9 ms·

Govt warns kenyans about Worldcoin

98 points by GrumpyNl 3y ago

filterpoo 3y ago
[flagged]
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
deadballcretin 3y ago
What's the grift here, get as much voluntary biometric data as possible before regulatory pressure shuts the whole thing down?
- nwoli 3y ago
  Am I the only one who doesn’t think its a grift? I get that we wanna put negative pressure on altman becuase of the hypocrisy of openai, but I kinda would like to participate in world coin if possible. UBI sounds nice and I give up more personal data using any other service so idk, it doesn’t actually bother me tbh
  - veave 3y ago
    I agree with you. They are clear about what they ask of you and what they give you. I wouldn't accept, but people should be able to accept if they want.
    - croes 3y ago
      It isn't clear what they give you. You know neither it's worth nor it's usefuless nor it's lifetime. And I doubt that many people exactly know what they give and what happens to that data or what negative effects it could have if that data is stolen. Otherwise people wouldn't fall for (crypto) scams.
      - veave 3y ago
        It's crypto - quite clearly you don't know what its worth is or will be. That's the entire point.
        croes 3y ago
        So it isn't clear what the really give, could be the equivalent of OneCoin.
  - SonicScrub 3y ago
    The grift here is that there is no way in you are ever going to see a cent of that promised UBI. I hope giving away your biometrics was worth that slim hope. I'd personally go for the lottery ticket if I wanted to some have fun with massively improbable odds. I still won't ever see a cent, but at least it's less creepy
  - pavlov 3y ago
    Where is the money going to come for a UBI? Presumably it would be distributed as Worldcoin airdrops. Either those airdrops will quickly reduce the value of the coin towards zero because nobody’s going to trade real money for WorldHyperInflationCoin… Or, Sam Altman will somehow create Worldgov too that will fund this brave new Worldcoin UBI. Doesn’t seem terribly likely. Maybe it’s an AI Underpants Gnome thing where step #2 is “posthuman superintelligence will solve it!”
  - croes 3y ago
    We put negative pressure on anybody who tries to build a global database of mankind's iris scans, no matter if it's a government, an agency or a company.
  - piuantiderp 3y ago
    Call it the Universal law: Any coin used for UBI, will lose value against Bitcoin.
  - wahnfrieden 3y ago
    Lots of shitcoins before have handwaved at some UBI solution in the future. World coin has no plans. They have a public roadmap, which is different from a plan. Every shitcoin has a roadmap to build hype and satisfy desires without needing to deliver.
- rgrieselhuber 3y ago
  I remember being in awe when I visited Universal Studios a few years back and they casually asked everybody to fingerprint themselves on the way in. Most people did it without even thinking about it. When I told them I was not going to participate, they said "you have to" to which I replied "I most certainly do not." They let me in after that. It almost felt like an IQ test.
  - noduerme 3y ago
    This really happens at theme parks now? What the hell?! [edit] The last time I was at Universal Studios, I was 17. A couple friends and I spent a few hours running around the park in camouflage at around 1am, stoned out of our minds, before being caught and escorted out. They let us go with a warning. Can you imagine what they'd do now?? The 90s were awesome.
    - rgrieselhuber 3y ago
      I couldn't believe it myself.
    - romafirst3 3y ago
      They would let you go with a warning unless you were black.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
  - andsoitis 3y ago
    Biometrics / fingerprinting at Universal Studios: https://www.universalstudioshollywood.com/web/en/us/faqs/biometrics https://www.universalstudioshollywood.com/web/en/us/faqs/bio...
    - robocat 3y ago
      How are biometrics used at Universal Studios Hollywood? Biometrics are gathered on a guest’s first visit when using Multi-Day, Annual Pass or Season Pass tickets. On subsequent visits these biometrics are referenced to ensure that it is the same guest using the ticket.
- akira2501 3y ago
  It's a grift^2. It's simply pretending that language models masquerading as AI are so absurdly powerful that human identity itself is now threatened and requires an additional verification layer to prove that you are actually human. Like the language model product, I think they're purely trading on hype. I'm not sure what having my retinal scan gets you if you can't actually replicate an eyeball matching that scan.
  - rgrieselhuber 3y ago
    I think it's more of a compliance test than anything else. They already have all the facial recog data they would need, or could easily source it.
    - at-fates-hands 3y ago
      This just gives them another vector to prove its actually you. Matching finger print data with facial recog is about as close as you can get to foolproof identity analysis I would think. I know both can be faked, but for a majority of the population, having these two markers would be almost impossible to claim it wasn't you.
      - rgrieselhuber 3y ago
        This is what government ids are already for. Instead of creating new systems to strip away privacy rights, spend more time enforcing laws and prosecuting identity theft. Tying identity to biometrics makes it involuntary at some point down the road, which is obviously the real intention.
  - rngname22 3y ago
    It's absolutely the case that there will be a need for human verification, in fact it already is a core part of identity verification, it's one reason we have a liveness check. The rise of LLM and generative image and video absolutely poses threats in the form of criminal impersonation and scams, in terms of maliciously intentioned catfishing, in terms of manipulation of public discourse, and last but not least to the enshittification of online discussion. Online discussion spam filters have been decent at removing low effort commercial shilling and automated trollposting, but LLM poses a real threat in that regard. If you don't want a 14 year old troll to be able to set an automated script to spam post 50 new convincingly written Reddit posts every hour about how horrible Playstation 7 is and how much better Xbox Series 15 is to /r/Games, then you care about human verification or spam detection that takes into account the new abilities of LLMs. All that being said Worldcoin doesn't look like the best answer.
- duskwuff 3y ago
  An even more cynical possibility is that it isn't even about the biometric data. If you treat that part as a distraction, the rest of it looks exactly like a typical cryptocurrency "airdrop" pump-and-dump scheme -- give away a bunch of your tokens to build hype and set a (bogus) price target, then start selling the tokens for liquid currency.
  - luma 3y ago
    The organization behind it is, of course, keeping 10% of the coin for themselves. Tracks very well with your theory.
    - tromp 3y ago
      Where can one find this information? Is it on their website?
      - downvotetruth 3y ago
        https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/04/06/1048981/worldcoin-cryptocurrency-biometrics-web3/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/04/06/1048981/worldcoi...
- soupbowl 3y ago
  I am still waiting for regulatory pressure to protect my privacy and data. This biometric data will be a gold mine I am sure.
startupsfail 3y ago
It seems there is nothing good that came out of crypto so far. Carbon emissions, waste of money on the mining facilities, GPUs wasted, production capacity for silicon wasted. And what is a result so far? Financial scams, crypto extortion schemes, bot nets, black market and drug market currency, exchange failures. A lot of negatives and literally nothing on the positive side. And now this dystopian Worldcoin scheme.
- mcpackieh 3y ago
  Perhaps soaking up the supply of GPUs has delayed the AI singularity, if only marginally?
  - pavlov 3y ago
    Turns out Satoshi was a time traveler who tried to distract humanity from building AIs for at least a decade longer, in order to prevent the extinction of mankind that happened in his timeline. The last remaining human scientists spent their final years hiding from AI patrols, devising a viral idea that could be implemented on 2010 technology and that would suck up the maximum amount of programmer brainpower and silicon resources without delivering any progress towards AI. Cryptocurrency was the solution they came up with. A man who looks surprisingly like Bruce Willis was sent back to seed the idea…
    - hollerith 3y ago
      It is sad that they couldn't think of a way to distract investors that didn't encourage investment in GPU technology.
  - lolinder 3y ago
    Alternatively, the enormous increase in GPU production for crypto seems to have translated directly into enormous gains in AI right around the time that crypto hype imploded. For a while there all the dumped mining GPUs were super cheap, and GPU manufacturers had scaled up their manufacturing capabilities to be able to easily meet increased demand as AI ramped up. It's possible AI would have developed more slowly had we not had so many GPUs lying around and nothing to use them for.
0xbadc0de5 3y ago
"Those who would trade freedom for temporary security shall inevitably lose both. (and deserve neither)" Corollary: "Those who would trade privacy for token freebies shall inevitably lose both. (and deserve neither)"
junofan 3y ago
I think a lot of global tech companies aren’t in compliance with Kenya’s Data Protection Act. Why is Worldcoin singled out?
- true_religion 3y ago
  Because Worldcoin kept their servers and staff in Kenya, making them wholly accessible to Kenyan police jurisdiction.
batmanthehorse 3y ago
article gets it wrong and sounds like a WorldCoin press release in the first sentence: "The Office of the Data Protection Commissioner (ODPC) has cautioned Kenyans against sharing their details with WorldCoin, a financial public utility that allows the public to easily access digital currencies without the need for a third party to facilitate the transactions."
lyapunova 3y ago
It's almost as if governments are actually serving their constituencies... Something that large corporations (or otherwise masquerading as NGOs) will most certainly never do unless it magically aligns with making them filthy rich in the process.
dang 3y ago
Police raid Worldcoin warehouse in Nairobi - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37036277 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37036277 - Aug 2023 (361 comments) Kenya suspends Sam Altman’s eyeball-scanning crypto project - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36973882 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36973882 - Aug 2023 (102 comments) Worldcoin Banned in Kenya - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36971704 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36971704 - Aug 2023 (15 comments)

98 points by GrumpyNl 3y ago

filterpoo 3y ago

[flagged]

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

deadballcretin 3y ago

What's the grift here, get as much voluntary biometric data as possible before regulatory pressure shuts the whole thing down?

nwoli 3y ago
Am I the only one who doesn’t think its a grift? I get that we wanna put negative pressure on altman becuase of the hypocrisy of openai, but I kinda would like to participate in world coin if possible. UBI sounds nice and I give up more personal data using any other service so idk, it doesn’t actually bother me tbh
- veave 3y ago
  I agree with you. They are clear about what they ask of you and what they give you. I wouldn't accept, but people should be able to accept if they want.
  - croes 3y ago
    It isn't clear what they give you. You know neither it's worth nor it's usefuless nor it's lifetime. And I doubt that many people exactly know what they give and what happens to that data or what negative effects it could have if that data is stolen. Otherwise people wouldn't fall for (crypto) scams.
    - veave 3y ago
      It's crypto - quite clearly you don't know what its worth is or will be. That's the entire point.
      - croes 3y ago
        So it isn't clear what the really give, could be the equivalent of OneCoin.
- SonicScrub 3y ago
  The grift here is that there is no way in you are ever going to see a cent of that promised UBI. I hope giving away your biometrics was worth that slim hope. I'd personally go for the lottery ticket if I wanted to some have fun with massively improbable odds. I still won't ever see a cent, but at least it's less creepy
- pavlov 3y ago
  Where is the money going to come for a UBI? Presumably it would be distributed as Worldcoin airdrops. Either those airdrops will quickly reduce the value of the coin towards zero because nobody’s going to trade real money for WorldHyperInflationCoin… Or, Sam Altman will somehow create Worldgov too that will fund this brave new Worldcoin UBI. Doesn’t seem terribly likely. Maybe it’s an AI Underpants Gnome thing where step #2 is “posthuman superintelligence will solve it!”
- croes 3y ago
  We put negative pressure on anybody who tries to build a global database of mankind's iris scans, no matter if it's a government, an agency or a company.
- piuantiderp 3y ago
  Call it the Universal law: Any coin used for UBI, will lose value against Bitcoin.
- wahnfrieden 3y ago
  Lots of shitcoins before have handwaved at some UBI solution in the future. World coin has no plans. They have a public roadmap, which is different from a plan. Every shitcoin has a roadmap to build hype and satisfy desires without needing to deliver.
rgrieselhuber 3y ago
I remember being in awe when I visited Universal Studios a few years back and they casually asked everybody to fingerprint themselves on the way in. Most people did it without even thinking about it. When I told them I was not going to participate, they said "you have to" to which I replied "I most certainly do not." They let me in after that. It almost felt like an IQ test.
- noduerme 3y ago
  This really happens at theme parks now? What the hell?! [edit] The last time I was at Universal Studios, I was 17. A couple friends and I spent a few hours running around the park in camouflage at around 1am, stoned out of our minds, before being caught and escorted out. They let us go with a warning. Can you imagine what they'd do now?? The 90s were awesome.
  - rgrieselhuber 3y ago
    I couldn't believe it myself.
  - romafirst3 3y ago
    They would let you go with a warning unless you were black.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
- andsoitis 3y ago
  Biometrics / fingerprinting at Universal Studios: https://www.universalstudioshollywood.com/web/en/us/faqs/biometrics https://www.universalstudioshollywood.com/web/en/us/faqs/bio...
  - robocat 3y ago
    How are biometrics used at Universal Studios Hollywood? Biometrics are gathered on a guest’s first visit when using Multi-Day, Annual Pass or Season Pass tickets. On subsequent visits these biometrics are referenced to ensure that it is the same guest using the ticket.
akira2501 3y ago
It's a grift^2. It's simply pretending that language models masquerading as AI are so absurdly powerful that human identity itself is now threatened and requires an additional verification layer to prove that you are actually human. Like the language model product, I think they're purely trading on hype. I'm not sure what having my retinal scan gets you if you can't actually replicate an eyeball matching that scan.
- rgrieselhuber 3y ago
  I think it's more of a compliance test than anything else. They already have all the facial recog data they would need, or could easily source it.
  - at-fates-hands 3y ago
    This just gives them another vector to prove its actually you. Matching finger print data with facial recog is about as close as you can get to foolproof identity analysis I would think. I know both can be faked, but for a majority of the population, having these two markers would be almost impossible to claim it wasn't you.
    - rgrieselhuber 3y ago
      This is what government ids are already for. Instead of creating new systems to strip away privacy rights, spend more time enforcing laws and prosecuting identity theft. Tying identity to biometrics makes it involuntary at some point down the road, which is obviously the real intention.
- rngname22 3y ago
  It's absolutely the case that there will be a need for human verification, in fact it already is a core part of identity verification, it's one reason we have a liveness check. The rise of LLM and generative image and video absolutely poses threats in the form of criminal impersonation and scams, in terms of maliciously intentioned catfishing, in terms of manipulation of public discourse, and last but not least to the enshittification of online discussion. Online discussion spam filters have been decent at removing low effort commercial shilling and automated trollposting, but LLM poses a real threat in that regard. If you don't want a 14 year old troll to be able to set an automated script to spam post 50 new convincingly written Reddit posts every hour about how horrible Playstation 7 is and how much better Xbox Series 15 is to /r/Games, then you care about human verification or spam detection that takes into account the new abilities of LLMs. All that being said Worldcoin doesn't look like the best answer.
duskwuff 3y ago
An even more cynical possibility is that it isn't even about the biometric data. If you treat that part as a distraction, the rest of it looks exactly like a typical cryptocurrency "airdrop" pump-and-dump scheme -- give away a bunch of your tokens to build hype and set a (bogus) price target, then start selling the tokens for liquid currency.
- luma 3y ago
  The organization behind it is, of course, keeping 10% of the coin for themselves. Tracks very well with your theory.
  - tromp 3y ago
    Where can one find this information? Is it on their website?
    - downvotetruth 3y ago
      https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/04/06/1048981/worldcoin-cryptocurrency-biometrics-web3/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/04/06/1048981/worldcoi...
soupbowl 3y ago
I am still waiting for regulatory pressure to protect my privacy and data. This biometric data will be a gold mine I am sure.

startupsfail 3y ago

It seems there is nothing good that came out of crypto so far. Carbon emissions, waste of money on the mining facilities, GPUs wasted, production capacity for silicon wasted. And what is a result so far? Financial scams, crypto extortion schemes, bot nets, black market and drug market currency, exchange failures. A lot of negatives and literally nothing on the positive side. And now this dystopian Worldcoin scheme.

mcpackieh 3y ago
Perhaps soaking up the supply of GPUs has delayed the AI singularity, if only marginally?
- pavlov 3y ago
  Turns out Satoshi was a time traveler who tried to distract humanity from building AIs for at least a decade longer, in order to prevent the extinction of mankind that happened in his timeline. The last remaining human scientists spent their final years hiding from AI patrols, devising a viral idea that could be implemented on 2010 technology and that would suck up the maximum amount of programmer brainpower and silicon resources without delivering any progress towards AI. Cryptocurrency was the solution they came up with. A man who looks surprisingly like Bruce Willis was sent back to seed the idea…
  - hollerith 3y ago
    It is sad that they couldn't think of a way to distract investors that didn't encourage investment in GPU technology.
- lolinder 3y ago
  Alternatively, the enormous increase in GPU production for crypto seems to have translated directly into enormous gains in AI right around the time that crypto hype imploded. For a while there all the dumped mining GPUs were super cheap, and GPU manufacturers had scaled up their manufacturing capabilities to be able to easily meet increased demand as AI ramped up. It's possible AI would have developed more slowly had we not had so many GPUs lying around and nothing to use them for.

0xbadc0de5 3y ago

"Those who would trade freedom for temporary security shall inevitably lose both. (and deserve neither)" Corollary: "Those who would trade privacy for token freebies shall inevitably lose both. (and deserve neither)"

junofan 3y ago

I think a lot of global tech companies aren’t in compliance with Kenya’s Data Protection Act. Why is Worldcoin singled out?

true_religion 3y ago
Because Worldcoin kept their servers and staff in Kenya, making them wholly accessible to Kenyan police jurisdiction.

batmanthehorse 3y ago

article gets it wrong and sounds like a WorldCoin press release in the first sentence: "The Office of the Data Protection Commissioner (ODPC) has cautioned Kenyans against sharing their details with WorldCoin, a financial public utility that allows the public to easily access digital currencies without the need for a third party to facilitate the transactions."

lyapunova 3y ago

It's almost as if governments are actually serving their constituencies... Something that large corporations (or otherwise masquerading as NGOs) will most certainly never do unless it magically aligns with making them filthy rich in the process.

dang 3y ago

Police raid Worldcoin warehouse in Nairobi - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37036277 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37036277 - Aug 2023 (361 comments) Kenya suspends Sam Altman’s eyeball-scanning crypto project - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36973882 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36973882 - Aug 2023 (102 comments) Worldcoin Banned in Kenya - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36971704 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36971704 - Aug 2023 (15 comments)