3.2. Identity verification through W Identity. To create a W Social account, you must first verify your identity through W Identity. W Identity operates an independent identity verification service that allows you to verify your identity once and then selectively share verified attributes with third-party applications under your control.
3.3. During the W Identity verification process, you will be asked to provide your phone number, email address, and date of birth, and to verify your identity using an official passport (via photo or NFC scan) and a selfie. This process is governed by W Identity’s own terms of service and privacy notice [...]
From the "W Identity" Play Store page:
Data that may be shared with other companies or organizations:
Personal info: Name, Email address, User IDs, and Other info
I appreciate the sentiment I guess, but you can't really verify the human-ness of a poster. At best you can validate that at some point(s) they completed a human-is-present check. Doesn't necessarily mean anything about a given post. Moltbook (wow that feels like forever ago) has the inverse problem: you can just larp as a kooky bot. At best maybe you can do something like limit the number of bots to the number of people who are willing to set aside their personal credentials, which is probably way more bots than you can stand.
They could tie the identities to governmental identities in a blind manner.
The pitfalls are as follows:
- the governments can just arbitrarily manufacture identities
- identities (govt and this) can be stolen
- identities can be misused (coercively or consensually, e.g. by passing on access to another person or automation)
Still would beat the current state of affairs, which is piss-all identity attestation, but then they're not actually doing this. They're scanning official documents and go LGTM + pinky promise. Hard skip.
On the day I have deleted all social network accounts bar Mastodon, as I have realised I just don't care anymore. Any one I want in my life, I have the phone number of, any one I can take or leave I don't. Mastodon is more than enough for exploring and finding interesting projects that I otherwise wouldn't have learned about.
Users can be from anywhere in the world, but they're making a selling point of it being built in Europe, hosted on European infrastructure, and governed by European law. The linked page shows this pretty clearly, I think.
Privacy Policy:
3.2. Identity verification through W Identity. To create a W Social account, you must first verify your identity through W Identity. W Identity operates an independent identity verification service that allows you to verify your identity once and then selectively share verified attributes with third-party applications under your control.
3.3. During the W Identity verification process, you will be asked to provide your phone number, email address, and date of birth, and to verify your identity using an official passport (via photo or NFC scan) and a selfie. This process is governed by W Identity’s own terms of service and privacy notice [...]
From the "W Identity" Play Store page:
Data that may be shared with other companies or organizations:
Personal info: Name, Email address, User IDs, and Other info
Photos and videos: Photos
Location: Approximate location
Messages: Other in-app messages
Device or other IDs
How uneuropean.
Can't wait to do this and then get to use my "W account" to log into pornhub...
The pitfalls are as follows:
- the governments can just arbitrarily manufacture identities
- identities (govt and this) can be stolen
- identities can be misused (coercively or consensually, e.g. by passing on access to another person or automation)
Still would beat the current state of affairs, which is piss-all identity attestation, but then they're not actually doing this. They're scanning official documents and go LGTM + pinky promise. Hard skip.
That just seems too heavy an operation for my taste. Seems prone to either infighting or raising too much early capital.
My social network is IRC, never needed to reveal my ID behind my nickname.
what, exactly, has "european" got to do with bieng a "verified human"
maybe I should ask a dog