The web should remain anonymous by default

The web should remain anonymous by default(blog.mozilla.org)

5 points by TangerineDream 94 days ago | 8 comments

h45x1 94 days 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). What are the drawbacks though?

JohnFen 94 days 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 94 days 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.

k310 94 days 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 94 days 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.