U.S. companies back Sam Altman's World ID even as much of the world pushes back

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kkelnos about 4 hours ago 82 commentsRead Article on restofworld.org

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Discussion (82 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

iknowstuff•about 2 hours ago

Judging solely by their FAQ, this is not enough. Iris photos can be fabricated client-side, including by AI, and can be shared.

So it's invasive AND worthless? Why is this getting support?

You need an offline/IRL verification step and measures to prevent sharing/cloning. AND you need to never phone home revealing services you're using.

Total garbage

    Proof of human verification powered by the Orb only involves one type of data: images of your eyes and face. It does not require your name, email, gender or anything else.
    
    The iris images are used to verify unique humanness, while the images of your face are used for Face Auth, a security feature that ensures only the person who verified their World ID at an Orb can use it.

    The Orb takes high-resolution images of your irises and face.
    The Orb uses these images to confirm your humanness and converts the iris image into a unique code which is then split into randomized multi-party compute (MPC) fragments.
    The Orb sends the images and MPC fragments to your device (your personal custody package), before permanently deleting them.

Your device sends the fragments to the AMPC service to confirm you have never verified before. Your World ID is verified.

tim333•about 1 hour ago

>You need an offline/IRL verification step

That's what the orb thing is about. You go visit, meet humans, have a photo of your eyes. You can't just hold up an AI photo or scan your dog or whatever.

dylan604•about 1 hour ago

Calling it The Orb does not help anything but adding to the creepy factor. Also, Alex Patterson is not involved with this, and I refuse to accept it being called The Orb.

simonw•about 2 hours ago

I tried to track down the original source of the news that World ID is being adopted by Zoom and Tinder and DocuSign and it looks like it's an event they hosted on April 17th. Here's their blog post about it: https://world.org/blog/announcements/the-new-world-id-and-th...

There were more logos on that title slide: Tinder, DocuSign, Zoom, Okta, Vercel, Shopify, Browsnerbase, AWS, exa, RAZER, Coinbase, VanEck

2ndorderthought•about 3 hours ago

World id, meta verifier, how many other military funded establishments are pushing to require mass surveillance of everyone doing anything. Meanwhile their bots run rampant all over the Internet without any concern for anyone else's infrastructure, copyright, or ip. The irony...

pocksuppet•about 2 hours ago

You'd be silly not to, if you think about it. There's demand for ID verification, and don't you want to be the one with copies of everyone's documents, instead of the other guy? Do you want to make the money, or do you want Peter Thiel to make the money?

Andrex•about 2 hours ago

The prisoner's dilemma of stupidity.

red-iron-pine•about 2 hours ago

so take down the internet. or take down their company. or just stop using the internet

will posting this on forums that are run by these same people actually be able to drive change?

jochem9•about 2 hours ago

Yes.

Your message needs to find other people. The how is irrelevant, it just shapes and transmits it.

ArcHound•about 3 hours ago

You mean to tell me that companies that got rich by hoarding data are excited to hoard more data? Never would have guessed.

Also, why wouldn't anyone want to have data about everyone? Seems like a valuable asset.

filoeleven•41 minutes ago

It's only considered an asset because companies are allowed to externalize the cost of breaches.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CS9ptA3Ya9E (Mitchell and Webb on "identity theft")

2ndorderthought•about 3 hours ago

Defense contractors can sell it to the military and related agencies for top dollar. That's probably number 1, number 2 is higher fidelity correlations to other data.

theplatman•about 3 hours ago

so we're trusting the guy who created tech to make it easier for bots to exist on the internet to then sell us the solution to fix the problem he made worse?

llbbdd•about 2 hours ago

I've seen this take a lot and I don't really understand it. IMO if there's anybody to blame here, and I don't think there is, you could go back and assign blame to the authors of the Attention is All You Need paper, or Google as its publisher.

Once that was out in the wild it was only a matter of time before someone productized it, but there was no conceivable world in which nobody decided to, and there was no guarantee that it was going to be public in all cases. The basis for LLMs is so simple in hindsight that it's not even impossible that it'd been independently discovered and privately weaponized for many years before 2017.

demorro•about 2 hours ago

> Once that was out in the wild it was only a matter of time before someone productized it, but there was no conceivable world in which nobody decided to...

By this logic, we cannot blame anyone who is the agent of anything that we deem to be inevitable. Just because it is eventually going to happen, that means you are completely non-culpable for being the person who does it. This could obviously be extended into justifying pretty much anything.

llbbdd•17 minutes ago

Yeah but I think that's precisely what makes it fuzzier than a zero-sum blame game. Given that this technology was going to be in public hands no matter what, the how matters more than condemning the first visible target. Instead of ChatGPT, the first wide use of this tech could have been a private endeavor to secretly kill the internet. The fact that anyone can see and use it, and learn it's hallmarks, arguably helps innoculate some of the populace against the worst things it could be used for. We're able to sit around and complain that the discourse has been poisoned by robots instead of blindly wondering why otherwise-indistinguishable fellow humans are all saying "delve" suddenly.

I'm not sure I have a specific point here other than that I think it's interesting that he became a target, not necessarily that he's actually blameless.

HSO•about 2 hours ago

he didnt create anything

stefan_•about 2 hours ago

Ironically, of the only thing he did create (ostensibly), a copycat never went anywhere "social network", its claim to fame was the app (preinstalled by paying carriers) spamming your entire contact book with SMS invitations to join their failing network. Splendid privacy record!

wmf•about 2 hours ago

I guess it would be worse if he was doing nothing to address the problem.

estimator7292•about 2 hours ago

Incorrect. Completely and utterly.

Trying to make money on selling the solution to the problem you caused (while also probably tracking literally everyone with the solution) is much worse than causing the problem and doing nothing about it.

Teever•about 2 hours ago

I saw someone in another thread put it quite succinctly:

Shit in the pool then sell the nets to clean it up.

taeric•about 2 hours ago

This is an odd topic. On the one hand, we do seem to have a problem where attention is hijacked by engagement farming. On the other, we also know of problems from draconian management.

I would actually like it if we had something that could say, only promote things on my feeds that are "liked" by people within a geographic radius of me. At the least, mute things that are getting pumped from hostile regions.

I just don't know that I see how this can get us there, though? Seems far more likely that it would lead to more abuse.

dylan604•about 1 hour ago

> only promote things on my feeds that are "liked" by people within a geographic radius of me

Ugh, really? I live in a part of town where I speak a different language than the vast majority of the people in this "geographic radius of me" which means I'd see very little content that I could understand.

Where do people come up with these wild ideas of anything other than show me the content of people I want to see in the order it was posted? If you want a "Feeling Lucky" type of feed, make it available. Otherwise, you're sending people content they don't want and are only too lazy to stop using it.

watwut•about 2 hours ago

Or like, have chronological feed of accounts user follows. Simple. Produces less outrage tho, so it is a no go.

taeric•about 2 hours ago

This assumes that most people would choose that feed? Which, I'm less convinced.

That is, this sounds like the idea that telling people if bad things happen when you eat too much candy, then people will eat less candy. Just flat not the case at large.

Yes, you also have to document the downsides of candy. Such that I'm also all for having that feed. But I don't see it being enough to move the needle much, on its own.

chucksmash•about 1 hour ago

> That is, this sounds like the idea that telling people if bad things happen when you eat too much candy, then people will eat less candy. Just flat not the case at large.

Seems like there's an effect but it just takes time. The younger generations are smoking and drinking less.

Maybe the trend will be to abstain from social media feeds and chronological feeds will be their Zima.

Terr_•about 3 hours ago

I'm not even remotely-interested unless there is legislation that creates civil-liability and criminal penalties for abuse or mishandling of the data.

Also, companies shouldn't be able to refuse service just because the prospective customer's biometric data was leaked/stolen/duplicated in the past. I mean, when you think about it that's some Twilight Zone or Black Mirror territory.

thesurlydev•about 2 hours ago

Since when has that stopped companies from mishandling of data? :)

bradleysz•about 2 hours ago

The axiom here is that both AI and the human internet are worth keeping.

Tech like World ID is scary. Agreed.

What is the better alternative? AI isn't going away and a human internet is worth preserving.

skybrian•about 2 hours ago

I imagine that in the future we will have less trust in strangers on the Internet and whether they're human or AI will be a side issue. Knowing that a correspondent is human will be neither necessary nor sufficient.

izzydata•about 2 hours ago

Perhaps it is time to return to meatspace for verifiably real interactions.

red-iron-pine•about 2 hours ago

bring back PGP in-person signing parties

int32_64•about 2 hours ago

Is there any technical solution to these centralized ID authorities doing sybil attacks and minting identities out of nothing to manufacture consensus on supposedly "human verified" sites?

2001zhaozhao•about 2 hours ago

An effective naive defense would be requiring ID to be verified with multiple sites

cantalopes•about 2 hours ago

Necer hace i tgought i can have a job in age of jobless ai by being a human verified data scraper

ofcrpls•about 1 hour ago

Khosla and Nilekani are to blame for this a lot more than anyone else. They got India to steamroll the iris scan in the AADHAR enrollment process and now that is used to justify every other expansion.

kaonwarb•about 2 hours ago

Pairs well with also-on-the-front-page https://app.oravys.com/blog/mercor-breach-2026

goolz•about 3 hours ago

The blind leading the blind. These companies and Sam are both devoid of any sort of ethical code aside from C.R.E.A.M.

red-iron-pine•about 2 hours ago

protect ya neck is also one of their main ethical concerns

frogperson•about 3 hours ago

This is fascism. It erodes our right to privacy and should be shouted down at every opportunity.

Alive-in-2025•about 1 hour ago

another move is the trump admin trying to "prohibit" wifi points unless they are "approved".

greenchair•about 3 hours ago

his mark of the beast attempt # ?

gentleman11•about 2 hours ago

Weirdly, peter thiel is going on tour right now promoting the idea that the antichrist is coming and may be an organization or social movement rather than a person. Please correct me if I'm wrong, I only skimmed the articles about it

jacquesm•about 2 hours ago

'And how do you know this is the case?' : 'Receipts, mostly.'.

notahacker•about 2 hours ago

yeah, always struck me as odd that Thiel is more obsessed with identifying candidate antichrists than almost anyone else on the planet, including some people who are actually observant Christians, and yet it doesn't seem to have occurred to him that the most messianic secular figures who treat themselves as above mere laws and the guys making millenarian prophesies about the scale of what they're going to deliver are basically the guys in his rolodex...

drob518•about 2 hours ago

Oh, hell no!

josefritzishere•about 3 hours ago

Nobody wants to live in an open air prison.

john_strinlai•about 2 hours ago

>On April 16, it published a blueprint for how companies can grow their revenue with its digital ID.

that "blueprint", hilariously enough, starts with the title "How AI is eroding the foundations of the internet".

from a sam altman company. im afraid if i rolled my eyes any harder that they would spin out of their sockets.

jacquesm•about 2 hours ago

To fix the internet, we had to destroy it first.

There is no way these guys don't know exactly what they are doing. It's the spam thing all over again, but on a 100x worse scale. Cue PG with an essay 'A plan for AI'. Except this time it is probably going to be game over.

I can see a real future for the likes of tailscale here: botfree networks of friends.

techteach00•about 2 hours ago

KYC to breathe.

gentleman11•about 2 hours ago

I suspect that if we don't want to live in this future, we need some major open source tech leadership around making something like an anonymous version of this

I know, not exactly an easy problem to solve, but big tech or government is going to do it if we can't find better solutions first

wmf•about 2 hours ago

Google and Apple already developed private age verification.

rdevilla•about 3 hours ago

As if I needed another reason to despise this continent. Who actually wants to uphold, work for, and build these systems in our society? This is seriously the kind of nation you want to inhabit?

jacquesm•about 2 hours ago

Half of HN. At least.

voidfunc•about 1 hour ago

Pay me enough and I'll do it. The only thing that matters anymore is money.

/shrug

jmclnx•about 3 hours ago

Of course they do, when the age verification morphs into real personal identification (PI) all people's habits will be known to everyone.

Time to put a stop to this PI tracking trend. But we all know PI will be tracked by all entities in the future in about 10 - 20 years.

zingababba•about 2 hours ago

Sama can ID my balls.

derriz•about 2 hours ago

I’d guess that the pattern of ball wrinkles are quite unique. It could have applications for secure login - you’d could hold your balls above your phone camera or lay them onto a USB attached mini-scanner for authentication.

jbxntuehineoh•about 2 hours ago

iphone 18: now with ball and/or pussy scanner!

lioeters•12 minutes ago

A couple years from now: Massive database of 1 billion people's unique genital IDs stolen by hackers and posted on Reddit, as US and EU governments scramble to censor the social media platform. To check if your personal data was included, send a "selfie" to Sam Altman for verification.

ck2•about 2 hours ago

Seems like a good point to remind that capitalism doesn't need democracy to function or survive

They have no problem helping to strangle democracy to death

jonathanstrange•about 3 hours ago

The US is trying hard to become world's most despised country.

red-iron-pine•about 2 hours ago

Oh please.

China already has this level of tracking, Russia is straight up clamping down on the entire domestic internet, and Europe is headed their aggressively, too.

Perhaps glorious Paraguay, aka Best Guay, will shine as the last beacon of freedom, but this is plainly a global phenomenon

CamperBob2•about 2 hours ago

The difference is, nobody ever expected anything better from countries like China and Russia.

jonathanstrange•about 1 hour ago

The problem with lashing out like this is that whataboutism is not constructive. Your uneducated tech billionaires and their sometimes a bit too crazy ideas are posing real threats and people all over the world are starting to realize it.

That being said, I admit that my original comment also wasn't very constructive, more of an emotional statement. I need to get off HN and other social media, they're a waste of time.

gverrilla•about 2 hours ago

trying? apart from a few cryptocolonies, it's already widely despised.

AlexandrB•about 3 hours ago

I can't believe this idiotic project is running so long after the "blockchain for everything" mania ended. Seems like they can't believe it either since they changed their name from "Worldcoin" to just "World.

simonw•about 2 hours ago

I'd love to see some credible reporting on the graveyard of blockchain projects.

So many obviously stupid ideas cropped up on the blockchain in 2021-2022. How many of those are still going concerns?

I guess the problem with blockchain stuff is that often there's no servers to shut down or other clear indication that a project has failed - presumably you can look at on-chain data to see if people have stopped trading various backing tokens, but does trade ever clearly stop or are there always bots exchanging tokens back and forth?

traderj0e•about 2 hours ago

Transactions on a blockchain have a cost, so it's kinda hard to sustain faking usage. Unless they count random bogus blockchains.

giancarlostoro•about 3 hours ago

Sam Altman doing his hardest to become more hated than Larry Ellison I see.

red-iron-pine•about 2 hours ago

do not anthropomorphize sam altman

noir_lord•about 2 hours ago

No one who has watched him talk would. (And yes I know the origin of the reference but at least Ellison doesn’t pretend).

amlib•about 2 hours ago

do not anthropomorphize the Sam Mower...

yardie•about 2 hours ago

The Blockchain is back, baby!

booleandilemma•about 3 hours ago

I think we need less technology. Can we have a de-tech movement? Life-saving tech is fine but enough is enough with software, AI, surveillance, etc. It's too much. It's been too much for the past twenty years or so.

2ndorderthought•about 1 hour ago

You shouldn't be down voted for this. It's a valid opinion and it's an acceptable lifestyle.

My personal line doesn't go back 20 years. But I think a lot of people can relate.

pesus•about 2 hours ago

It's already becoming a trend amongst the youngsters, though I can't say how widespread it is. I think it's inevitable and long overdue.

gibsonsmog•about 2 hours ago

The Butlerian Jihad looms

xantronix•about 2 hours ago

Won't you think of the children! And the economy! My shareholder value! MY DIVIDENDS!!!

jbxntuehineoh•about 1 hour ago

seriously, what kind of ignorant rube would be opposed to Technological Progress(TM)? Pol Pot, Lysenko? thank god our society is run by serious people, the kind who understand the importance of ensuring that the Line goes Up at all costs

booleandilemma•about 2 hours ago

Oops sorry I forgot about the shareholder value! >.<

Praise to the equity lords!

siva7•about 2 hours ago

I would be happy if Tinder used this tech. The Internet is unusable nowadays because of bots.