• 0 Posts
  • 45 Comments
Joined 2 months ago
cake
Cake day: January 7th, 2026

help-circle
  • I wonder why such discussions are always framed as an all or nothing propositions. Zero knowledge systems are a decades old invention. Just very briefly: based on some ID a site issues cryptographycally signed tokens claiming some fact, e.g. the requester being an actual real person, adulthood, etc. Such a token could be presented by an otherwise anonymous user to a 2nd site with their own signature as proof of said property in order to consume their service. Tokens could even be single use.

    A requirement to prove someone is, in fact, a human is not unreasonable. Banning bots or bad actors could be a solution to a lot of the problems on social media etc…

    There is naturally a major shortcoming of this scheme, authoritarians could not track people…







  • Bit of a nitpick, but according the quote they “problem” Google puts forward is about “…reducing dependence on American tech companies…” not adoption of free software. Their problem, it seems to me, is that they don’t want competition and with that a more level playing field. If the EU would promote or even finance local alternatives, it would only would hurt their bottom line.

    As a reminder, Google itself is built and continues to operate on free software. They themselves have released and maintain important software such as Go and Kubernetes conform the open source model. They are also major supporters of governence organizations such as The Linux Foundation. But this is of course b/c they are smart in recognizing their own benefit.