7 ms·

i guess in that world proof of identity becomes all more important.

by platz 3y ago

ta8645 3y ago
IMHO, the world is going to become much more authoritarian. What else to do when you can no longer trust even audio or video of any scene; when anyone can create video of any politician saying anything they want? In response, laws, control, and enforcement will likely become very strict.
- uticus 3y ago
  Plenty of people are willing to trade freedom for security, that's for sure.
  - ianai 3y ago
    Or, don’t take the Internet so seriously. Edit-It’s great for things that can be verified easily/safely yourself like food recipes or certain tech stuff. It’s dangerous for things with higher stakes. That’s when you want some “meatspace” corroboration.
    - ethbr0 3y ago
      "Grind a quarter cup (for each cupcake) of red cherry seeds in a mortar and pestle, then add to batter for a surprising flavor!"
      - noduerme 3y ago
        Well now you've done it. Watch this get picked up by an LLM.
        ethbr0 3y ago
        Sometimes, the world needs a little chaotic evil -- it's the only way we'll beat the machines.
      - ianai 3y ago
        Yes and blindly following that advice would hurt people but it wouldn’t topple a government or bring about world war 3. That’s my point. (But really if you’re cooking you should know about basic food dos/don’ts. Or at least check for safety sometimes.)
    - visarga 3y ago
      > Or, don’t take the Internet so seriously. Sounds awfully similar to how we see LLMs.
- MichaelZuo 3y ago
  Someone posting the audio or video from a verified identity account will still be taken seriously to some degree. Since they have real credibility at stake.
- progrus 3y ago
  They can try, but it won’t go well in the US. The future looks like decentralized identity protocols.
  - majormajor 3y ago
    Much of the US is pretty well-suited for an authoritarian regime. There are various groups, some of which tend to be highly geographically-clustered, with fairly high levels of trust of their own "team." And weapons are readily available to speed a transition to enforcement-by-the-local-majority vs enforcement-by-other-bodies (higher-level state or federal government). Breakdown of governance -> authoritarianism is a common sequence regardless of political lean of the new regime; and both sides think there's currently a breakdown of governance somewhere in the country. If you're Democrat-leaning, you'd read that as red states, of course, but even on the flip side: to some pundits places like SF are already starting to turn into a violent anarchy; a new, armed, local authority would be a logical followup step emerging out of that, sorta Mafia-style. I don't think this is likely - I don't think today's crises are unprecedented compared to the 1960s/70s or various earlier periods of American unrest - but there's nothing innate about America that would prevent it, and there are plenty of historical American examples of those in power using force to strictly control others.
    - progrus 3y ago
      > Breakdown of governance -> authoritarianism is a common sequence regardless of political lean of the new regime; The second amendment is an uncommon law. I do hope we never find out who is right on this one…
      - tourmalinetaco 3y ago
        > The second amendment is an uncommon law Even better, it’s a human right, one the federal government has been eroding in both the courts of public opinion and the actual courts for decades. Thankfully in most states it’s still legal to produce firearms, but I suggest getting them and becoming proficient sooner rather than later.
- jonhohle 3y ago
  Why does it need to be more authoritarian? Proof of identity can be done in a multitude of ways with existing technologies and protocols.is much rather have this federated and have to deal with an aggregator (like existing password, key, cert, TOTP, wallet), and get to choose the persona per interaction than be required to use a government issued identity for everything. If industry can figure this out, governments can keep their mitts out. It would be great to be able to import identities from businesses, agencies, and humans and use that as a first level filter for electronic messages of any type.
  - ta8645 3y ago
    That's exactly the point. The coming technology will be used to justify government sanctioned identity. But once everyone is uniquely identified, they can be uniquely punished. Think about the autocratic control by corporations today, with their limited scope. Now give that power to the government, across every property on the internet and off, with the ability to automate the process of punishment and banishment. It will make the pandemic Government Department of Truth and the resulting censorship look quaint. The tools are coming, and the authoritarian predilections of government aren't going to resist using them to the fullest.
  - pixl97 3y ago
    > governments can keep their mitts out. Governments could... governments won't. If you want to remain anonymous it's not impossible. With POI, well if you tie your identity in with any type of payment or address, well won't be too hard trace that back to your person. Very likely it will make it easier to trace down all your internet communications if used with that same ID.
- majormajor 3y ago
  Go back a hundred and fifty years and you didn't have audio or video of scenes anyway. You had a bunch of hearsay and unreliable information still, but at a different scale. I think we'll get more "reputation-based" choosiness (not some sort of algorithmic reputation-score, more individually measured, and no, that won't be perfect for anyone) but I don't believe that authoritarianism is also a natural response. Yes, the scale of spam will be far higher than ever before. But I expect people to largely normalize/filter a lot of that out. The elderly will probably be most at risk, still, or even just those of us with habits that formed out of "Wikipedia is mostly reliable" or "random people on Reddit are generally trustworthy" etc, which will be exploited for a while before most of us move on. Most people have been mostly wrong about most things for most of history.
  - visarga 3y ago
    A more practical way to deal with adversarial content would be a "filter" AI we can use like AdBlock to hide the nuisances. You can have your own preferences, not the ones prevailing on any platform you want to visit. It is possible to do this with current day technology. Pinbot (was on HN 3 days ago) has a transformer model for embeddings. It could also filter any topic or type of content we want, and the kicker - it runs all in the browser, private and no internet connection required We can just tick a box to avoid Elon, Bitcoin, or various kinds of hype and activism, it works by semantic matching, so it understands phrase variations. Or maybe we just want to skip the occasional cat videos. The solution to the current situation is end user empowerment, we can make our own AI filters.
    - majormajor 3y ago
      I've seen this in some sci-fi stories, it makes a lot of sense, but I have a personal hunch that setting up a filtering solution on various feeds of mostly-crap is going to be too much effort for most people, and they'll just slowly abandon the crap-feeds for anything beyond the most trivial sorts of entertainment. And then you could see something like a move from commenting on Twitter about news articles linked out to going back to going directly to the source and discussing things with other "verified subscribers" (whether paid or otherwise verified) there. Even in a "free, but ad supported" world it wouldn't surprise me to see outlets push for more "I'm a real reader and commenter" verification to keep their ad rates up.

i guess in that world proof of identity becomes all more important.

by platz 3y ago

i guess in that world proof of identity becomes all more important.

IMHO, the world is going to become much more authoritarian. What else to do when you can no longer trust even audio or video of any scene; when anyone can create video of any politician saying anything they want? In response, laws, control, and enforcement will likely become very strict.

uticus 3y ago
Plenty of people are willing to trade freedom for security, that's for sure.
- ianai 3y ago
  Or, don’t take the Internet so seriously. Edit-It’s great for things that can be verified easily/safely yourself like food recipes or certain tech stuff. It’s dangerous for things with higher stakes. That’s when you want some “meatspace” corroboration.
  - ethbr0 3y ago
    "Grind a quarter cup (for each cupcake) of red cherry seeds in a mortar and pestle, then add to batter for a surprising flavor!"
    - noduerme 3y ago
      Well now you've done it. Watch this get picked up by an LLM.
      - ethbr0 3y ago
        Sometimes, the world needs a little chaotic evil -- it's the only way we'll beat the machines.
    - ianai 3y ago
      Yes and blindly following that advice would hurt people but it wouldn’t topple a government or bring about world war 3. That’s my point. (But really if you’re cooking you should know about basic food dos/don’ts. Or at least check for safety sometimes.)
  - visarga 3y ago
    > Or, don’t take the Internet so seriously. Sounds awfully similar to how we see LLMs.
MichaelZuo 3y ago
Someone posting the audio or video from a verified identity account will still be taken seriously to some degree. Since they have real credibility at stake.
progrus 3y ago
They can try, but it won’t go well in the US. The future looks like decentralized identity protocols.
- majormajor 3y ago
  Much of the US is pretty well-suited for an authoritarian regime. There are various groups, some of which tend to be highly geographically-clustered, with fairly high levels of trust of their own "team." And weapons are readily available to speed a transition to enforcement-by-the-local-majority vs enforcement-by-other-bodies (higher-level state or federal government). Breakdown of governance -> authoritarianism is a common sequence regardless of political lean of the new regime; and both sides think there's currently a breakdown of governance somewhere in the country. If you're Democrat-leaning, you'd read that as red states, of course, but even on the flip side: to some pundits places like SF are already starting to turn into a violent anarchy; a new, armed, local authority would be a logical followup step emerging out of that, sorta Mafia-style. I don't think this is likely - I don't think today's crises are unprecedented compared to the 1960s/70s or various earlier periods of American unrest - but there's nothing innate about America that would prevent it, and there are plenty of historical American examples of those in power using force to strictly control others.
  - progrus 3y ago
    > Breakdown of governance -> authoritarianism is a common sequence regardless of political lean of the new regime; The second amendment is an uncommon law. I do hope we never find out who is right on this one…
    - tourmalinetaco 3y ago
      > The second amendment is an uncommon law Even better, it’s a human right, one the federal government has been eroding in both the courts of public opinion and the actual courts for decades. Thankfully in most states it’s still legal to produce firearms, but I suggest getting them and becoming proficient sooner rather than later.
jonhohle 3y ago
Why does it need to be more authoritarian? Proof of identity can be done in a multitude of ways with existing technologies and protocols.is much rather have this federated and have to deal with an aggregator (like existing password, key, cert, TOTP, wallet), and get to choose the persona per interaction than be required to use a government issued identity for everything. If industry can figure this out, governments can keep their mitts out. It would be great to be able to import identities from businesses, agencies, and humans and use that as a first level filter for electronic messages of any type.
- ta8645 3y ago
  That's exactly the point. The coming technology will be used to justify government sanctioned identity. But once everyone is uniquely identified, they can be uniquely punished. Think about the autocratic control by corporations today, with their limited scope. Now give that power to the government, across every property on the internet and off, with the ability to automate the process of punishment and banishment. It will make the pandemic Government Department of Truth and the resulting censorship look quaint. The tools are coming, and the authoritarian predilections of government aren't going to resist using them to the fullest.
- pixl97 3y ago
  > governments can keep their mitts out. Governments could... governments won't. If you want to remain anonymous it's not impossible. With POI, well if you tie your identity in with any type of payment or address, well won't be too hard trace that back to your person. Very likely it will make it easier to trace down all your internet communications if used with that same ID.
majormajor 3y ago
Go back a hundred and fifty years and you didn't have audio or video of scenes anyway. You had a bunch of hearsay and unreliable information still, but at a different scale. I think we'll get more "reputation-based" choosiness (not some sort of algorithmic reputation-score, more individually measured, and no, that won't be perfect for anyone) but I don't believe that authoritarianism is also a natural response. Yes, the scale of spam will be far higher than ever before. But I expect people to largely normalize/filter a lot of that out. The elderly will probably be most at risk, still, or even just those of us with habits that formed out of "Wikipedia is mostly reliable" or "random people on Reddit are generally trustworthy" etc, which will be exploited for a while before most of us move on. Most people have been mostly wrong about most things for most of history.
- visarga 3y ago
  A more practical way to deal with adversarial content would be a "filter" AI we can use like AdBlock to hide the nuisances. You can have your own preferences, not the ones prevailing on any platform you want to visit. It is possible to do this with current day technology. Pinbot (was on HN 3 days ago) has a transformer model for embeddings. It could also filter any topic or type of content we want, and the kicker - it runs all in the browser, private and no internet connection required We can just tick a box to avoid Elon, Bitcoin, or various kinds of hype and activism, it works by semantic matching, so it understands phrase variations. Or maybe we just want to skip the occasional cat videos. The solution to the current situation is end user empowerment, we can make our own AI filters.
  - majormajor 3y ago
    I've seen this in some sci-fi stories, it makes a lot of sense, but I have a personal hunch that setting up a filtering solution on various feeds of mostly-crap is going to be too much effort for most people, and they'll just slowly abandon the crap-feeds for anything beyond the most trivial sorts of entertainment. And then you could see something like a move from commenting on Twitter about news articles linked out to going back to going directly to the source and discussing things with other "verified subscribers" (whether paid or otherwise verified) there. Even in a "free, but ad supported" world it wouldn't surprise me to see outlets push for more "I'm a real reader and commenter" verification to keep their ad rates up.