Reddit considers iris-scanning Orb developed by a Sam Altman startup

5 comments

1. lmao sure I’ll give my biometric information to Reddit. I also bought a really nice bridge in New York City just yesterday.

   Now drink this verification can, please.

   Web 2.0 was a mistake. We need to go back to geocities.

2. And then there’s people without eyes. Some blind people who can’t use face verification easily. People with artificial eyes. Uhm. Sod outta luck I guess…?

3. the day they make me scan my eyeballs is the day i quit reddit.

   I know, the way the world is going, that i won’t be able to avoid this sort of biometric ID stuff forever. But when I do use it it will only be for things that are absolutely vital and unavoidable, not something as silly as a Reddit account.

4. Jesus christ, what the hell is wrong with these people?

   This is a bad idea at so many levels I don’t even know where to start.

   But I suspect reddit execs know about that and, like they’ve proven beyond a shadow of a doubt, will happily sell our private data if they can make a quick buck out of it.

5. >Last month, Reddit co-founder and CEO Steve Huffman said AI and age verification laws would eventually force the company to check whether its users are human and of a certain age.

   This technology can only do that if it can outpace the ability to generate a fake video of a human iris to present to the verification system. It’s the same race as the whole CAPTCHA mess, trying to make something that only humans can do to prevent automated accounts clogging up the system. But realistically you can’t beat it.

   A technologically superior system would be one that uses some government ID service to verify that the user is a unique individual person, and issues them a randomly generated GUID without actually attaching the user’s identity.

   So e.g. the user signs up to Reddit, says they are French, is sent via an embedded link to a French government-hosted service to validate that, the user signs into it, the French government service confirms they are real and over 18 to the Reddit service without telling Reddit who they are, and Reddit issues them an ID without telling the French government service what ID the user was issued. Reddit gets to know they are a real person, the French government gets the benefit of authentic social media platforms and human communication existing without being overwhelmed by inauthentic platforms in a way that allows automated proliferation of propaganda, the user gets to be validated as a real person without their posts being linked to their identity.

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