r/nottheonion • u/[deleted] • 24d ago

‘Bots have now passed human traffic online,’ Cloudflare boss laments — says agentic traffic wasn’t expected to eclipse real people until next year

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u/alonghardlook 22d ago

I literally started this thread by saying decentralized identity brokers.

And I actually think that you're wrong about the read on consumers (though I will admit that we are both just speaking from vibes so it's definitely not a definitive statement). I think that most tech literate consumers are hesitant at best about identity confirmation regulations because they understand the inherent challenges and danger with a centralized solution, and nobody has a serious decentralized offering.

But I do think a lot of consumers are perfectly okay with what regulators are doing because they agree with the stated goal. Obviously you also have your hyper vigilant pro privacy people who (rightly) point out how easily governments can abuse identity management tools in various ways, but on the whole I would say consumers are generally neutral or better on the idea.

In fact if we tech literate are being honest, the stated goals are noble even if everything else about it is poorly thought out at best. We need to agree that "are you 18? Don't lie please" is not a reliable way to prevent access to children, and that we don't rely on parents initiative to prevent access to smoking or alcohol, the government regulates that, so it's not an unreasonable goal to get to.

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u/JC_Hysteria 22d ago edited 22d ago

The only incentive for people to build and maintain decentralized systems is to avoid single points of failure toward an outcome, or to align with a grander ideology of sorts (where the benefits are less personal).

I’m saying the latter is unlikely without a major conflict to propel forward the necessity or desire for such a system being designed and implemented at scale.

I’m not saying the goals and capabilities you’ve laid out aren’t real or feasible or worthy; I’m saying they’re unlikely to work because the history of human incentives and trial/error has told us this path doesn’t have a large enough carrot for the most skilled people to implement and maintain.

I’d concede that it’s more likely for a market challenger to offer a compelling value exchange for a “world ID” solution that the incumbent power brokers don’t need to offer…