@Chance
This comment is empty, admin should fix
My thoughts are that we really need some way to link real people with their online profiles, but we shouldn’t give up anonymity. So, the right plan might involve giving out a special token to people in real life after verifying who they are, like a bank account or ID, which can then be traded for anonymous tokens to verify our humanity on different platforms. Once we have these human tokens, we could sign all our online contributions.
Here’s what to think about:
- You shouldn’t need to have a human token to use online services, but it could be helpful and act as a filter. Algorithms could then favor the accounts with these tokens as being more trustworthy.
- There might be a cost to get the first token and you’d have to trust whoever verifies your humanity initially. This is a weak link, but we sort of do that in the finance world, so maybe it can fit there?
- You could easily get the human token and trade it for anonymous tokens for services, then sell those accounts. The only way to stop this is to make anonymous tokens expire, so you’d need to renew them through your main human token.
- Of course, you could use your own ID to sign tons of AI-generated junk. We’d probably need a way to create spam lists that could demote or invalidate tokens that post too much spam. This is a bit like what shared block lists do on BlueSky, but it has its own chance for misuse. Still, I think this could lead to progress, but we need to sort out the details.
- Clearly, the steps to get a token, exchange it, and so on, need to be simple and not some crazy cryptographic puzzle, plus we need to have a good user experience – not sure how to do that, but it’s vital.
- Lastly, this would have to be an international effort with various organizations verifying people. However, governments could have their own interests in creating bot accounts. Maybe there should be a system to double-check that verification organizations are acting fairly. Perhaps they could monitor each other?
@Dane
Who decides what counts as spam? How do you stop groups from gaming those systems? How do you stop people from selling their tokens like they sell old forum accounts these days?
This would only work with strong biometric tech. Cryptography would only secure the tokens themselves.
@Chance
Those are good questions and they’re part of the conversations about decentralized moderation. Basically, you could subscribe to spam lists you trust or get one from a trustworthy provider. It’s about having organizations you can rely on handle this work instead of giving total control over Judgment to just one group. But this definitely gets complicated on what we see as spam.
@Dane
You have to look beyond the technical aspects. What are the social impacts? Why give more power to unappointed moderators and so-called trusted referees? The time of trusting third parties is over in my opinion. That just creates another opportunity for corruption.
It could also lead to mob behavior, where people band together to claim you aren’t human, just to get your token taken away or put on a spam list. We’ve seen independent creators be targeted for no reason at all.
That doesn’t account for the power this gives the state to silence opponents. There’s a reason we defined free speech as a right – it’s because there’s no technical fix for these issues.
@Dane
You can’t see it?
Whoever controls token registration has a way to find out your true identity and know everything you did online.
It’s like the bans on adult content or the need to register to see certain stuff.
What you’ve described sounds a lot like a surveillance state.
Privacy can be tricky. You can’t have it both ways.
Whoever controls token registration has a way to find out your true identity and know everything you did online.
I don’t think that has to be the case. Making this trustworthy is indeed a challenge, but I don’t believe it’s impossible.
For example, you could take multiple valid tokens, mix them up, create secondary tokens from them, and send them back randomly to users, so no one can connect the original token to any secondary ones.
@Dane
But that needs validation right? So every time you make a request, you have to send that token header, and some service needs to verify it… that sounds like cross-site tracking, which everyone is against right now.
This makes it really easy and valuable for tracking online. That’s already happening.
To me, this boils down to figuring out who someone really is.
How do we make sure a person is human? And that it’s one unique individual who can’t just pretend to be someone else?
This is tough because people want to stay anonymous and it’s risky to share personal details, especially with non-government entities.
@Dylan
What if we had a local DNA tool that connects to our devices like a YubiKey? It could create a unique match just for you. To keep it more private, you could do something like Apple’s hidden mail system that gives fake identifiers so no one can track your digital actions.
I have been a librarian for 15 years and collect resource links every day. My main project when I retire is to create a links directory like the old human-edited Yahoo for those who remember it.
Clove said:
I have been a librarian for 15 years and collect resource links every day. My main project when I retire is to create a links directory like the old human-edited Yahoo for those who remember it.
I made something like that for myself haha. It’s the only way to protect myself online. I miss the old internet.
Clove said:
I have been a librarian for 15 years and collect resource links every day. My main project when I retire is to create a links directory like the old human-edited Yahoo for those who remember it.
Remind me in 35 years.
One reason I find myself visiting this forum more often these days.
Kingsley said:
One reason I find myself visiting this forum more often these days.
What if I told you that there is a good chance you’ve interacted with a bot?
Kingsley said:
One reason I find myself visiting this forum more often these days.
What if I told you that there is a good chance you’ve interacted with a bot?
Yeah, I’ve noticed those, but thankfully most channels I follow aren’t interesting to bots.
[Just a humorous thought]
What if we trained an AI to tell the difference between human and AI content and used that to clean up the web, like an ad-blocker? I bet we could solve AI issues with AI!
I asked a similar question here yesterday. I got downvoted harshly and developers said it’s impossible… so there you go.