[falcor84]

I'm as biased against cryptocurrency as everyone, but couldn't we have the requestor do a bit of mining work to mint that initial id? I mean, if the service is actually making a bit of money from each request, the need for rate limiting just vanishes, right?

[nroets]

If proof of work is the "payment" to prove that you're human, many AI startups will outbid poor people living third world countries. They will even outbid some Americans.

Yes, those AI startups can also buy cheap Android phones at scale, but it's a bit harder because they'll pay for stuff that their bots have no use for (a screen, a battery, a 5G radio, software, branding, distribution, customer support etc).

[falcor84]

As I see it, living requires money. If we have people on this planet that are too poor to digitally prove that they're alive, then we need to figure out a way to distribute the Earth's wealth more equally in general, rather than to require hardware attestation, which seems to be worse on essentially every metric, including inequality.

[cybercatgurrl]

i genuinely don’t think the idea of being too poor to prove you’re alive is on their radar. it’s just not in their priorities. this is why we need regulations. companies only care about bottom line and increasing profits not the wellbeing of humanity

[AnthonyMouse]

> If proof of work is the "payment" to prove that you're human, many AI startups will outbid poor people living third world countries. They will even outbid some Americans.

The difference is that if you're human you can create an account and then carry on using it for decades, whereas if you're an aggressive scraper bot or spammer then you get banned and have to buy new accounts over and over.

[nroets]

An "account" which is somehow linked to enough of your browsing history to determine if you're a scraper or a spammer. Then the company(s) administrating these accounts will be able to collect a lot of info on the account holders over decades.

Google hardware attestation idea won't give them that much data: All Google will know is which phones visited which websites and only when the website asks the phone for hardware attestation. If the website gives the phone a cookie for bypassing subsequent attestations, then Google will know only of the first visit.

[fsflover]

A least they would give money to something useful.

[falcor84]

Attestation is a service, like every other service. Why should it necessarily be free? Especially now that we all know that "free" on the web means ads & tracking?

I think we should just accept that some things should cost a bit of money and move the discussion to "how much should it cost", rather than trying to sweep economics under the rug.

[nroets]

I think you miss my point: When bots can "give" more money/computing power, then the transaction is no longer a good test of being human.

[fsflover]

This is why I said "at least".