago
  You are right, but I think it's performance art plus narcissism and greed.

axg11 5y ago

I had a few interactions with employees at Worldcoin. At a high level they're trying to solve a worthy problem: proof of personhood for crypto. HN is very anti-crypto so I expect any conversation on this topic is an uphill battle. If you're generally sceptical of crypto, Worldcoin will seem outright useless to you. I tend to believe there are some great ideas embedded in the cryptocurrency world alongside a lot of noise and speculation. Eventually the "signal" and core ideas will rise through, perhaps after a long period of pain. There are a whole class of ideas in crypto that require one wallet/address to correspond to one single person. Like all powerful ideas, there are ways that this could bring great value to the world and unfortunately also ways that this could be horrifically abused. Proof of personhood for crypto could enable verifiable UBI for the world. It could also enable mass surveillance if widely adopted. Given the interesting potential of the idea, someone was going to eventually work on it. Worldcoin should have approached the problem slightly differently. First, testing the concept in lower-income countries has a "colonial experimentation" look to it. Since the idea is controversial, they would have gained more goodwill by initially launching in the EU/North America under the more strict legal frameworks. Second, make the orb look less dystopian. Third, launch with a non-economic use case. Worldcoin won't solve UBI or inequality in one shot, so why not launch with a lower stakes use case such as an online forum or community that requires proof of personhood to post? Sadly I think because of all the missteps, I can't see Worldcoin tackling the proof of personhood problem in the longterm. I hope another project comes along and makes an attempt more "sensitively".

runako 5y ago
> Proof of personhood for crypto could enable verifiable UBI for the world. This kind of statement breeds skepticism of crypto. Does anyone think "proof of personhood" is among the top 25 barriers for verifiable UBI for the world?
- ChicagoBoy11 5y ago
  I think so. Every other attempt I have ever heard of governments providing some sort of subsidy is always met by all sorts of schemes and incentives to try to game them. It would seem "being a person" is such a basic and unassailable standard that SURELY governments would be able to get a handle on that, right? Except, well, if you look at any discussion about election security, benefits payments, etc., in any area decently complex nation, it will quickly reveal that the devil is in the details when it comes to stuff like that, and that even in standards like that all sorts of fraudulent schemes abound. This is all, of course, not taking the context of a sort of GLOBAL UBI approach, where the possibilities to fake/forge "personhood" would be even easier.

boeingUH60 5y ago

It baffles me that Altman picked up such a creepy, woo-woo tech project. It's not like the guy is desperate for cash, he's already really rich and has a stellar reputation from running Y Combinator (formerly) and OpenAI (currently) as well as investing in many other startups...it's just weird

deleted 5y ago
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JeremyBanks 5y ago
verisimi 5y ago
Have you seen the creepy interview of Altman and Zuckerberg? Upright posture, hands on thighs... the borg talking with itself... https://www.facebook.com/YCombinator/videos/10153993693829107/ https://www.facebook.com/YCombinator/videos/1015399369382910... its on Facebook, but no need to log in
tomatowurst 5y ago
Not so far off when Paul Graham also vouched for Coinbase, which CFTC ordered it to settle on its False, Misleading, or Inaccurate Reporting and Wash Trading. It's quite unbelievable that this type of grift is defended by YC. When the crypto mania ends and the obvious consequences from tens of thousands of people who have been destroyed by Coinbase are realized, they will be just as quick to distance themselves. I'm really disappointed in YC, especially in its founders. When Paul Graham mentioned that he specifically looks for Founders who break the rules but not outright illegal, I had no idea he meant a break from moral ethics and brushing very close with US securities law. I just don't get how some people can look away at what's truly happening in crypto—it is a systematic wealth transfer via digitized ponzi. any money you make in crypto comes directly from somebody's loss and this is NOT at all like the financial markets where pricing mechanism are enforced and regulated for price discovery on real world assets that is widely adopted. Yet this will not stop thousands of applicants who apply to YC for their chance at riches. It's a shame how we glorify grift and enrichment through the destruction of others. It is this specific culture that we chose not associate ourselves with YC, others are already aware of the grift that YC founders have publicly supported, invested, and vouched for. What saddens me is that many YC hopefuls and commenters will look the other way because of what they seek to gain. If you drink from water that others had muddied, you too are dirty.

manholio 5y ago

They say they scan irises so that each person is unique and "nobody gets more than their fair share". Why then not use the clasic identifiers: name, date of birth, proven with a state issued document, and a facial picture holding some sign. These are easy to do remote and are the current standard for financial KYC, which any "world currency" needs to take into consideration in the post-Bitcoin world. Sure, some people don't have access to government issued IDs, but they are a minority in the world population. The economic benefits of having a government capable of issuing IDs are so great, that Worldcoin, if successful, could provide technical and financial assistance to those states directly to implement such systems, instead of pushing dubious "Orbs" onto the world. The whole "nobody gets more than their fair share" trope is dubious. What will the typical person from DR Congo do with $20 worth of altcoins on his phone? 99% of them will sell it for $20 minus fees and pocket the money. A very small investor minority can afford to hodl, select few will purchase and accumulate w-coins, and those will earn the speculative appreciation Worldcoin founders are really after. The whole populist act is a ruse to get the bubble going.

oneoff786 5y ago
Yeah the fair share comment felt scummy as hell. I presume the coin founder’s “fair share” is quite sizeable.

manesioz 5y ago

> People may never receive the money they were promised. “We make no warranty … that we will be successful launching the Worldcoin network or issuing WLD tokens,” says a contract distributors must sign before receiving an Orb, which was viewed by BuzzFeed News. “We are providing the Orb to you for experimental purposes, to advance our objectives, including to gather data on the use of the Orb by end users, and for no other purpose.” So they're taking advantage of people in poor countries to collect their biometric data. Yikes. The people who made this are the same people who talk endlessly about the virtue of innovation and technology.

AlexandrB 5y ago
What are the odds this will end with Worldcoin being sold off for parts - namely the "orb" technology and the biometric database? I'm sure a company like Palantir could find a use for this stuff.
- boeingUH60 5y ago
  Ever since I heard of Worldcoin, I've been thinking that's the plan...gather enough biometric data and sell it off to a larger player (likely a surveillance company), while pumping some shitcoins on the side. Or maybe they'll monetize the database themselves...the whole thing is just creepy
- TotempaaltJ 5y ago
  (I work for Palantir but any opinions are my own) Palantir is not in the business of collecting data, and as such would have no use for this data. Here's an official blog post explaining this: https://blog.palantir.com/palantir-is-not-a-data-company-palantir-explained-1-a6fcf8b3e4cb https://blog.palantir.com/palantir-is-not-a-data-company-pal...
  - AlexandrB 5y ago
    I don't like Palantir, but I'm not sure why you're being downvoted. You are correct that Palantir probably would not want to acquire a bunch of biometric data. My mistake.

nradov 5y ago

So if you lose your eye in an accident or something do you then lose your coins?

d--b 5y ago

- So how can we do UBI? - Well we don't have the political capital to do it in real world currencies, but we can spawn crypto from nothing, so that could work. Obviously we'll need to have a way to make this crypto currency actually valuable, and stable, but let's figure that out later. - Ok, ok, so technically, what do we need to make this work? - Well, the main problem is surely that people are going to want to claim their UBI several times, so we need a way to control that. - Ah, ok, we have AI to do that right? - Well yeah, but we need to send an army of people everywhere on the planet, each with a specially created device that scans everyone eyeballs. - Uh? Can't we do this with a webcam? - No people will cheat. - But that's going to cost an awful lot of money, how are we going to fund that? - We'll go to VC, they'll give us the money, and well that crypto money is going to raise in value, so we'll have that, and otherwise we could monetize the planet wide authentication scheme that we created. - And you are sure this is going to solve the world's poverty problem?

propter_hoc 5y ago

This is horrifyingly dystopian. Glad that the media is starting to cover this critically, I bet the fallout will cause the VCs to pull away soon.

qchris 5y ago

I've heard that there's been pressure to shut down or significantly reduce BuzzFeed.News in order to lower the cost[1], but I really hope that they manage to keep the organization running and effective. I struggle to think of many other newsrooms, let alone an upstart like this one, that are able to produce articles of this quality through investigative journalism, especially on a story involving topics like cryptocurrency and privacy ethics. [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/22/buzzfeed-investors-have-pushed-ceo-jonah-peretti-to-shut-down-newsroom.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/22/buzzfeed-investors-have-push...

IncRnd 5y ago

I am going to give from 231 to 789 HNCoins[1] to anyone who reads this post. The number of coins awarded will scale depending on factors we will discretely and securely apply using our proprietary algorithm that determines how we decide to reward our HNCoins during the decision process. [2] If you are a cryptographer, SME, blockchain guru, or brain surgeon take a gander at our peer reviewed whitepaper! [3] [1] Past and Future performance do not indicate an ability to convert from HNCoins to any alternate currencies. [2] Not all people will get awarded within the stated range of HNCoins. [3] https://www.usmint.gov/learn/kids/resources/coin-activities/coin-rubbing-and-matching https://www.usmint.gov/learn/kids/resources/coin-activities/...

simonswords82 5y ago

I believe the correct term for this is sketchy, and that's probably being too generous to Sam. This is some next level dystopia nonsense. There are plenty of KYC (Know Your Client) imperatives out there that don't require yet another blockchain driven platform and a scan of your fucking eyeball. It's a no from me. This is more than sketchy it's downright awful.

schizopathch 5y ago
You're putting it mildly. This is the most tyrannical technology in the history of humanity.

qualudeheart 5y ago

I trust Sam with my biometrics more than I would trust most other people.

th340d 5y ago

me_me_mu_mu 5y ago

While I watched or read dystopian sci fi horrified at the twisted scenarios presented, these tech nerds on the other hand were furiously driven to be the villains in the story. I hope I'm wrong, but at least that is how it feels from the outside looking in. And now people (lesser level of the same kind) flock to their companies to be edgy. Trust me guys I know it’s called $nameOfSomeEvilItemHeldBySomeEvilCharacter but don’t worry we’ll be using it for $randomBenignSoundingThingButReallyAScam

asasidh 5y ago

Scam Altman should not have associated with these kind of scams. Lost any credibility he built till date.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

negamax 5y ago

Sama join the long list of shitcoin paddlers. Sad day

lazzlazzlazz 5y ago

Worldcoin isn't an effort to accumulate biometric data — Clear (the private company that competes with TSA PreCheck) does this at most airports in the US. Instead, Worldcoin uses sophisticated cryptography[1] specifically to avoid the collection of biometric data. The value appears to be in the ability to resist the Sybil problem[2] with this cryptographic proof of uniqueness[3] as well as the wide distribution of tokens (a play on Metcalfe's Law)[4]. Of course, I expect the usual unrelenting crypto skepticism from HN, and see that proudly on display today. :) [1]: https://worldcoin.org/privacy-by-design https://worldcoin.org/privacy-by-design [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sybil_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sybil_attack [3]: https://twitter.com/cdixon/status/1451204467815235587 https://twitter.com/cdixon/status/1451204467815235587 [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe%27s_law

phphphphp 5y ago
Except as the article states based on quotes and leaked presentations, they are collecting the data. The page you linked confirms it. You might be right that their aspiration is to not collect biometric data, but they are collecting it and that’s what this article is about: Worldcoin collecting 500,000 people’s biometric data. “Images of users’ body, face, and eyes, including users’ irises (visible, near infrared and far infrared spectrum)” “Three-dimensional mapping of users’ body and face” https://worldcoin.org/privacy-during-field-testing https://worldcoin.org/privacy-during-field-testing
- lazzlazzlazz 5y ago
  You're making my point — Worldcoin's business isn't to collect biometric data, as alleged by many comments here.
  - phphphphp 5y ago
    Their business is whatever they’re doing, we can’t give organisations a free pass on bad behaviour because they aspire to be well behaved once they’ve extracted enough value from their bad behaviour. Your comment implies that the article is wrong: it isn’t.

Stampo00 5y ago

Okay, but does it have to be my eyeball?

th340d 5y ago

1024core 5y ago

> concerns that the company is using its cryptocurrency as a way to amass millions of biometrics and perfect a new kind of authentication technology for the blockchain era. Isn't retinal scanning an "old" technology by now? I know we (the US) used it in Afghanistan to identify people years ago.

daenz 5y ago

This whole thing gives the impression that these tech gurus view the rest of us (particularly less developed countries) as cattle, to be identified, categorized, and allocated a pre-defined amount of resources.

obeid 5y ago
You are definitely beginning to 'get it'.

parkaboy 5y ago

I find the fundamentals and implications of Worldcoin to be a really neat idea, but moreso for the potential to have true online anonymity while simultaneously being a provable Verified Unique Real Human Being. The idea of just having a public/private key that is associated with your biometrics. If implemented and executed properly, you could put a big dent in online disinformation / troll farms / bot accounts and streamline all sorts of things. Obtaining biometrics is a critical component of this, though--and doing this in a non-dystopian way is tough. Hashing that data is needed (as the article mentions), but even that has a bunch trickiness under the hood to unpack. The Worldcoin/UBI narrative seems like it would be a smart play to spur rapid adoption for this, but--again according to the article, it sounds like that execution has been...challenging.

daenz 5y ago
>If implemented and executed properly, you could put a big dent in online disinformation / troll farms / bot accounts and streamline all sorts of things. No it won't. It will only ensure that certain people and groups can be the absolute final say in what information people can say and hear. Only an extremely generous and unhistorical interpretation is that this will "reduce disinformation." It will only consolidate who is allowed to have the loudest disinformation. This is disastrous for so many reasons. For example, suppose a whistleblower has damning evidence of human rights abuses. The powers involved decide to flip a switch and digitally quarantine all individuals who could possibly be whistleblowers, and everyone N-hops away from those people, so the story can't get out. The public never learns of it, and the abuses continue. This is not a novel idea, but now we've just made it push-button and absolute. How do you propose whistleblowers exist in the system you are advocating for?
- parkaboy 5y ago
  Just blue-skying here, but you could have a process that allows the individual to revoke a previously used key pair and generate a new one associated with their biometrics whenever they want. The history of their online identity gets wiped as needed, but they're still a Verified Real Human Being online. Now of course, again -- the devil's in the details with this central entity and how it acquires/processes/stores those biometrics. And of course that central entity could be be morally/ethically dubious. It would be cool to have a more distributed way of acquiring and processing the biometrics instead of having a corporation run that part. Also to be clear: I'm not advocating all online communications need to have this identify verification in place. I'm envisioning something like Twitter badges, where you have some identifier that you're a guaranteed real-person, but people can still communicate without that. Like if I'm Reddit, I'm probably not going to care while perusing r/music if someone's a Real Human Being, and similarly if I get a whistleblower tip over an email. If I'm reading r/politics or r/worldnews where disinfo and troll accounts run rampant, I then might want to be able to filter the discussion or interact with Real Human Beings. I also readily admit my whole excitement for the concept assumes (and it's a big assumption) it's designed and implemented in a way such that it can't be abused. And I'm also not saying Worldcoin is taking the right approach to this overall concept.

nerdo 5y ago

> Orb operators in Africa, Asia, and Europe spoke to BuzzFeed News under the condition of anonymity because they feared retribution from Worldcoin as well as local authorities. Show that sentence to someone in 1995 it would blow their minds.

jollybean 5y ago

The solution to 99% of problems is conscientiousness and competency. Technology and provide some game changing opportunities - such as for example access to information, access to basic banking, maybe a couple of vaccines can re-shape a region ... ... but generally speaking there will never be a substitute to social organization at all levels. If people are corrupt and incompetent, they will have nothing. If everyone from the barber to the president act diligently and thoughtfully, for the most part, most social malaise would disappear. Many poor countries have ample natural resources with which to provide a foundation for a base economy, funny that places like Japan, Singapore, Germany etc. are able to provide very high standard of living without much in the way of 'free money in the ground' ...

th340d 5y ago

f0e4c2f7 5y ago

Worldcoin talks about UBI which based on what Sam has said in the past I would take them at their word on. But beyond UBI what WorldCoin is going for is identity. In the nonblockchain world your identity is your Country ID, Passport, etc. In the blockchain world none of that stuff exists and people get uncomfortable when you start asking for it. This leaves a situation where a person is often just represented by a wallet. Well as you may know a person can make dozens or hundreds of wallets. This problem leads to all kinds of weird tricks that crypto projects get up to when trying to verify 1 wallet 1 person. For example in the idea of 1 person 1 vote on a project or for something like an airdrop early in a project where people on a discord get free crypto for being early adopters but you don't want one person registering with many wallets. Today that might look verification based on a phone number associated with discord or something. Real flimsy stuff. Worldcoin bases it on retina, which I admit creeps me out as well even if it's just a hash. But I can see what they're getting at. The need is there, maybe there is a better way. I used to work at crypto startup and we ran into this exact problem.

drexlspivey 5y ago
Proof of Work’s raison d’etre is to mitigate Sybil attacks so a naive solution to the problem would be to have people “mine” their airdrop.
- zhoujianfu 5y ago
  Bitcoin/crypto solved the “proof of resources” problem in a decentralized trustless way, which is cool. What would be neat now is “proof of unique living individual” in the same way.. that would solve a number of problems, related to UBI and voting. In the past, or in dictatorships, resources == votes, but in democracies we want individuals == votes.
  - Melting_Harps 5y ago
    > What would be neat now is “proof of unique living individual” in the same way.. that would solve a number of problems, related to UBI and voting. So, there was a project called Aurora that tried to do exactly this during the financial crisis fallout in Iceland, it failed, mainly because it was way too early and the blockchain itself wasn't protected as well as Bitcoin: it was presumed that PoS could serve as a possible solution if it has a specific usecase. Unfortunately, we didn't gain as much info and data as we could have other than then from a security standpoint deviating from BTC was not tenable. Jack Dorsey is seeking ways to just this with Block, he did a recent talk on how UBI could work via Bitcoin's blockchain as a way to facilitate seamless txs, the biggest obstacle being that this would need to be a layer 2 or possibly layer 3 because of the ID component that ensures that this info is not retained: think zero proof knowledge protocol. It can be done on mainchain via a derivative for incredibly low cost (100 million sats/BTC), but just like colored coins was too early this may prove tricky. What we learned from the COVID unemployment debacle was that the payments system in the US is entirely broken and cannot function even at the best of times, much less under any strain without being subject to total collapse or perpetual grift so this needs to happen either way. Personally speaking, I'd really wish that we can derive more data from all the UBI test runs and then have this be a major part of layer 2/3 development: for all this talk about 'Web3,' a total boomerism if I ever heard one, and the money pouring into this space I wish some of it would be spent in this space. I'd offer to help get involved if it were the case as a former co-founder, dev and consultant in this space, if that were to happen.

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eternalsept 5y ago

Reminds me of the United Nations using eyeball scan payment systems instead of cash to let refugees buy stuff from local stores.

th340d 5y ago

dang 5y ago

Related: Crypto Startup That Wants to Scan Everyone’s Eyeballs Is Having Some Trouble - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30699327 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30699327 - March 2022 (30 comments) Edward Snowden Slams Sam Altman's Worldcoin: 'Don't Catalogue Eyeballs' - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28998065 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28998065 - Oct 2021 (298 comments) Sam Altman’s Worldcoin wants to scan eyeballs in exchange for crypto - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28947468 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28947468 - Oct 2021 (95 comments) Worldcoin - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28945557 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28945557 - Oct 2021 (101 comments) Sam Altman Wants to Scan Your Eyeball in Exchange for Cryptocurrency - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27674598 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27674598 - June 2021 (30 comments) Others?

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jdrc 5y ago

metaverse is such a scam, but at least it's a way to do random wealth redistribution

th340d 5y ago

rurp 5y ago

"The data consent form says Worldcoin can share user data with third parties who can use the data as they see fit." Doesn't this completely undermine all of their claims about privacy and being responsible stewards of people's biometric data? You can't make promises about data that is freely given to third parties, and I'm sure the people involved here realize that. It's hard to see this company as anything other than sleazy when their public statements are completely contradicted by the legal terms.

alangibson 5y ago

I would love to meet whoever designed the Orb. That thing is insanely creepy. I'd be worried it would steal my soul and I'm a materialist. I can't imagine it goes over well I places where superstition is common.

NelsonMinar 5y ago

It's worth taking a step back to think just how awful this whole enterprise is. The article is mostly about their marketing and scanning affiliates feeling scammed in what looks like very direct labor exploitation. Also the biometrics they are collecting are not being collected with informed consent. There's a distinct air of colonialism about the whole enterprise. The cryptocurrency they promise will be the payment for those biometrics does not exist. And even if it did, it seems quite possible the whole thing is just another crypto scam. And financing all this perfidy is Andreessen Horowitz, Khosla Ventures, and Sam Altman.

johnsgresham 5y ago

I wrote a post digging deeper into the Proof-of-Personhood problem and Worldcoin's design here https://mirror.xyz/johnsgresham.eth/6lL5QT6UqW9VBCdUb6xK2gjhn1fXun8w0hyAYMSIKcM https://mirror.xyz/johnsgresham.eth/6lL5QT6UqW9VBCdUb6xK2gjh... Although many of the complaints seem like operators getting their hopes up and Worldcoin miscommunication, it's unfortunate to hear about the growing pains in the buzzfeed article, and I hope Worldcoin can work them out.

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 5y ago

What a stupid idea. Of course, it's very simple (i.e. cheap) to create fake irises.

th340d 5y ago
cuteboy19 5y ago
Someone thought about this before you, and made it true https://mobile.twitter.com/roelven/status/1452290703548166144?cxt=HHwWgMC5-eisyacoAAAA https://mobile.twitter.com/roelven/status/145229070354816614...

mdb333 5y ago

Basically the same article that ran ~6 months back... Anyhow, I happened to interview with these folks a year or two ago: 20% interesting concept 80% red flags At that time I could barely find anything more than tenuous links to Sam Altman. Seems like maybe he's upped his role as they're getting into bigger $$$ raises.

rdiddly 5y ago

Well this is a pretty good social critique, but I would like to tackle the technical side a bit more. 1) As the WorldCoin people know, there is no way a raw iris scan is going to be consistent enough to produce the same hash every time. Every scan of the same person's iris is going to have slight differences compared to previous scans. And a hash, as HN well knows, is designed to amplify slight differences, so it is, if you will, a "different-maker." (It makes two things more different from each other.) So to address this, they're saying "Wait, wait, we'll spread some ML in between like so much peanut butter," with the goal of transforming multiple slightly-different scans of the same iris into something "the same" enough to generate the same hash. So this part is a "same-maker," that makes different things more similar. Aside from how half-assed this sounds (a same-maker and a different-maker fighting each other[0]), now throw in what you already know from every "Turns Out Some Problems Came Up with This Particular Widely-Hyped ML Application" article in HN for the past 5 years. No ML model is perfect and they all have false positives/negatives and the like. Remember this is supposedly for identifying people. What if, before you apply your different-maker, your same-maker makes two different people's irises the same, such that they have the same hash and the different-maker can't tell the difference? Then your shit is fucked there, happy camper. I'm saying, not in this decade, will this work right. 2) If you're ever wondering whether a particular tool or piece of technology is something designed to serve humans and adapt and accommodate itself to humans, vs. something humans are supposed to serve and to which we're supposed to adapt and accommodate ourselves, just look for the handle. Obviously I'm being a little facetious but you get the idea. Someone brought this up elsewhere on the thread and I thought it was spot-on. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30932568 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30932568 [0] ...although it does sound like fertile ground for something GAN-like

BayAreaEscapee 5y ago

Regardless of the meritoriousness of Sam Altman's startup, I find at admirable that the admins allow these kind of discussions about Y Combinator to go on. There is so much outright censorship on the internet these days. It would be easy for YC to just have a policy of deleting any content or threads critical of YC, and it's good to see that's not what's happening.

Agnosco 5y ago

Andreessen Horowitz declined to comment on this story. Khosla Ventures did not respond to a request for comment. Just not good enough.

m3kw9 5y ago

Is a lazy way to ensure one wallet per person. Just look at how real world does this. There are layers and layers of checks throughout a persons life that verify they exist individually, sign off from nurses and docs at birth etc. Taking photos of a government id is one of them. Even that, it can still be faked if you go enough lengths, let alone a one time iris scanner.

Synaesthesia 5y ago

I like the concept, a lot, because I've always thought that money should be redistributed equitably. But can we maybe think of a better way of doing it? Like just giving everybody credit or smth?

walrus01 5y ago

The only valuable thing about Worldcoin is the eyeball scans with possible additional geolocation metadata for where the person was scanned. I can see something like Palantir buying the data when the company goes belly up. The fact that most of these eyeball scans have been collected in developing nations with little/no concern to data privacy laws (imagine doing this in a GDPR EU location) makes it extra-suspicious in my opinion.

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awinter-py 5y ago

I like how someone definitely based the UX on vanilla sky (abre los ojos) and the scam part on minority report (stealing eyes) > “Face detected,” said the Orb in its robo-staccato voice when one of the men pointed it at Kudzanayi. “Open your eyes.” The machine stared back at him for about 30 seconds before the men fiddled with their phones and told him they were done. > “Its now more than 3 months, what did you do with our eyes?” one person wrote in a text to an Orb operator, which was viewed by BuzzFeed News. “This was all a lie this worldcoin is the same as other scams. Prove me wrong if l am talking lies,” said another. A third called the operators “thieves” for stealing their eyes. in theory there should be a cryogenics phase next? or switch to arnold and do like a free trip to mars

johnqian 5y ago

I think a lot of commenters here would benefit from adjusting their scam-radars. The way you scam people is by offering something that sounds great and plausible, but actually isn't. Consider Theranos, Bernie Madoff, etc. Worldcoin doesn't fit the pattern at all. To almost everyone that they need to sell to, it sounds ridiculous and dystopian. If Sam wanted to scam the poor to make himself richer, why would he make it so difficult for himself? There's far easier ways to do it that would escape public scrutiny. I don't know whether the approach will work, but we'd have a much more productive conversation if we assumed good intent.

joe_the_user 5y ago
To almost everyone that they need to sell to, it sounds ridiculous and dystopian. I've heard this kind of apology for scams before. If a "scam that sounds like a scam" still rips people successfully, well, the scammers are still guilty of fraud and I still view people who do it with contempt. And "scams that sound like scams" are marketed to desperate people. In many ways, finding a promise people want to believe is more important than finding a claim that you easily defend. The people who check out frauds in detail are never a fraud's target market.

nonrandomstring 5y ago

Reposting a comment I left here [1] after realising it will be totally eclipsed by this thread. This "defence of" post [1] is absolutely cringe-worthy, both in the poverty of its arguments and shameless apologetics. The arguments basically say, for each terrible, insecure and dehumanising act X: 1) Don't worry about us doing X because soon everyone will be doing X. 2) Everyone can safely do X because some people are already doing X. 3) We'll all definitely get very rich from doing X but don't worry, maybe some other people can get rich doing X2, X3, X4 too. 4) Please just ignore that X provokes visceral horror from everyone who encounters it. The association with dystopia is likely caused by those silly science fiction authors. 5) Don't worry about X creating a dystopian hell, because it will preserve privacy (hint: privacy is not the only dimension of human dignity and is barely relevant in this case anyway) 6) The track record of the team making X is unquestionable. They are already ball-deep in other projects of questionable merit to society. The masterminds of X are not interested in extracting profits from the project, they will have more than enough raw power from controlling them. They basically admit the whole thing is a scam to get people to accept the dystopian bait - proof of person-hood - "The Worldcoin coin only needs to retain value as an incentive to get people signed up". I guess the problem, from a simple philosophers point of view is that nobody who actually is a person needs or wants to prove that they are, because that self-evidently constitutes what a person is. But there are two other matters. One is that the very definition of "proof of person-hood" implies non-person-hood. That's the road that leads to the ovens at Belsen. The other point is that the only excuse you'd ever have for a "proof of person-hood" would be in a world where humans were so disconnected and disempowered that they'd have to compete within systems with AIs designed to be indistinguishable from people. And guess who is building those? Seriously, understand what iatrogenic means, and why a company that wants to "change the world for the better" [2] by making the poison and the antidote should worry you. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30935213 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30935213 [2] Anand Giridharadas. Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World

mcguire 5y ago

Ok, so here's a general notice to the techbros of the world: Most people, when you say "X is true" believe that you are saying that X is true. Not that you are saying X will be true in the future, not that X might be true at some point in time, and certainly not that you are asserting that X is physically possible. Anyone remember the argument that rather than waiting to recharge an electric car's battery, you can just drop the battery, bolt a new one in place, and be on your way? Yes, that is physically possible. Yes, it might be a way to do things sometime in the future. But no, it is not possible now, no one is building out the infrastructure required, and as far as I know no vehicle manufacturer is designing their vehicles such that the battery can be easily and quickly replaced. The possibility that something may be done in the future is not a solution to a current problem. This may be news to you, but most people who might exchange a iris scan for $20 in currency that you cannot access now, and may never be able to access, would consider that to be fraud. You have lied to them. But that's just the start of the craziness here. "The documents indicate that the true value of Worldcoin’s continent-spanning field test lies in its distinctive Orbs. Rather than just facilitating the company’s utopian promises, the Orb appears to be at the core of Worldcoin’s ambitions to dominate the emerging business of anonymous digital authentication: in other words, proving that an online avatar is a real person without revealing who they are. [...] Worldcoin says that once its systems are perfected, it will anonymize and delete users’ biometric data, thereby guaranteeing their privacy. But the company still has not committed to a timeline, even though it has captured and stored almost a half million iris scans to train its algorithms." Yes, they're simply lying about the reason they are collecting data. "Blania strongly pushed back on the suggestion that Worldcoin’s purpose was to harvest the world’s eyeballs in return for a cryptocurrency that may turn out to be worthless. That notion “is just very wrong. I don’t even know where to start, like this is just very wrong,” he said." Yeah, if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and spends its time quacking, it's probably a duck. Theranos!

brap 5y ago

I have yet to hear of a single crypto idea in the last 5 years that was either stupid, malicious, or both. “How do we print free money for everyone in the world? Oh I know, we’ll just make it virtual money! Also eyeballs!”

andreyk 5y ago

"“Ensuring a person is human, unique, and alive is an unsolved problem,” reads an internal Worldcoin deck marked as confidential, which was viewed by BuzzFeed News." I mean, this is true. But I don't get how this solves that - it's not like we'll scan our eye every time we need to login to something, so there will be a digital bit of data associated with the retina we'll need to log in with instead, and boom you have the same problem of identity fraud as could happen if someone stole you social security number. Except it may be worse, because you can't alter this unique identifier.