Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Worldcoin isn’t as bad as it sounds: It’s worse

blockworks.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 370 posts

Re: Worldcoin isn’t as bad as it sounds: It’s worse

#3

Post by JohnFen »

gumballindie wrote: post #2

I am seeing a pattern here and I am starting to believe that Sam Altman is an Accelerationist: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerationism A lot of his actions, investments and marketing strategy seem to point in that direction.

Interesting. I wonder how he would characterize his belief system.

I personally have a very dim view of him, mostly because of Worldcoin (which is how he came onto my radar). His work with OpenAI confirms my unease with his efforts and makes me wonder what his goals actually are.

Re: Worldcoin isn’t as bad as it sounds: It’s worse

#4

Post by hiatus »

gumballindie wrote: post #2

I am seeing a pattern here and I am starting to believe that Sam Altman is an Accelerationist: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerationism A lot of his actions, investments and marketing strategy seem to point in that direction.

Could you elaborate on which actions, investments, and marketing strategies led you to that belief?

Re: Worldcoin isn’t as bad as it sounds: It’s worse

#5

Post by arcticbull »

Like any other non-coin crypto tech, Worldcoin doesn't do what it set out to do because it doesn't solve the oracle problem. If you trust their orb, it generates a wallet for you - but anyone, human or otherwise - can use that wallet. There's a black market in China for these identities already [1] and of course the response from Worldcoin was there's nothing they can do - because there's nothing they can do.

So this is just any other coin with extra steps, and the extra layer of trusting Sam Altman with your eyeballs to generate secret keys?

[1] https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2023/05/24/black-market-for-...

Re: Worldcoin isn’t as bad as it sounds: It’s worse

#8

Post by simonsarris »

I think you should instead just read what Worldcoin wrote. It's quite short, and I think easy to consider false.

https://worldcoin.org/cofounder-letter

There are a few words about economic opportunity but little explanation, so you can discount that part. They don't seem to believe it beyond UBI distribution, which has the same problems as any distribution today[1]

Their main sell:

> scale a reliable solution for distinguishing humans from AI online while preserving privacy

> Worldcoin consists of a privacy-preserving digital identity (World ID)

> You can now download World App... After visiting an Orb ... you will receive a World ID. This lets you prove you are a real and unique person online while remaining completely private.

This seems to be the sole feature but "distinguish" and "privacy" are fundamentally at odds. Always! If you can identify a person, in any way, they are no longer private. They may be private for a little while, but as soon as User12345 is outed to be Taylor Swift, there's no going back. There's no worldcoin re-roll. Twitter accounts are more anonymous than that - at least if your anon twitter account is unveiled, you can make a new one! In that way uniqueness is anti-privacy. It has to be.

[1] For example worldcoin has a plan to confirm that people exist. It does not have a plan to confirm that people are dead. https://japantoday.com/category/crime/man-says-he-kept-paren...

Re: Worldcoin isn’t as bad as it sounds: It’s worse

#10

Post by meowface »

arcticbull wrote: post #5

Like any other non-coin crypto tech, Worldcoin doesn't do what it set out to do because it doesn't solve the oracle problem. If you trust their orb, it generates a wallet for you - but anyone, human or otherwise - can use that wallet. There's a black market in China for these identities already [1] and of course the response from Worldcoin was there's nothing they can do - because there's nothing they can do. So this…

I understand your point, but why the separation of coin vs. non-coin tech? Meaning that the only real guarantee of cryptocurrency is prevention of double-spend rather than a confirmed unique identity?
Post reply on HN