Sam Altman's Creepy Eyeball-Scanning Company Gets in Bed With Zoom and Tinder
Source: Gizmodo
No one wants to talk to a bot, but how far are you willing to go to prove that youre human? Sam Altman is banking on people being willing to surrender scans of their eyes in order to authenticate themselves, and hes amassing some powerful sources to push more people to go along with the scheme. On Friday, both Tinder and Zoom announced partnerships with Altmans World, the company behind the creepy, eyeball-scanning orb that is meant to prove users are human.
World has already been working with Tinder and ran a pilot of the verification process in Japan. It was apparently enough of a success that Tinder will roll out the authentication method globally. According to a press release, users will be required to undergo Worlds verification method, which requires having their eyeballs scanned at a physical location with a proprietary device to prove they are human. Once they do so, theyll get a badge on their profile to signal that they are a verified human. Tinder will also tempt people to partake by offering five free boostsa feature that temporarily makes a persons profile appear first for other users.
Zoom will also be getting in on the proof-of-humanhood plan, but will be taking a different approach. Per a press release, the video conferencing platform will start to integrate World ID Deep Face, a technology that cross-references an image of a user taken at the time they verify their identity at a World Orb device to ensure they are who they claim, performs a real-time face check of the person from their own device, and scans the live video frame that other participants see on screen. If all three methods produce a match, the person gets a Verified Human badge.
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Its not clear World has anywhere near the infrastructure needed to support this scheme at scale at this point. Last year, the company claimed it planned to deploy 7,500 Orbs in the United States, but never followed up on that figure. The company reportedly has about 18 million verified users thus far, but many of them are people in developing nations who signed up because of the promise of Worldcoin, a cryptocurrency that has seemingly fallen out of Worlds plans. The scheme to get users to trade their biometrics for digital coins was criticized for being exploitative and deceptive.
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Read more: https://gizmodo.com/sam-altmans-creepy-eyeball-scanning-company-gets-in-bed-with-zoom-and-tinder-2000748013
Sam's a very good salesman.
He's also someone nobody should trust: https://www.democraticunderground.com/100221158209
Goonch
(5,264 posts)
yellow dahlia
(6,153 posts)I do not plan on signing up for this surveillance state.
TommyT139
(2,420 posts)And of course there's this recent news:
This Company Is Secretly Turning Your Zoom Meetings into AI Podcasts
WebinarTV hosts 200,000 webinars. A Zoom call you may thought was private might be one of them.
https://www.404media.co/this-company-is-secretly-turning-your-zoom-calls-into-ai-podcasts/
No paywall:
https://archive.md/20260324184050/https://www.404media.co/this-company-is-secretly-turning-your-zoom-calls-into-ai-podcasts/
reACTIONary
(7,210 posts)reACTIONary
(7,210 posts)... copy right violator. I would register the copyright to my webinar, display the copyright right off, and the skip the takedown notice and proceed directly to the lawsuit.
2naSalit
(103,260 posts)Have no apps to worry about and I wouldn't be able to use the eye scan stuff because whenever I acquire a new device, before I ever turn it on, I poke its eyes out so it can never see me. I either damage the lens or cover it with electrical tape.
Not going to be available for them to take advantage of me with their tech bro control freak bullshit.
Fuck all of them.
FakeNoose
(41,931 posts)Oh, I get it ... it's so-o-o-oo 20th century!
reACTIONary
(7,210 posts)..... secret agent action adventure film feature retinal scans. Fingerprints are sooooo passe.
erronis
(24,072 posts)just want to make it look official.
Prairie_Seagull
(4,740 posts)This is reason for relocation outside this sphere of influence.
Karasu
(2,023 posts)seeing ANYWHERE else in the world right now.
It is one of the best reasons to leave, and there are many.
not fooled
(6,710 posts)Problem solved! No need for anything else!
FakeNoose
(41,931 posts)jfz9580m
(17,381 posts)Last edited Sat Apr 18, 2026, 06:02 AM - Edit history (1)
I do not trust Sam Altman, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai, Elon Musk, Satya Nadella, Vinod Khosla, Marc Andreessen, Larry Ellison and the like.
Their analogues here in India are just as creepy. I was creeped out by the fact that this shady guy Alex Pentland of the Epstein associated MIT Media Lab was one of the architects of Indias Aadhar program.
I am not paranoid.
I would not be wary if dramatic accelerations of ubiquitous technology did not appear forced through with scant oversight.
I would prefer it if there was substantial input at the helm from the kinds of people I am inclined to trust. I would not trust the contemporary technology sector to seriously safeguard the essential principles that had resulted in a society which back in 2008 had at least some semblance of implicitly civilized democratic functioning.
Roe v Wade fell in 2022 and based on the societal attitudes I had witnessed bts in tech sector adjacent academic science and psychiatry starting from the Fall of 2011, I was less surprised than many.
However imperfect the running implementation of a democratic state, whatever the new directions selected, they should not set course in actively worse directions.
I cannot see common ground with anyone who sees the overturning of Roe v Wade as inconsequential.
These are examples of people I trust: lawyers or regulators like Lina Khan, Aziz Huq, Rohit Chopra; doctors like Dr. Caitlin Bernard, Dr. Warren Hern, Dr. Fauci or Dr. Clayton Dalton; scientists like Dr. Henrik Mouritsen, Dr. Peter Hore, Dr. Adam Becker, Prof Paul Ehrlich, Dr. Madhav Gadgil, Prof Ryan Williams or Dr. Francis Collins; tech journalists like Yasha Levine or Ed Zitron; privacy groups like Privacy International or the Internet Freedom Foundation; environmental journalists like Chris Ketcham; AI safety groups like Timnit Gebrus DAIR; groups that safeguard womens rights such as Planned Parenthood; whistleblowers like Hemant Kappana; hopefully regulatory bodies like the TRAI; most MeToo complainants, though I am wary of PMC involvement as they tend to favor shitty institutions not harassed women and finding a path that involves due process for all without PMC bullshit is an ongoing concern.
I never buy the current crop of business leaders in tech. Vinod Khosla is portrayed as better occasionally and I disagree. Although Khosla doesnt seem particularly sexist, he is very autocratic and women fare worse in dictatorships.
On the whole I think Khosla is more dangerous than Elon Musk, who at least doesnt pretend to be anything he is not.
Vinod Khosla, Sundar Pichai, Satya Nadella and Marc Andreessen are my four least favorite people in tech.
Best case, these guys are not people I can take seriously. And Vinod Khosla angers me outright with how imperious, sleazy, disingenuous and daft he is. Not the man who should be calling anyone a dope.
Lina Khan was a corrective move and even some Republicans like her. Businesspeople who attack Lina Khan truly show how ott their worldviews are.
This is an oped I really liked from the last election season. I save pieces like these. My mom used to collect newspaper cuttings so that makes sense:
https://newrepublic.com/article/187156/mark-cuban-harris-working-class
Am a chip of the old block! The exclamation mark connotes enthusiasm wrt using the present day web.
I am trying to organize information like this into a pattern in my journal.