X now wants your biometric data, as well as your job and education history for ‘safety, security, and identification purposes’::The company said it may use user data to train A.I. models.
While the potential misuse of highly personal information by private companies is indeed a concern, I believe we may be overlooking a key point that the article doesn’t fully address: Musk’s ambition to create a “super app”. I haven’t delved deeply into this concept, but I’ve pondered it a bit. The question that comes to mind is: why would someone choose to develop an app for Twitter instead of Android or iOS?
Apart from the obvious advantage of not having to develop for two separate platforms, there’s also the benefit of user identification. This, I believe, will be a major draw for many services. The ability to verify a user’s identity at the ID level, even down to their fingerprint, is a significant advantage. From a technical standpoint, it’s impressive, but consider the legal implications as well. It’s incredibly convenient for those offering sensitive services.
If this approach proves successful and attracts companies, government entities, and so on, and if Twitter becomes the platform where we can easily renew our driving licenses, pay municipal taxes, and handle other tedious tasks, would we be willing to exchange our personal data for such convenience? Perhaps those of us reading this comment wouldn’t, at least initially, but I suspect the majority of people would.
I believe the Chinese already have it.
Apple isn’t far behind. Transferring funds, iPhones have biometric authentication, GPS in every phone, account mandated. The future is handed to our technical overlords on a platter for a bit of convenience.
They do, it’s called Weibo and Elon has explicitly said he’s trying to make an app like it