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"Careful design of the protocols maintains privacy by preventing sites from learning any additional information beyond personhood." Is personhood verification d

by h45x1 6mo ago

"Careful design of the protocols maintains privacy by preventing sites from learning any additional information beyond personhood." Is personhood verification desirable? Say, HN introduces personhood verification and budgets the number of posts or comments per person. That would limit the amount of AI posts, which seems to be desirable judging by the recent discussion (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47340079 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47340079). What are the drawbacks though?

k310 6mo ago
I hadn't thought of that. Check age of persons but not personhood. How old are LLM's? How do we check? Ask for a cookie recipe? What person can do that from memory?
- bholley 6mo ago
  The idea is to leverage information from site A (say, a bank) who knows a lot about the user to attest to site B (say, HN) that the user is a real person, without revealing any other information known by site A to site B.
  - k310 6mo ago
    That's an interesting trust chain.
JohnFen 6mo ago
> Is personhood verification desirable? It's hard for me to see how it could be done without unacceptable exposure. So, right now, it's the opposite of desirable to me and I would avoid using any sites that require it.
- h45x1 6mo ago
  In my limited understanding, with zero-knowledge proofs. That's also what the blog mentions. Say, a website issues a challenge, you sign the challendge with your private key supplied by either your government (or some other authority). The signature is verified against a big set of public keys using a ZKP without knowing which specific public key matches. I imagine the problem is more economics and politics than technology. Say, personhood verification becomes available. Then it is also that much easier to mandate age verification, and that becomes a slippery slope.
  - JohnFen 6mo ago
    Yes, I'm aware of zero-knowledge proofs, but they aren't sufficient all by themselves. > I imagine the problem is more economics and politics than technology. Exactly so, yes. That doesn't make the problem any less serious. It also makes it very hard to put any real trust in technological solutions. You still have to trust that the solution provider is being honest, has implemented everything correctly, etc. I can't think of any entity that I have that much faith in.
    - bholley 6mo ago
      The system is mediated by the browser, so the source code can be inspected by anyone and verified not to leak information.

by h45x1 6mo ago

k310 6mo ago

I hadn't thought of that. Check age of persons but not personhood. How old are LLM's? How do we check? Ask for a cookie recipe? What person can do that from memory?

bholley 6mo ago
The idea is to leverage information from site A (say, a bank) who knows a lot about the user to attest to site B (say, HN) that the user is a real person, without revealing any other information known by site A to site B.
- k310 6mo ago
  That's an interesting trust chain.

JohnFen 6mo ago

> Is personhood verification desirable? It's hard for me to see how it could be done without unacceptable exposure. So, right now, it's the opposite of desirable to me and I would avoid using any sites that require it.

h45x1 6mo ago
In my limited understanding, with zero-knowledge proofs. That's also what the blog mentions. Say, a website issues a challenge, you sign the challendge with your private key supplied by either your government (or some other authority). The signature is verified against a big set of public keys using a ZKP without knowing which specific public key matches. I imagine the problem is more economics and politics than technology. Say, personhood verification becomes available. Then it is also that much easier to mandate age verification, and that becomes a slippery slope.
- JohnFen 6mo ago
  Yes, I'm aware of zero-knowledge proofs, but they aren't sufficient all by themselves. > I imagine the problem is more economics and politics than technology. Exactly so, yes. That doesn't make the problem any less serious. It also makes it very hard to put any real trust in technological solutions. You still have to trust that the solution provider is being honest, has implemented everything correctly, etc. I can't think of any entity that I have that much faith in.
  - bholley 6mo ago
    The system is mediated by the browser, so the source code can be inspected by anyone and verified not to leak information.