I haven't heard of, and can't think of, a solution to this problem that doesn't introduce much larger problems. Big picture, I don't think the problem of distinguishing humans from bots online is a big enough deal that we should take hits in other areas to solve it.

The least-harm solution, as far as I can see right now, is to just accept that the internet cannot be made trustworthy in this way. The only way to know for sure the nature of who you're dealing with will be to deal with them in person. Much like it has always been.

What if the person you are dealing with is on the other side of the world?

I don't think that really works, you need some kind of trust system. I hope it doesn't turn out that worldcoin is the best solution.

Identity online should be optional. If you read comments on a news story about an upcoming election in your country, you should see some that are verifiably a human citizen from your country, separate from everything else. Pay attention to everything else at your discretion.

I think a web that is half identified and half anonymous would work well.

> What if the person you are dealing with is on the other side of the world?

Then you can't be sure.

> you need some kind of trust system.

I agree. I just haven't heard of one that doesn't cause more problems than it solves. Just because we want it doesn't mean we can have it.

There isn't a single solution to be had because there isn't a single way you interact with strangers online.

Verifying identity is necessarily completely different if you're sending someone an item in exchange for money, or looking to date them for a while, or going into long-term business with them, or maybe just having a discussion where you want to validate that they work where they claim.

We don't need blanket verification of people's identities online. If a bot is posting on a service and is indistinguishable from an interesting human, why shouldn't it stay? "On the internet, nobody knows you're a dog" used to be the Web 1.0 motto.

In Europe there's eIDAS. You install an app on your phone that can be used to identify yourself. This is used to sign documents, payments, single sign on to other apps / websites, etc. During onboarding you will need to verify your identity with the help of the government, banks, or other recognised authorities. Afterwards it's just the app. It works very well.

The thing is that in some cultures people are strongly against ID cards. In the UK for example, for a long time there was a fight against a national identity card. Even though you have to get one (a passport) to travel abroad. Instead they would use electricity bills to prove things like you actually live somewhere. Or the driver license was a pice of paper, with no photo. With fraud as a result.

I think it is based on that in some countries there is less trust in the government than in other countries.

Where I live, Sweden, it is very hard to live without an ID card/passport and starting to get hard without a digital ID.

However, the privacy laws and prevention against abuse is fairly good. Not perfect I am sure but pretty good, compared with the US or even the UK (both places I have lived).

> The only idea I see is for some certificates handed out by government to citizens and I absolutely hate it even in a democracy.

I think this is the answer. Governments already have the infrastructure to verify identities in person, and no other organization is going to build it.

I think your idea of certificates handed out by government is horrifying, but I agree it seems to be the only way to guarantee that you are who you say you are - even though it comes with several potential avenues for abuse.

I think we'll see two "tiers" of internet.

One tier will be for day to day usage for "normal" users - banking, social media, news, etc. A tier that you digital ID will be used to verify you are who you are, and others can be assured that they're talking to the person they say they are - though there are flaws in that system if someone can get a hold of another persons' certificate.

The other tier would be the unverified internet - things like boilerplate/startup communities, activities you don't want your digital ID tied to, something to still allow people to remain semi-anonymous on the internet if choosing to.

Not sure if this will be what actually happens or if governments just slowly decide to force people to use only the verified internet while trying to access the "outernet" (or whatever buzzword they'd use) would be met with scrutiny and potentially criminal charges.

Well hopefully the system could be semi-anonymous. So reddit doesn't get your identity, they are just able to prevent you from making another account (or perhaps limit it to a few accounts per real person). If they are nice, they don't even need to track which accounts belong to the same person.

Of course there is a lot of space for abuse. And it would unfairly lock many/most people out, because services can only accept certificates from the governments they trusts.

Why did we believe that we could build an algorithm that provided trust? We can provide "trust", which is when we narrow the definition to verifying whether mathematical objects have been tampered with, or whether they can be observed without secret keys, but we could always make safes.

Trusting a safe isn't like trusting a person.

I don't find this helpful.

Captchas have solved a real problem. They did work.

Captchas reduced a real problem, certainly, but didn't solve it. And they come with collateral damage.

I'm not asserting that the compromise they present is a bad one (or a good one). Just that they're a compromise.

You are hair splitting. Okay yes captchas successfully reduced the problem. That doesn't make a difference to the topic.

How can we _reduce_ the problem once captchas are obsolete?

I have bad news: it may be time to go back to the real world

A certificate from the government that gets revoked when you commit a crime. Or are accused of a crime. That can track every single thing you so online. All of your speech online, which is most of everyone’s speech, is permanently stored and analyzed.

The government doesn't need to know which services you use and which accounts are yours. The service doesn't need to know who you are, only that you are a unique human.

But yes, as I said, I hate the idea. Was asking for other solutions.

Yeah the US government would never in a million years do it in a privacy preserving way

Very few governments would.

> Or should we just accept that the times of interacting over internet with strangers you can believe to be humans is over?

IMO, you can end that sentence after "internet".

Why, I will be able to call my friends.

The post office should have a centralized public key registry for people with a US mailing address.