Proof-of-humanity can’t come soon enough.

We’re talking about privacy-preserving proof of age, but as we see here the real utility of such a system will be proof of humanity.

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Arubis 4 hours ago | parent [-]

How do you define humanity?

How do you ensure it includes every human?

How do you ensure it doesn’t include every non-human?

I’m not even asking about computation or algorithms. I straight up don’t think you can make a definition that isn’t a tautology or an approximation. Both of which are useful, but neither of which can fit a _proof_.

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alkonaut 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Every place on earth has some legal definition of who is human. The system I’m thinking of isn’t a technical/captcha one, it’s a human curated list of humans. Just an electronic ID. Those already exist but the challenge is making them (acceptably) privacy-preserving.

I want to take my existing national digital ID and use it online basically. BUT I don’t want the websites to know it’s me. Just that I’m human (or perhaps over a certain age). And I don’t want the ID issuer to know what site/service asked whether I’m a human or I’m 18 etc.

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Kamq 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You're not wrong, but something can work well enough to still be useful despite falling short of the idea of a proof or any formal definition.

Let's say that 95% of individual humans can pass it and only 2% of bots. For someone maintaining a website, who has to decide between using this system and shutting down their site because of the increased costs, that may very well be good enough

	▲	inigyou 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I'm one of the 5% apparently, cloudflare thinks I'm a bot. I suppose you'll exempt me in exchange for all my ID documents and bank statements?
	▲	Arubis 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		That’s a pragmatic and understandable argument. And for an individual hobbyist site owner, that’s fine. Are we okay with excluding 1 person in 20 from the services of a midsized organization? What if they’re integral to the workplace? Or a major transport provider without differentiated competitors? What if the organization is a state government?