interesting - this looks quite promising. anything that reduces captchas or client blocks while using a VPN is welcome in my books.
i’m not sure what they mean about agents, however. would this mean a human generates legitimate traffic, and that goodwill can then be utilised by a browser agent? and will it be possible to host your own Moderator?
> i’m not sure what they mean about agents, however. would this mean a human generates legitimate traffic, and that goodwill can then be utilised by a browser agent?
I feel like this is explained in the article:
> AI agents acting on behalf of a user slot into the same flow. An agent can carry its user’s Credentials, in which case the user remains accountable for how the agent behaves. Sites would not need to grant any more access than they would to the user themselves. Alternatively, the operator of an agent can run its own Anchor and vouch for its agents the way other Anchors vouch for human users. Sites retain control over which Anchors they accept, so they can choose how to treat agent traffic without needing a separate detection mechanism.
So there are 2 things that could happen, depending on how the agent works.
1: An Anchor gives the user Credentials, with personhood verified by e.g. the user's phone number. The agent can then use that to act like a normal user.
2: The operator of the Agent (OpenAI, Google, etc.) acts as the Anchor themselves. That Anchor gives the agent its own separate Credentials, maybe with personhood
verified by the user's paid subscription or something. This approach would allow Moderators to block agents, if they wanted.
> and will it be possible to host your own Moderator?
Yes. They say that the website itself can be the Moderator
> In the common case the site itself plays the Moderator role, so there’s no new entity or trust boundary.
I'm likely naive, but I'm very excited about a future that abandons the web and builds on reticulum. But I worry that the same flaws will be replicated out of habit instead of using it as a chance to avoid the dark paths.
Reticulum uses a proof of work "stamp" as a user side defense against not like behavior.
It looks really interesting from a technical standpoint. I really hope they manage to make meaningful progress. At the same time, it looks really challenging; not just because of technical implementation but collaboration. It's a pretty involved plan to begin with, and they are competing with behemoths who don't mind getting many bits of information about a user (with simpler implementations). Who will help Mozilla succeed here?
5 comments
[ 215 ms ] story [ 120 ms ] threadi’m not sure what they mean about agents, however. would this mean a human generates legitimate traffic, and that goodwill can then be utilised by a browser agent? and will it be possible to host your own Moderator?
I feel like this is explained in the article:
> AI agents acting on behalf of a user slot into the same flow. An agent can carry its user’s Credentials, in which case the user remains accountable for how the agent behaves. Sites would not need to grant any more access than they would to the user themselves. Alternatively, the operator of an agent can run its own Anchor and vouch for its agents the way other Anchors vouch for human users. Sites retain control over which Anchors they accept, so they can choose how to treat agent traffic without needing a separate detection mechanism.
So there are 2 things that could happen, depending on how the agent works.
1: An Anchor gives the user Credentials, with personhood verified by e.g. the user's phone number. The agent can then use that to act like a normal user.
2: The operator of the Agent (OpenAI, Google, etc.) acts as the Anchor themselves. That Anchor gives the agent its own separate Credentials, maybe with personhood verified by the user's paid subscription or something. This approach would allow Moderators to block agents, if they wanted.
> and will it be possible to host your own Moderator?
Yes. They say that the website itself can be the Moderator > In the common case the site itself plays the Moderator role, so there’s no new entity or trust boundary.
Reticulum uses a proof of work "stamp" as a user side defense against not like behavior.
Shorter post: https://blog.mozilla.org/en/privacy-security/keeping-the-web...
Sincerely, I wish them the best of luck!