this post was submitted on 25 Mar 2026
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Privacy
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It's really weird to me how literally anything they say or do is immediately interpreted in the worst possible way here, on Lemmy.
Let's get real for a second.
Is there a bot problem on the Internet in general? That's a resounding "yes".
Do we want to do something about it?
According to OP - no, not at all.
I mean, if OP considers malicious everything that Spez listed, the only remaining course of action is inaction and hoping for the best.
https://lemmy.ml/post/45007584/24779562
You're right in theory, but it's Spez we're talking about. I tend to consider that the following is a rational reaction to Spez preparing to take any action about anything in any context:
There is a bot problem but ID checks are invasive, and you can stop the bots with things like Hcaptcha Passive and Turnstile which use POW to waste the CPU cycles of bots and look for signs of things like Selenium and Puppeteer controlling the browser.
This is not ID checks.
Passkeys and hardware attestation are also good as they require a fingerprint or face and bare metal hardware instead of a VM, but Spez also wants to introduce things like the Worldcoin Orb and IDs as well which are too invasive IMO.
FFS, do you guys just not understand a thing you're reading, or flat out refuse to read anything on Reddit?
Who says anything about ID checks or HCaptchas?
Well, it looks like they state three options:
Passkeys. This won't work over a medium term, period. It's tantamount to saying that SSH keys prove someone is human. If there's enough interest, they'll just make a software passkey solution that can work. Passkey being "human interactive" is purely a client-side construct.
Biometric services. Strictly speaking, not an ID but it's not hard to imagine leveraging capturing biometrics to an ID like scenario.
Government IDs. Well that's self explanatory.
They do state distancing themselves from the ID by trusting a third party service, but 3rd party ID service is still a thing.
Of course, this seems to be only after someone accuses you of being a bot and Reddit bothering to pay attention. Which may be almost no one.
Precisely. Any of the listed options is better than a captcha. None of the options are perfect, obviously, we're using yesterday's tech to solve a tomorrow's problem, but it's something, and it doesn't immediately mean "privacy online is dead".
I'd rather put up with a captcha than do any on those other things, especially if it was temporary. Or maybe they could do something like Anubis
Why would it be temporary?
Ironically the only thing that will ever work is identifying a user to a person in one form or another. Otherwise it's just a never ending arms race.
"We can't let the terrorists win!!"
You'd really hand over your government ID to Spez? Lmao
Did you not read anything from the linked post, or did you fail to understand it?
Who says anything about government ID?
Did you read the announcement? This has nothing to do with identification.