11 ms·

'Verified human': Worldcoin users queue up for iris scans

79 points by baal80spam 3y ago

netbioserror 3y ago
We must be entering some strange perverted era where "skepticism" is a poisoned, dirty word, because not too long ago this would've been considered an insane proposition to be welcomed in by insane people. I'm inclined to give a layman's diagnosis: A whole generation, maybe two, raised with almost no suspicion of power...except when the conformist narrative permits performative suspicion.
- hooverd 3y ago
  <crank warning> I think having a little bit of slop in a human system is good. A world where your freedoms and responsibilities are entirely managed by computers, like an AWS IAM role for people, sounds awful, and this project seems to want to go there.
- pavlov 3y ago
  Skepticism has been largely hijacked by those with an anti-democratic or downright reactionary agenda. A generation raised on “contrarian” and “anti-conformist” YouTube influencers is skeptical of democratic power and international institutions, but willing to give a free pass to billionaires and any other kind of power that operates via ruthlessly deployed private property. Worldcoin fits this mold and so it will find fans.
  - matrix_overload 3y ago
    I'm not sure it's anti-democratic and can think of a few examples: * Skepticism over mass vaccination (as opposed to at-risk groups only). Shut up, anti-vaxer, you're anti-democratic. Backed by Big Pharma. * Skepticism over climate change policy (asking middle class to reduce expectations, rather than cranking down on planned obsolescence and offshore production). Shut up, climate denier, you're anti-democratic. Backed by the companies doing offshoring and using climate as selling point. * Skepticism over affirmative action (as in discriminating people based on skin color in Academia, rather than making it easier for ALL parents to teach things to their kids). Shut up, you racist. Backed by the billion-dollar DEI industry billing enormous rates to public institutions. I can give many more examples where valid skepticism is immediately conflated with the nearest crazy idea nobody actually cares about (like the actual KKK), and is shut down on that basis by those who have a vested interest in not being scrutinized.
    - pavlov 3y ago
      > "Skepticism over mass vaccination" All successful vaccination is mass vaccination. That's the whole point. Would we be rid of polio if we'd only vaccinated the 5% of population who were most at risk?
      - matrix_overload 3y ago
        Hello, numbers. Every infection has an R0 rate (average number of people infected by a single infected person). If it's greater than 1, the infection spreads exponentially. If it's lower than 1, it peters out. Vaccinating X% of people pushes R0 lower by X * N, where N depends on mutation rate, how good is the vaccine at preventing the spread (vs. reducing symptoms), etc. R0 is also affected by seasonality, immunity from earlier infections, etc. Polio doesn't mutate as fast, the vaccine lasts long time, and prevents both symptoms and the spread. R0 drops below 1, polio defeated. COVID mutates much faster, has one of the highest R0 rates among known diseases, vaccine lasts a limited time, considerably reduces mortality rate (which isn't much of a concern for fit healthy adults under 50), and somewhat reduces the spread. It pushes the R0 number somewhat down, but not below 1. What actually ended the pandemic was the Omicron variant that mysteriously grew much faster in the upper respiratory tract, and got your body to start fighting it before it did anything to the lungs. It still has enough R0, but the symptoms are so mild, it became mostly indistinguishable from common cold, so people stopped caring. Had we vaccinated the at-risk groups, and given strong incentives for others to lose weight and start exercising, we could have arrived at the same, or lower death toll with much less taxpayer money going towards the Big Pharma.
      - cempaka 3y ago
        Always helps to have vaccines that actually work to prevent transmission too.
      - Vecr 3y ago
        There clearly are risk factors for paralytic Polio disease but it's likely to be in the very complex interaction between the person's genome and the environment, causing variability in certain types of immune responses. Even now it's not very clear how you would go about testing for them in advance. In the 1950s the "risk group" for a specific serotype of Polio virus is that you were statistically less likely to already have been infected with that serotype. They found out the Salk vaccine was almost entirely ineffective against transmissions pretty quick as well.
  - TechBro8615 3y ago
    There's nothing wrong with being skeptical of Democracy, as people have been since Ancient Greece. More recently there's the famous Churchill quote, "Democracy is the worst form of government, except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."
    - pavlov 3y ago
      It's good to be skeptical of how democracy is implemented and executed at any given time. (IMHO Americans in particular should be much more skeptical of their 18th century constitution rather than treat it as scripture.) It's not good to be knee-jerk skeptical of everything that defined the post-WWII rules-based international system while idolizing billionaire founders and their corporate power. We had some good things figured out by the 1990s. It wasn't the proverbial "end of history" but IMO we need more of the cooperative spirit and respect for human rights that got us there, not less.
  - delfinom 3y ago
    >YouTube influencers is skeptical of democratic power and international institutions, but willing to give a free pass to billionaires and any other kind of power that operates via ruthlessly deployed private property. Because they have temporarily poor millionaire syndrome.
  - api 3y ago
    "The mainstream media and governments lie and make mistakes, so I am going to mindlessly believe everything this random asshole on YouTube says instead!"
  - skrebbel 3y ago
    I agree with this observation but it bothers me to no end how eagerly the non-reactionary “mainstream” opinion has let them hijack it. A little bit of skepticism is healthy! This new trend of dismissing every non-conforming opinion is as bad as the conspiracy nut wave it’s trying to fight. I’m not sure what the solution is but I’m not sure that shutting down every slightly uncommon opinion is it. (I recognize that this comment is exactly what a savvy troll would say and well I guess that’s kinda part of my point)
  - throw10920 3y ago
    I bet you think that Jeffrey Epstein killed himself, too. There's no "hijacking" occurring except in your mind. Your preferred political tribe also engages in its share of conspiracy-adjacent skepticism.
- matrix_overload 3y ago
  A whole generation has been asked to take the backseat and just keep themselves busy, while the big guys do serious business. USSR tried that very approach, and you can see in the history books how well it unfolded for them.
- soligern 3y ago
  Skepticism has been muddied by right wing conspiracy theorists and now people equate healthy skepticism with mild insanity.
  - onetokeoverthe 3y ago
    [dead]
  - renegat0x0 3y ago
    Sometimes we do not look though our eyes, but though lenses of somebody else. Although right wing conspiracy theorists exist, also left wing theorists exist. We should not sat that skepticism is muddied by anybody, because it is muddied by they media that presents their view on they world, which Has muddied our skepticism.
- nonameking2026 3y ago
  Vaccinated?
- uLogMicheal 3y ago
  Skepticism these days only requires incrementing the number of bots you want to flood your agenda.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  And far too many people mistakenly think "skeptical" means "distrustful".
dadjoker 3y ago
Nothing creepy about this....
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
getmeinrn 3y ago
Here's EPIC's statement on why Worldcoin is a "potential privacy nightmare": >Worldcoin is a potential privacy nightmare that offers a biometrics-dependent vision of digital identity and cryptocurrency, and would place Sam Altman’s Tools for Humanity company at the center of digital governance. Worldcoin’s approach creates serious privacy risks by bribing the poorest and most vulnerable people to turn over unchangeable biometrics like iris scans and facial recognition images in exchange for a small payout. Mass collections of biometrics like Worldcoin threaten people’s privacy on a grand scale, both if the company misuses the information it collects, and if that data is stolen. Ultimately, Worldcoin wants to become the default digital ID and a global currency without democratic buy-in at the start, that alone is a compelling reason not to turn over your biometrics, personal information, and geolocation data to a private company. We urge regulatory agencies around the world to closely scrutinize Worldcoin. https://epic.org/epic-statement-on-privacy-risks-of-worldcoin/ https://epic.org/epic-statement-on-privacy-risks-of-worldcoi...
- Twirrim 3y ago
  > unchangeable biometrics Except for, say, glaucoma, detached retinas, injuries, all sorts of stuff that can impact the eyes. Sorry, you've been involved in a serious accident, you can no longer get your money!
  - drewry 3y ago
    They address this in the whitepaper[0]: > To validate the quality of the algorithms at scale, their performance was evaluated by collecting 2.5 million pairs of high-resolution infrared iris images from 303 different subjects. These subjects represent diversity across a range of characteristics, including eye color, skin tone, ethnicity, age, presence of makeup and eye disease or defects. > It is important to note that many health conditions, like cataracts to a certain degree, do not impede iris biometrics. Already today, iris biometrics surpass the inclusivity of other PoP verification alternatives like official IDs since less than 50% of the global population has digitally verifiable identities. However, if the proof of personhood mechanism becomes essential for society, it is important that eventually every single person can verify if they want to. Although not currently established, there could be specialized verification centers to facilitate alternative means of verification for individuals with eye conditions, via e.g. facial biometrics. The introduction of alternative means of verification for World ID could potentially create loopholes. [0] https://whitepaper.worldcoin.org/ https://whitepaper.worldcoin.org/
thepasswordis 3y ago
Did they try to make the scanner look as creepy as possible?
- arittr 3y ago
  Honestly I think so, yes.
- pimlottc 3y ago
  Where do you see a picture of the scanner, I don't see any photos on the submitted link?
  - capableweb 3y ago
    https://www.google.com/search?q=worldcoin&hl=EN&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1440&bih=858&sclient=img https://www.google.com/search?q=worldcoin&hl=EN&tbm=isch&sou...
    - mr_sturd 3y ago
      It's just missing a pair of electrodes for the users to hold on to - they can sell their thetan levels for a few extra coins.
walterbell 3y ago
Handful of comments on 2022 article, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36850993 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36850993
capableweb 3y ago
"What do I (Vitalik Buterin) think about biometric proof of personhood?" - https://vitalik.ca/general/2023/07/24/biometric.html https://vitalik.ca/general/2023/07/24/biometric.html - Has a bunch of alternatives and more thinking about the problem. On HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36849277 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36849277
- pavlov 3y ago
  One of the tech industry’s greatest snake oil peddlers maybe isn’t the right person to look to provide solutions here.
  - EddieJLSH 3y ago
    How is Vitalik a "snake oil peddler"?
    - pavlov 3y ago
      If Ethereum is a global supercomputer, my miniature dachshund sitting on a copper penny is the dragon Smaug.
  - capableweb 3y ago
    As far as I know, he personally isn't responsible/involved with any of the alternative solutions here, he's merely listing them/talking about them to contextualize the conversation further.
m3kw9 3y ago
must be a good reason Apple designed facial scans to be kept inside a device instead of a server.
accountinhn 3y ago
Some previous discussions: 2022 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30931614 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30931614 2021 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28998065 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28998065 2021 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28947468 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28947468 Don't have any big thought provoking comments other than the fact this makes me feel a bit more sadder :(
RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago
Sam Altman is rapidly climbing the list of villainous rich people. He seems to be actively working to bring about a very dystopian future in a way that Zuckerberg or Gates never did.
libraryatnight 3y ago
"It's free money!" People are insane. We're just giving everything away.
hooverd 3y ago
If only we could get ByteDance or Tencent to buy into this. Not that it would improve it, but the CPC association would be the kiss of death.
Arch485 3y ago
I can't wait for people's irises to be redlisted by some organization, permanently locking them out of all services that organization provides.
- uLogMicheal 3y ago
  Cross service bans too. They are actively creating a web of identity connected to the most powerful LLMs. What can go wrong?
demizer 3y ago
And here I am thinking the Toyota app for my new minivan was asking for too much. I hate the direction tech is going.
- potatototoo99 3y ago
  Tech isn't going anywhere. This is just a rich guy on Twitter sharing his pyramid scheme. It will be forgotten in a week just like it was forgotten when it launched years ago.
fvdessen 3y ago
"Proof of Personhood" is indeed a critical component of internet infrastructure. In Belgium we have an app for that called "Itsme" and it is becoming more and more the go-to single-sign-on tool. Instead of scanning your iris it asks your bank or government to confirm your identity when you set-up your account. I believe the EU commission is working towards standardising those protocols so apps like Itsme will work EU wide, maybe even worldwide. As for privacy I don't see a big problem as for most online services I don't want to actually be anonymous towards the service provider, just towards the general web, and the online services should respect that according to the GDPR
- JohnFen 3y ago
  > In Belgium we have an app for that called "Itsme" That doesn't sound like proof-of-personhood, it sounds like proof-of-identity.
  - fvdessen 3y ago
    Itsme identifies you as a person. You can't have multiple accounts. So a Itsme signature is a proof of personhood (in addition to a proof of identity)
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      Right. All proofs of identity also act as proofs of personhood, but "proof of personhood" isn't the same. You can have a proof of personhood that doesn't identify which exact person you are.
      - fvdessen 3y ago
        Indeed! I believe Itsme also has the ability to provide anonymised tokens -- to be able to vote online -- but nobody uses it yet
  - neolefty 3y ago
    A UBI coin like WorldCoin needs proof-of-identity as well, to prevent duplicate payouts.
ozr 3y ago
This is a 'reasonable response' to the current AI wave by people that subscribe to the Effective Altruism/LessWrong/AI-Doomer mythos. If AGI is created and then removes the need for any human to work, UBI (or the like) would be essential. You'd want to avoid abuse, so you also need to uniquely verify each person receiving it. I don't think the people involved in this are ignorant to the concerns, they just see it as inevitable based on their ideas about the future. > The orb was necessary, the website continued, because of Worldcoin’s commitment to fairness: each person should get his or her allotted share of the digital currency—and no more. To ensure there was no double-dipping, the chrome orb would scan participants’ irises and several other biometric data points and then, using a proprietary algorithm that the company was still developing, cryptographically confirm that they were human and unique in Worldcoin’s database. > “I’ve been very interested in things like universal basic income and what’s going to happen to global wealth redistribution,” Sam Altman, Worldcoin’s cofounder and the former President of Silicon Valley accelerator Y Combinator, told Bloomberg, which first reported on the company last summer. Worldcoin was intended, he explained, to answer the question “Is there a way we can use technology to do that at a global scale?” A common response from Altman when asked about the benefits of AGI is "I think eliminating poverty is good". This is what he's talking about. Of course, this redistribution doesn't apply to him, early employees, or investors: > Others took issue with the company’s purported focus on fairness given that 20% of the coins had already been allocated: 10% to Worldcoin’s full-time employees, and another 10% to investors, like Andreessen Horowitz. https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/04/06/1048981/worldcoin-cryptocurrency-biometrics-web3/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/04/06/1048981/worldcoi...
- dgs_sgd 3y ago
  If the need for UBI due to AGI arises then wouldn’t biometric proof of personhood be dead in the water? Spoofing irises seems well within the realm of a sophisticated AI.
  - ozr 3y ago
    Any sufficiently AI would be under the control of some trustworthy entity. Preferably one. It's too dangerous otherwise. (I don't agree with this, but it's a common perspective amongst this crowd).
bambax 3y ago
> Worldcoin's data-collection is a "potential privacy nightmare," said the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a U.S. privacy campaigner. > Ali, a 22-year-old chemical engineering student... (...) "I told my brother about it this morning. I told him 'it's free money, you want to come with me to get it?'" I wonder what you can get people to do with the promise of money? Could you have them play Russian roulette? How many people would accept? If there was a way to make it seem real and convincing (without being real of course!) it would be a fascinating experiment.
jonesjohnson 3y ago
> Hackers have installed password-stealing malware on the devices of multiple Worldcoin Orb operators, TechCrunch has learned, giving them full access to the Worldcoin operator dashboard. https://techcrunch.com/2023/05/12/hackers-stole-passwords-of-worldcoin-orb-operators https://techcrunch.com/2023/05/12/hackers-stole-passwords-of...
- uLogMicheal 3y ago
  This thing is going to get exploited to oblivion. They already have a culture to counter feedback. Good luck interfacing with security researchers.
kmeisthax 3y ago
Create the problem (AI-assisted spam), sell the solution (centralized identity verification)
- uLogMicheal 3y ago
  If they really cared about the spam, wouldn't they crack down internally on use of bots for manipulation? To my knowledge no ToS or internal rules against this type of deception exist.
malikNF 3y ago
Theres a tweet going around claiming that people are scanning the iris of poor villages and getting the “reward” for themselves. https://twitter.com/BlockBeatsAsia/status/1659060950748782594 https://twitter.com/BlockBeatsAsia/status/165906095074878259... This whole project is creepy and disgusting.
- TacticalCoder 3y ago
  Not dissimilar to when the USSR imploded: the (ex-)komrades were given shares of the company they were working in. Some evil people who then use different means to collect those shares. Apparently at times driving with trucks full of vodka and exchanging the company shares for a pack of bottles of vodka. The project is creepy but the scammers stealing others from their fair share are just downright evil people.
- uLogMicheal 3y ago
  Eyeball bounties are now a thing. Which country / mercenary group will round them up first to take all the worldcoin? They really should have thought of the implications of creating an incentive market for iris scans.
LispSporks22 3y ago
This one in particular makes me feel like I've woken up in a dystopia.
cproctor 3y ago
Who would have thought that "apocalyptic science fiction author" would be included in the professions made obsolete by tech?
zorrolovsky 3y ago
In the article, the sentiment from many people is: companies already own my data anyway, so at least I'm getting something this time". In other words, the malicious actions from data predators (FAANG et al.) and the negligence from governments and regulators to protect the public have led individuals to learned helplessness. It's a dire and depressing situation. The bad guys have won, and people don't have the means or knowledge to fight back. That's why I donate to the Electronic Frontier Foundation and similar orgs. It's the only way to show the middle finger to the bad guys.
koolba 3y ago
Putting aside the insanity of people lining up to be cataloged by a private company, what's to stop someone from scanning the eyeballs of a dog? And how does this work if you only have one eye?
AraceliHarker 3y ago
I'm sure Sam Altman can't stop laughing because people willingly give their privacy to a venture company they don't really understand, just to issue a virtual currency that's worth a couple of bucks.
- rvz 3y ago
  Exactly. A government or a three letter agency would find it difficult to do just that and will quickly run into lots of trust issues. Now with Worldcoin, Sam is selling the solution (proof-of-personhood) to the problem he created with ChatGPT (AI spam, deep fakes, etc) and could be easily working with those same governments who would have always wanted to get people to sleep-walk into handing over their digital identity. The main difference? Worldcoin is doing it all out in the open. Sam is actually worse than Zuckerberg.
intrasight 3y ago
I am reminded that $5 cash for signing up was how PayPay quickly scaled. Beneficial knock-on effects to society from that were: reusable rockets, satellite internet, electric cars, and the death of Twitter.
jessenaser 3y ago
I see some comments talking about how proof of personhood is necessary, however the way that Worldcoin does it leaves a gap between the cryptographic proof keys and the identity. TL;DR there isn’t a way to connect biometrics to key pairs unless the key pairs are generated using biometrics (very insecure) or the orb attests that they are unique from a hardware signature to Worldcoin (which means Worldcoin is a central issuer of identity and controls global identity). If you want to read more I wrote on HN a few months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35457769 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35457769 There must be another way.
aabiji 3y ago
Just for context, does WorldCoin actually save your iris information somewhere, or are the scans just a one time thing to generate your WorldId? The thought of iris scanning is slightly creepy, but I'm curious ...
- calderknight 3y ago
  Doesn't leave the Orb, and is deleted immediately.
wonderwonder 3y ago
looking forward to a rise in crime where the victim had his eyes removed.
- rootw0rm 3y ago
  obligatory scene from Demolition Man: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7R_FF5O1d4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7R_FF5O1d4
rvz 3y ago
This is exactly how to trick the masses into a new system like Worldcoin. Give them that free money and take their digital identity from them. A leaf out of China's digital Yuan CBDC rollout. [0] Governments are now taking notes on how to perform a perfect rollout of a CBDC without alarming the masses with its dystopian drawbacks or the so-called 'conspiracy theorists' discovering their plans and leaking it before it launches. Given that Worldcoin was essentially out there in the open, it was already too late to even begin to stop them. Especially when Sam Altman has been talking to governments about both creating the poison (ChatGPT/AI fakes) and selling the cure / solution (Worldcoin). You are watching the creation of another 'personhood' data broker / collector using an Orb to verify / KYC people and give them free money. Something that would make governments and three letter agencies incredibly jealous. [0] https://www.reuters.com/markets/currencies/china-uses-digital-yuan-stimulate-virus-hit-consumption-2022-05-30/ https://www.reuters.com/markets/currencies/china-uses-digita...
ShowalkKama 3y ago
>Applicants lined up to have their irises scanned by the device, before waiting for the 25 free Worldcoin tokens the company says verified users can claim. that's a one time payment of 57$ https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/worldcoin-org/ https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/worldcoin-org/
0xbadc0de5 3y ago
I prefer my cyberpunk dystopia to remain fiction. I'm starting to suspect Sam Altman is a closet accelerationist.
glimshe 3y ago
That would make Sam Altman one of the most powerful humans in history. Technical problems aside, what has he done to deserve this trust?
w4lker 3y ago
> Christian, a 34-year-old graphic designer, said he was taking part because he was "intrigued". He follows developments in artificial intelligence (AI) and crypto, buying cryptocurrencies "just for fun". > >"I think going forward AI will be hard to distinguish from human and I think this potentially solves that problem and that’s pretty amazing," he said, declining to give his full name for privacy reasons. ... Its just me, or it sounds ironic?
ChrisArchitect 3y ago
This garbage? Thought we all decided to ignore this back in the NFT daze a year, nay, two years ago.
lonk 3y ago
what if I scan eye picture, or CGI eye animation, or high quality photo of someone else's eye?
alexpotato 3y ago
To give some historical insight into identity, I highly suggest people read: "Fingerprints:The Origins of Crime Detection and the Murder Case that Launched Forensic Science" by Colin Beavan The overall book is excellent and good balance of the science and history wrapped around an interesting murder case. The part of the book that felt most apropos to this HN comment thread is this: In the 1800's there were multiple countries with large populations (by 1800s standards0 where a majority of the population had essentially zero identity documents. This made it trivial for criminals to commit a crime, get caught, move to a different region and commit the exact same crime over and over again. On the flip side, the book highlights a case where an innocent person is charged with a crime due to a passing resemblance to a criminal. There was no way to prove the innocent person was NOT the criminal and therefore the charge stood. The goal of bringing this up isn't to say "100% we need digital ID!" but rather to help provide some balance to a discussion on the pros and cons of having "an identity" that is easily verifiable.
- kaliqt 3y ago
  To counter-balance... we should realize that if there's a way to 1:1 identify people, then "they" (they is whoever happens to rule over you at any given time, because lord knows we haven't the power to rule our own lives) will require identity even when you don't want to give it. Sure everything seems nice now, but when they force all to be part of the network, or else, then they have even further control, possibly total control. So it's not something to tread into lightly. Make sure the means of technological progress is in the hands of the user, not outside powers. This means crypto(graphy)(includes crypto currency, but also DID, etc.), it means running AI locally rather than in the cloud, it means even things as simple as hydroponics in the home and in public spaces. At the end of the day, technological advancement is a fine line between beneficial progress and absolute tyranny at this stage.
nitwit005 3y ago
Presumably, the reason they want you to show up in person to one of their "orbs", is to stop people from submitting generated biometrics to extract the free money. But, if I already have someone's biometrics for some other purpose, I presume I can use that to pretend to be them? It just seems like an inconvenient password you can't change.

79 points by baal80spam 3y ago

We must be entering some strange perverted era where "skepticism" is a poisoned, dirty word, because not too long ago this would've been considered an insane proposition to be welcomed in by insane people. I'm inclined to give a layman's diagnosis: A whole generation, maybe two, raised with almost no suspicion of power...except when the conformist narrative permits performative suspicion.

hooverd 3y ago
<crank warning> I think having a little bit of slop in a human system is good. A world where your freedoms and responsibilities are entirely managed by computers, like an AWS IAM role for people, sounds awful, and this project seems to want to go there.
pavlov 3y ago
Skepticism has been largely hijacked by those with an anti-democratic or downright reactionary agenda. A generation raised on “contrarian” and “anti-conformist” YouTube influencers is skeptical of democratic power and international institutions, but willing to give a free pass to billionaires and any other kind of power that operates via ruthlessly deployed private property. Worldcoin fits this mold and so it will find fans.
- matrix_overload 3y ago
  I'm not sure it's anti-democratic and can think of a few examples: * Skepticism over mass vaccination (as opposed to at-risk groups only). Shut up, anti-vaxer, you're anti-democratic. Backed by Big Pharma. * Skepticism over climate change policy (asking middle class to reduce expectations, rather than cranking down on planned obsolescence and offshore production). Shut up, climate denier, you're anti-democratic. Backed by the companies doing offshoring and using climate as selling point. * Skepticism over affirmative action (as in discriminating people based on skin color in Academia, rather than making it easier for ALL parents to teach things to their kids). Shut up, you racist. Backed by the billion-dollar DEI industry billing enormous rates to public institutions. I can give many more examples where valid skepticism is immediately conflated with the nearest crazy idea nobody actually cares about (like the actual KKK), and is shut down on that basis by those who have a vested interest in not being scrutinized.
  - pavlov 3y ago
    > "Skepticism over mass vaccination" All successful vaccination is mass vaccination. That's the whole point. Would we be rid of polio if we'd only vaccinated the 5% of population who were most at risk?
    - matrix_overload 3y ago
      Hello, numbers. Every infection has an R0 rate (average number of people infected by a single infected person). If it's greater than 1, the infection spreads exponentially. If it's lower than 1, it peters out. Vaccinating X% of people pushes R0 lower by X * N, where N depends on mutation rate, how good is the vaccine at preventing the spread (vs. reducing symptoms), etc. R0 is also affected by seasonality, immunity from earlier infections, etc. Polio doesn't mutate as fast, the vaccine lasts long time, and prevents both symptoms and the spread. R0 drops below 1, polio defeated. COVID mutates much faster, has one of the highest R0 rates among known diseases, vaccine lasts a limited time, considerably reduces mortality rate (which isn't much of a concern for fit healthy adults under 50), and somewhat reduces the spread. It pushes the R0 number somewhat down, but not below 1. What actually ended the pandemic was the Omicron variant that mysteriously grew much faster in the upper respiratory tract, and got your body to start fighting it before it did anything to the lungs. It still has enough R0, but the symptoms are so mild, it became mostly indistinguishable from common cold, so people stopped caring. Had we vaccinated the at-risk groups, and given strong incentives for others to lose weight and start exercising, we could have arrived at the same, or lower death toll with much less taxpayer money going towards the Big Pharma.
    - cempaka 3y ago
      Always helps to have vaccines that actually work to prevent transmission too.
    - Vecr 3y ago
      There clearly are risk factors for paralytic Polio disease but it's likely to be in the very complex interaction between the person's genome and the environment, causing variability in certain types of immune responses. Even now it's not very clear how you would go about testing for them in advance. In the 1950s the "risk group" for a specific serotype of Polio virus is that you were statistically less likely to already have been infected with that serotype. They found out the Salk vaccine was almost entirely ineffective against transmissions pretty quick as well.
- TechBro8615 3y ago
  There's nothing wrong with being skeptical of Democracy, as people have been since Ancient Greece. More recently there's the famous Churchill quote, "Democracy is the worst form of government, except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."
  - pavlov 3y ago
    It's good to be skeptical of how democracy is implemented and executed at any given time. (IMHO Americans in particular should be much more skeptical of their 18th century constitution rather than treat it as scripture.) It's not good to be knee-jerk skeptical of everything that defined the post-WWII rules-based international system while idolizing billionaire founders and their corporate power. We had some good things figured out by the 1990s. It wasn't the proverbial "end of history" but IMO we need more of the cooperative spirit and respect for human rights that got us there, not less.
- delfinom 3y ago
  >YouTube influencers is skeptical of democratic power and international institutions, but willing to give a free pass to billionaires and any other kind of power that operates via ruthlessly deployed private property. Because they have temporarily poor millionaire syndrome.
- api 3y ago
  "The mainstream media and governments lie and make mistakes, so I am going to mindlessly believe everything this random asshole on YouTube says instead!"
- skrebbel 3y ago
  I agree with this observation but it bothers me to no end how eagerly the non-reactionary “mainstream” opinion has let them hijack it. A little bit of skepticism is healthy! This new trend of dismissing every non-conforming opinion is as bad as the conspiracy nut wave it’s trying to fight. I’m not sure what the solution is but I’m not sure that shutting down every slightly uncommon opinion is it. (I recognize that this comment is exactly what a savvy troll would say and well I guess that’s kinda part of my point)
- throw10920 3y ago
  I bet you think that Jeffrey Epstein killed himself, too. There's no "hijacking" occurring except in your mind. Your preferred political tribe also engages in its share of conspiracy-adjacent skepticism.
matrix_overload 3y ago
A whole generation has been asked to take the backseat and just keep themselves busy, while the big guys do serious business. USSR tried that very approach, and you can see in the history books how well it unfolded for them.
soligern 3y ago
Skepticism has been muddied by right wing conspiracy theorists and now people equate healthy skepticism with mild insanity.
- onetokeoverthe 3y ago
  [dead]
- renegat0x0 3y ago
  Sometimes we do not look though our eyes, but though lenses of somebody else. Although right wing conspiracy theorists exist, also left wing theorists exist. We should not sat that skepticism is muddied by anybody, because it is muddied by they media that presents their view on they world, which Has muddied our skepticism.
nonameking2026 3y ago
Vaccinated?
uLogMicheal 3y ago
Skepticism these days only requires incrementing the number of bots you want to flood your agenda.
JohnFen 3y ago
And far too many people mistakenly think "skeptical" means "distrustful".

dadjoker 3y ago

Nothing creepy about this....

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

getmeinrn 3y ago

Here's EPIC's statement on why Worldcoin is a "potential privacy nightmare": >Worldcoin is a potential privacy nightmare that offers a biometrics-dependent vision of digital identity and cryptocurrency, and would place Sam Altman’s Tools for Humanity company at the center of digital governance. Worldcoin’s approach creates serious privacy risks by bribing the poorest and most vulnerable people to turn over unchangeable biometrics like iris scans and facial recognition images in exchange for a small payout. Mass collections of biometrics like Worldcoin threaten people’s privacy on a grand scale, both if the company misuses the information it collects, and if that data is stolen. Ultimately, Worldcoin wants to become the default digital ID and a global currency without democratic buy-in at the start, that alone is a compelling reason not to turn over your biometrics, personal information, and geolocation data to a private company. We urge regulatory agencies around the world to closely scrutinize Worldcoin. https://epic.org/epic-statement-on-privacy-risks-of-worldcoin/ https://epic.org/epic-statement-on-privacy-risks-of-worldcoi...

Twirrim 3y ago
> unchangeable biometrics Except for, say, glaucoma, detached retinas, injuries, all sorts of stuff that can impact the eyes. Sorry, you've been involved in a serious accident, you can no longer get your money!
- drewry 3y ago
  They address this in the whitepaper[0]: > To validate the quality of the algorithms at scale, their performance was evaluated by collecting 2.5 million pairs of high-resolution infrared iris images from 303 different subjects. These subjects represent diversity across a range of characteristics, including eye color, skin tone, ethnicity, age, presence of makeup and eye disease or defects. > It is important to note that many health conditions, like cataracts to a certain degree, do not impede iris biometrics. Already today, iris biometrics surpass the inclusivity of other PoP verification alternatives like official IDs since less than 50% of the global population has digitally verifiable identities. However, if the proof of personhood mechanism becomes essential for society, it is important that eventually every single person can verify if they want to. Although not currently established, there could be specialized verification centers to facilitate alternative means of verification for individuals with eye conditions, via e.g. facial biometrics. The introduction of alternative means of verification for World ID could potentially create loopholes. [0] https://whitepaper.worldcoin.org/ https://whitepaper.worldcoin.org/

thepasswordis 3y ago

Did they try to make the scanner look as creepy as possible?

arittr 3y ago
Honestly I think so, yes.
pimlottc 3y ago
Where do you see a picture of the scanner, I don't see any photos on the submitted link?
- capableweb 3y ago
  https://www.google.com/search?q=worldcoin&hl=EN&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1440&bih=858&sclient=img https://www.google.com/search?q=worldcoin&hl=EN&tbm=isch&sou...
  - mr_sturd 3y ago
    It's just missing a pair of electrodes for the users to hold on to - they can sell their thetan levels for a few extra coins.

walterbell 3y ago

Handful of comments on 2022 article, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36850993 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36850993

capableweb 3y ago

"What do I (Vitalik Buterin) think about biometric proof of personhood?" - https://vitalik.ca/general/2023/07/24/biometric.html https://vitalik.ca/general/2023/07/24/biometric.html - Has a bunch of alternatives and more thinking about the problem. On HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36849277 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36849277

pavlov 3y ago
One of the tech industry’s greatest snake oil peddlers maybe isn’t the right person to look to provide solutions here.
- EddieJLSH 3y ago
  How is Vitalik a "snake oil peddler"?
  - pavlov 3y ago
    If Ethereum is a global supercomputer, my miniature dachshund sitting on a copper penny is the dragon Smaug.
- capableweb 3y ago
  As far as I know, he personally isn't responsible/involved with any of the alternative solutions here, he's merely listing them/talking about them to contextualize the conversation further.

m3kw9 3y ago

must be a good reason Apple designed facial scans to be kept inside a device instead of a server.

accountinhn 3y ago

Some previous discussions: 2022 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30931614 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30931614 2021 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28998065 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28998065 2021 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28947468 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28947468 Don't have any big thought provoking comments other than the fact this makes me feel a bit more sadder :(

RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago

Sam Altman is rapidly climbing the list of villainous rich people. He seems to be actively working to bring about a very dystopian future in a way that Zuckerberg or Gates never did.

libraryatnight 3y ago

"It's free money!" People are insane. We're just giving everything away.

hooverd 3y ago

If only we could get ByteDance or Tencent to buy into this. Not that it would improve it, but the CPC association would be the kiss of death.

Arch485 3y ago

I can't wait for people's irises to be redlisted by some organization, permanently locking them out of all services that organization provides.

uLogMicheal 3y ago
Cross service bans too. They are actively creating a web of identity connected to the most powerful LLMs. What can go wrong?

demizer 3y ago

And here I am thinking the Toyota app for my new minivan was asking for too much. I hate the direction tech is going.

potatototoo99 3y ago
Tech isn't going anywhere. This is just a rich guy on Twitter sharing his pyramid scheme. It will be forgotten in a week just like it was forgotten when it launched years ago.

fvdessen 3y ago

"Proof of Personhood" is indeed a critical component of internet infrastructure. In Belgium we have an app for that called "Itsme" and it is becoming more and more the go-to single-sign-on tool. Instead of scanning your iris it asks your bank or government to confirm your identity when you set-up your account. I believe the EU commission is working towards standardising those protocols so apps like Itsme will work EU wide, maybe even worldwide. As for privacy I don't see a big problem as for most online services I don't want to actually be anonymous towards the service provider, just towards the general web, and the online services should respect that according to the GDPR

JohnFen 3y ago
> In Belgium we have an app for that called "Itsme" That doesn't sound like proof-of-personhood, it sounds like proof-of-identity.
- fvdessen 3y ago
  Itsme identifies you as a person. You can't have multiple accounts. So a Itsme signature is a proof of personhood (in addition to a proof of identity)
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    Right. All proofs of identity also act as proofs of personhood, but "proof of personhood" isn't the same. You can have a proof of personhood that doesn't identify which exact person you are.
    - fvdessen 3y ago
      Indeed! I believe Itsme also has the ability to provide anonymised tokens -- to be able to vote online -- but nobody uses it yet
- neolefty 3y ago
  A UBI coin like WorldCoin needs proof-of-identity as well, to prevent duplicate payouts.

ozr 3y ago

This is a 'reasonable response' to the current AI wave by people that subscribe to the Effective Altruism/LessWrong/AI-Doomer mythos. If AGI is created and then removes the need for any human to work, UBI (or the like) would be essential. You'd want to avoid abuse, so you also need to uniquely verify each person receiving it. I don't think the people involved in this are ignorant to the concerns, they just see it as inevitable based on their ideas about the future. > The orb was necessary, the website continued, because of Worldcoin’s commitment to fairness: each person should get his or her allotted share of the digital currency—and no more. To ensure there was no double-dipping, the chrome orb would scan participants’ irises and several other biometric data points and then, using a proprietary algorithm that the company was still developing, cryptographically confirm that they were human and unique in Worldcoin’s database. > “I’ve been very interested in things like universal basic income and what’s going to happen to global wealth redistribution,” Sam Altman, Worldcoin’s cofounder and the former President of Silicon Valley accelerator Y Combinator, told Bloomberg, which first reported on the company last summer. Worldcoin was intended, he explained, to answer the question “Is there a way we can use technology to do that at a global scale?” A common response from Altman when asked about the benefits of AGI is "I think eliminating poverty is good". This is what he's talking about. Of course, this redistribution doesn't apply to him, early employees, or investors: > Others took issue with the company’s purported focus on fairness given that 20% of the coins had already been allocated: 10% to Worldcoin’s full-time employees, and another 10% to investors, like Andreessen Horowitz. https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/04/06/1048981/worldcoin-cryptocurrency-biometrics-web3/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/04/06/1048981/worldcoi...

dgs_sgd 3y ago
If the need for UBI due to AGI arises then wouldn’t biometric proof of personhood be dead in the water? Spoofing irises seems well within the realm of a sophisticated AI.
- ozr 3y ago
  Any sufficiently AI would be under the control of some trustworthy entity. Preferably one. It's too dangerous otherwise. (I don't agree with this, but it's a common perspective amongst this crowd).

bambax 3y ago

> Worldcoin's data-collection is a "potential privacy nightmare," said the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a U.S. privacy campaigner. > Ali, a 22-year-old chemical engineering student... (...) "I told my brother about it this morning. I told him 'it's free money, you want to come with me to get it?'" I wonder what you can get people to do with the promise of money? Could you have them play Russian roulette? How many people would accept? If there was a way to make it seem real and convincing (without being real of course!) it would be a fascinating experiment.

jonesjohnson 3y ago

> Hackers have installed password-stealing malware on the devices of multiple Worldcoin Orb operators, TechCrunch has learned, giving them full access to the Worldcoin operator dashboard. https://techcrunch.com/2023/05/12/hackers-stole-passwords-of-worldcoin-orb-operators https://techcrunch.com/2023/05/12/hackers-stole-passwords-of...

uLogMicheal 3y ago
This thing is going to get exploited to oblivion. They already have a culture to counter feedback. Good luck interfacing with security researchers.

kmeisthax 3y ago

Create the problem (AI-assisted spam), sell the solution (centralized identity verification)

uLogMicheal 3y ago
If they really cared about the spam, wouldn't they crack down internally on use of bots for manipulation? To my knowledge no ToS or internal rules against this type of deception exist.

malikNF 3y ago

Theres a tweet going around claiming that people are scanning the iris of poor villages and getting the “reward” for themselves. https://twitter.com/BlockBeatsAsia/status/1659060950748782594 https://twitter.com/BlockBeatsAsia/status/165906095074878259... This whole project is creepy and disgusting.

TacticalCoder 3y ago
Not dissimilar to when the USSR imploded: the (ex-)komrades were given shares of the company they were working in. Some evil people who then use different means to collect those shares. Apparently at times driving with trucks full of vodka and exchanging the company shares for a pack of bottles of vodka. The project is creepy but the scammers stealing others from their fair share are just downright evil people.
uLogMicheal 3y ago
Eyeball bounties are now a thing. Which country / mercenary group will round them up first to take all the worldcoin? They really should have thought of the implications of creating an incentive market for iris scans.

LispSporks22 3y ago

This one in particular makes me feel like I've woken up in a dystopia.

cproctor 3y ago

Who would have thought that "apocalyptic science fiction author" would be included in the professions made obsolete by tech?

zorrolovsky 3y ago

In the article, the sentiment from many people is: companies already own my data anyway, so at least I'm getting something this time". In other words, the malicious actions from data predators (FAANG et al.) and the negligence from governments and regulators to protect the public have led individuals to learned helplessness. It's a dire and depressing situation. The bad guys have won, and people don't have the means or knowledge to fight back. That's why I donate to the Electronic Frontier Foundation and similar orgs. It's the only way to show the middle finger to the bad guys.

koolba 3y ago

Putting aside the insanity of people lining up to be cataloged by a private company, what's to stop someone from scanning the eyeballs of a dog? And how does this work if you only have one eye?

AraceliHarker 3y ago

I'm sure Sam Altman can't stop laughing because people willingly give their privacy to a venture company they don't really understand, just to issue a virtual currency that's worth a couple of bucks.

rvz 3y ago
Exactly. A government or a three letter agency would find it difficult to do just that and will quickly run into lots of trust issues. Now with Worldcoin, Sam is selling the solution (proof-of-personhood) to the problem he created with ChatGPT (AI spam, deep fakes, etc) and could be easily working with those same governments who would have always wanted to get people to sleep-walk into handing over their digital identity. The main difference? Worldcoin is doing it all out in the open. Sam is actually worse than Zuckerberg.

intrasight 3y ago

I am reminded that $5 cash for signing up was how PayPay quickly scaled. Beneficial knock-on effects to society from that were: reusable rockets, satellite internet, electric cars, and the death of Twitter.

jessenaser 3y ago

I see some comments talking about how proof of personhood is necessary, however the way that Worldcoin does it leaves a gap between the cryptographic proof keys and the identity. TL;DR there isn’t a way to connect biometrics to key pairs unless the key pairs are generated using biometrics (very insecure) or the orb attests that they are unique from a hardware signature to Worldcoin (which means Worldcoin is a central issuer of identity and controls global identity). If you want to read more I wrote on HN a few months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35457769 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35457769 There must be another way.

aabiji 3y ago

Just for context, does WorldCoin actually save your iris information somewhere, or are the scans just a one time thing to generate your WorldId? The thought of iris scanning is slightly creepy, but I'm curious ...

calderknight 3y ago
Doesn't leave the Orb, and is deleted immediately.

wonderwonder 3y ago

looking forward to a rise in crime where the victim had his eyes removed.

rootw0rm 3y ago
obligatory scene from Demolition Man: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7R_FF5O1d4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7R_FF5O1d4

rvz 3y ago

This is exactly how to trick the masses into a new system like Worldcoin. Give them that free money and take their digital identity from them. A leaf out of China's digital Yuan CBDC rollout. [0] Governments are now taking notes on how to perform a perfect rollout of a CBDC without alarming the masses with its dystopian drawbacks or the so-called 'conspiracy theorists' discovering their plans and leaking it before it launches. Given that Worldcoin was essentially out there in the open, it was already too late to even begin to stop them. Especially when Sam Altman has been talking to governments about both creating the poison (ChatGPT/AI fakes) and selling the cure / solution (Worldcoin). You are watching the creation of another 'personhood' data broker / collector using an Orb to verify / KYC people and give them free money. Something that would make governments and three letter agencies incredibly jealous. [0] https://www.reuters.com/markets/currencies/china-uses-digital-yuan-stimulate-virus-hit-consumption-2022-05-30/ https://www.reuters.com/markets/currencies/china-uses-digita...

ShowalkKama 3y ago

>Applicants lined up to have their irises scanned by the device, before waiting for the 25 free Worldcoin tokens the company says verified users can claim. that's a one time payment of 57$ https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/worldcoin-org/ https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/worldcoin-org/

0xbadc0de5 3y ago

I prefer my cyberpunk dystopia to remain fiction. I'm starting to suspect Sam Altman is a closet accelerationist.

glimshe 3y ago

That would make Sam Altman one of the most powerful humans in history. Technical problems aside, what has he done to deserve this trust?

w4lker 3y ago

> Christian, a 34-year-old graphic designer, said he was taking part because he was "intrigued". He follows developments in artificial intelligence (AI) and crypto, buying cryptocurrencies "just for fun". > >"I think going forward AI will be hard to distinguish from human and I think this potentially solves that problem and that’s pretty amazing," he said, declining to give his full name for privacy reasons. ... Its just me, or it sounds ironic?

ChrisArchitect 3y ago

This garbage? Thought we all decided to ignore this back in the NFT daze a year, nay, two years ago.

lonk 3y ago

what if I scan eye picture, or CGI eye animation, or high quality photo of someone else's eye?

alexpotato 3y ago

To give some historical insight into identity, I highly suggest people read: "Fingerprints:The Origins of Crime Detection and the Murder Case that Launched Forensic Science" by Colin Beavan The overall book is excellent and good balance of the science and history wrapped around an interesting murder case. The part of the book that felt most apropos to this HN comment thread is this: In the 1800's there were multiple countries with large populations (by 1800s standards0 where a majority of the population had essentially zero identity documents. This made it trivial for criminals to commit a crime, get caught, move to a different region and commit the exact same crime over and over again. On the flip side, the book highlights a case where an innocent person is charged with a crime due to a passing resemblance to a criminal. There was no way to prove the innocent person was NOT the criminal and therefore the charge stood. The goal of bringing this up isn't to say "100% we need digital ID!" but rather to help provide some balance to a discussion on the pros and cons of having "an identity" that is easily verifiable.

kaliqt 3y ago
To counter-balance... we should realize that if there's a way to 1:1 identify people, then "they" (they is whoever happens to rule over you at any given time, because lord knows we haven't the power to rule our own lives) will require identity even when you don't want to give it. Sure everything seems nice now, but when they force all to be part of the network, or else, then they have even further control, possibly total control. So it's not something to tread into lightly. Make sure the means of technological progress is in the hands of the user, not outside powers. This means crypto(graphy)(includes crypto currency, but also DID, etc.), it means running AI locally rather than in the cloud, it means even things as simple as hydroponics in the home and in public spaces. At the end of the day, technological advancement is a fine line between beneficial progress and absolute tyranny at this stage.

nitwit005 3y ago

Presumably, the reason they want you to show up in person to one of their "orbs", is to stop people from submitting generated biometrics to extract the free money. But, if I already have someone's biometrics for some other purpose, I presume I can use that to pretend to be them? It just seems like an inconvenient password you can't change.