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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
by 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 agoGiving real money escalates the fraud potential (as noted in the article - the frauds reduced when they switched away from BTC).
- micromacrofoot 5y agoBecause 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 agoIt's funny, because people tend to think performance artists are the ones full of shit... I suppose life really does imitate art.
- bmitc 5y agoYou are right, but I think it's performance art plus narcissism and greed.
- munificent 5y agoAkin to "security theatre", this is "tech startup theatre".
- Melting_Harps 5y agoStop trying to whitewash this, this is a scam, just because he was the former Kingmaker of the SV startup scene doesn't mean he isn't a scammer and this isn't a scam.
- munificent 5y agoReferring to the company as analogous to security theatre is not a compliment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_theater https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_theater
- micromacrofoot 5y agoit is a little “word softening” though, we might be better off calling a fig a fig
- munificent 5y agoIt's literally not, though. The whole point of "theatre" is to emphasize that it's not real. If you call something "counterfeit currency", the word "counterfeit" isn't "softening", it's negating.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Alex3917 5y ago> My question is, couldn’t you do this fairly without even spending that much money? It would actually cost tens of millions of dollars (if not more) if you want to comply with the securities laws of every country.
- hef19898 5y agoIf you cannot comply with local securities laws you have no business in finance in those countries.
- dcolkitt 5y agoIf you cannot comply with local restrictions on press freedom you have no business serving content to users from those countries.
- space_rock 5y agoExactly. It's a circular argument to say a law is good because it's a law. And no one has any idea of financial laws in each country Saying that Sam Altman is a scammer
- maxbond 5y agoThis comparison would imply that securities laws are unjust because financiers are regularly targeted by authoritarian regimes. Which is ludicrous. They aren't the underdogs here. They _are_ the powerful parties who need to be kept in check for democracy to function. A journalist publishing despite censorship is in no way comparable to wealthy promoters distributing unregulated securities. I think what you were going for may have been that distributing these securities is in some way freedom of speech, which is also just incorrect, or correct in some way so limited as to be irrelevant. If it is freedom of speech, your freedom to distribute securities stops at scamming your neighbor's nose. But the burden of proof here is on your security _not_ being a scam, and that is because unregulated securities markets readily devolve into scam after scam.
- 5y ago
- thirdwhrldPzz 5y agoMirror neurons and nostalgia for a particular modal. When a mind latches onto a modal for problem solving, every problem is a nail. Technocrats have to try and illustrate the value of their technocratic solutions.
- nr2x 5y agoI once heard a disturbing ghost story: Certain tech company was building a training set of faces. Hired a contractor in $poor_region. Contractor asks if eyes need to be open in photos. Doesn't sound right to $tech_employee. Asks why exactly the eyes in photos aren't open to start with? They were taking pictures of corpses. Contract ended.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- rosndo 5y agoThis sounds so unlikely, unless they already had a huge set of corpse photos for another purpose. It’s easier to find live people that’ll let you photograph them than corpses.
- mike_d 5y agoLots of places will collect biometric data from the dead. If your cousin works at a funeral home taking these photos, or in the city government collecting the photos, you can basically make money for no work.
- nr2x 5y agoI assure you this is real.
- strangattractor 5y ago
- btheshoe 5y agoGood data is worth it's weight in gold. I've heard stories of startups paying journalists 40/hr to write samples for nlp datasets. Imo this is not a good place to cut costs
- anyfactor 5y agoTrying to break into AI training business for a while. I have access to tech enabled semi-skilled workers who are willing and can be fairly compensated however launching this business isn't going to happen anytime soon. Medium and bigger companies need to work with bigger firms and require audits and certification and LLC registration in NA or Europe. And smaller companies can or willing to pay less than 5 bucks per workhour. At any scale the break even is 4 bucks because you can get the job done by semiskilled people but you need skilled people to revise and supervise. Even though the story is highly unlikely when it comes to AI training with data you have to balance scale, legitimacy and budget. Nobody has figured that out.
- rchaud 5y agoGive a man a fish, you feed him for a day. Give a man a homemade shitcoin and insert yourself as the transaction processor middleman, and you feed yourself in perpetuity.
- strangattractor 5y agoFeed yourself in perpetuity and you make billions.
- TrapLord_Rhodo 5y agoWhy does everyone devolve into the same 'X entity is nefarious and they are trying to build a database to sell' or for x machine learning. Thats not what this is about. It's about identity. How do you prove identity of a wallet and ensure that this is my only one? Say i want to do an airdrop but only to real people? This technology solves the identity problem in a secure way. It's just a hash of my retina data, proves this is my wallet and is based on unique retina data. Also with ZK Snarks, they don't know anything about that bio data. But crypto is an adversarial network, so i don't see this solution working on it's own. I know biometric data is intrisically secure but is also intrincicly arbitrary. So, this data could be spoofed and will create this constant cat and mouse game where the parameters for verification are adjusted, creating centralization. But they are on the right path.
- boopboopbadoop 5y agoThey’re “devolving” because that’s exactly what the article says WorldCoin is doing: > 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.
- CPLX 5y ago> But they are on the right path. The right path to what, exactly? Is there any remotely plausible sequence of events where this evolves into a positive contribution to the world rather than a way for a couple billionaires to role-play as, well, whatever they are role-playing here?
- TrapLord_Rhodo 5y agoI like playing around in the crypto space. I always have. Using ZK-Snarks with biodata allows you to verify, profit and protect your data. Instead of handing it to some entity to do god knows with. I give it to apple and their database isn't just a hash, it's full and open catalouging with all my other data taken from the the many sensors in the phone and products. Worldcoin's vision is a positive contribution to my life and many people i know who also enjoy playing around in the crypto space. People are adults, let them be adults and make their own decisions. & stop bashing the crypto-autists like me who enjoy playing in the cryptoverse, for the only reason that it's wierd and different.
- Melting_Harps 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. Welcome to the business model of those who want to align their old business models of 'web2' with this re-packed new thing (but not really) and call it 'web3,' which is totally not a scam and not their to sell your data. Altman is the typical Valley trope tat Silicon Valley lambasted, and showed to be a hypocrite of the worst kind: those that sell an image of and 'making the world a better place' with insert inane startup name (Worldcoin, really?) attached to some pernicious data mining business model. Honestly, YC may still have tons of capital and some cache in the Valley, but outside of it, especially if you've actually been in the Bitcoin community you will see Altman's work for the same type of ICO scam that it is. And like most of these guys they're transplants to CA, which is no surprise. I really wish they'd stop trying to cling on to our disruptive culture, and perverting it with their headlong greed. Is he still CEO of OpenAI? At this point I'd consider it equally as scammy as this project. Honestly, I'm just wondering if they're going to hire Carlos Matos [0] for this shitcoin, too. 0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5nyQmaq4k4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5nyQmaq4k4
- imtringued 5y agoIt's not an unlaunched shitcoin. There is already a cryptocurrency called Worldcoin. This is actually a plain scam.