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

https://restofworld.org/2026/sam-altman-worldcoin-zoom-tinder-partnerships/
70•kelnos•1h ago

Comments

rdevilla•55m 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?
frogperson•54m ago
This is fascism. It erodes our right to privacy and should be shouted down at every opportunity.
2ndorderthought•54m 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...
red-iron-pine•9m 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?

ArcHound•51m 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.

2ndorderthought•49m 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.
josefritzishere•46m ago
Nobody wants to live in an open air prison.
jmclnx•45m 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.

theplatman•45m 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?
wmf•19m ago
I guess it would be worse if he was doing nothing to address the problem.
estimator7292•3m 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•8m ago
I saw someone in another thread put it quite succinctly:

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

AlexandrB•41m 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•4m 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?

jonathanstrange•33m ago
The US is trying hard to become world's most despised country.
red-iron-pine•5m 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

goolz•32m 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•7m ago
protect ya neck is also one of their main ethical concerns
giancarlostoro•30m ago
Sam Altman doing his hardest to become more hated than Larry Ellison I see.
red-iron-pine•10m ago
do not anthropomorphize sam altman
noir_lord•6m 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).
booleandilemma•25m 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.
xantronix•14m ago
Won't you think of the children! And the economy! My shareholder value! MY DIVIDENDS!!!
gibsonsmog•13m ago
The Butlerian Jihad looms
greenchair•24m ago
his mark of the beast attempt # ?
gentleman11•20m 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•6m ago
'And how do you know this is the case?' : 'Receipts, mostly.'.
Terr_•23m 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•17m ago
Since when has that stopped companies from mishandling of data? :)
drob518•23m ago
Oh, hell no!
gentleman11•22m 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•17m ago
Google and Apple already developed private age verification.
john_strinlai•19m 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.

taeric•8m 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.

int32_64•6m 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?
zingababba•5m ago
Sama can ID my balls.
izzydata•4m ago
Perhaps it is time to return to meatspace for verifiably real interactions.

Bubbles

https://bubbles.town/
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