NAIROBI, Kenya, Aug 7 – Police raided a warehouse belonging to WorldCoin cryptocurrency in Nairobi and carted away documents over the weekend. The officers went to the offices along Mombasa Road armed with a search warrant and left with machines they believe stores data gathered by the firm. The team took the data to the […]
Why? I mean it still seems sketchy, but so what if people want to trade their personal data for currency?
They’re targeting low income locations to data mine on people. It’s shady asf and they’re barely even paying them. Meanwhile the people running it are obscenely wealthy and get 20% of all worldcoin…
People don’t want to sell their personal data for currency.
People need currency. There is only a finite amount of currency in the world. Power structures are formed because some people have currency and other people need currency.
People are forced to do things like sell their bodies, sell their organs, and - yes - sell their biometric data. Because they need currency to survive. You don’t see billionaires lining up for this.
It’s exploitation of those who are most desperate. You can argue that there’s the systemic problem - that there shouldn’t be billionaires alongside people who are starving and need to sell their bodies - but that isn’t being solved anytime soon.
But exploiting this systemic problem, using it as leverage to convince millions of poor folks to sell their biometric data… that’s immoral. It’s immoral to take advantage of desperation just to line your own pockets.
Why do you think you’re hearing about this from some of the poorest countries in the world?
They don’t even pay you each time they use your data. It’s a one time payment and that doesn’t work in this service economy. Even if you don’t care about privacy the deal is bad.