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Why are people lining up for Worldcoin eyeball scans? “Easy $50” (restofworld.org)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Reporters visited booths of Worldcoin, a global blockchain project championed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, in Nairobi, Bengaluru, and Hong Kong to get a better sense of who was signing up for the service and why. In all three cities, the surge of interest for registering their biometrics to the blockchain was driven primarily by the sign-up bonuses. Relatively few people were familiar with the goals of the project.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (8 children)

I'm more interested in learning about who is paying the 25 WLD, how they have funded that, and how they plan to generate a return on the investment. There is already an upfront investment involved in developing the token, the "orb", and the uses of the data, so what is the business model that generates revenue for them?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Last year the MIT Technology Review published an extensive research report. It's a very long read but it's worth the time if I may say so.

Deception, exploited workers, and cash handouts: How Worldcoin recruited its first half a million test users

Our [MIT] investigation revealed wide gaps between Worldcoin’s public messaging, which focused on protecting privacy, and what users experienced. We found that the company’s representatives used deceptive marketing practices, collected more personal data than it acknowledged, and failed to obtain meaningful informed consent. These practices may violate the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR)—a likelihood that the company’s own data consent policy acknowledged and asked users to accept—as well as local laws. [...]

Pete Howson, a senior lecturer at Northumbria University who researches cryptocurrency in international development, categorizes Worldcoin’s actions as a sort of crypto-colonialism, where “blockchain and cryptocurrency experiments are being imposed on vulnerable communities essentially because…these people can’t push back,” he told MIT Technology Review in an email.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Oh wow. It gets worse with every sentence. "Crypto-colonialism" has to be the most terrifying new term ive learned this week.

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