Dr. Adrianna Teriakidis | 📰 We Need A Way To Prove Personhood Online

I’ve been reading a lot of outrage online about the possibility of the government requiring ID verification to access social media or other sites that it wants to keep children off. Based on the discussion, you could be forgiven for thinking that there are only two options: handing over your full government ID or no verification. This article does a nice job of explaining the alternatives. I distilled some of the info here for you. I also recommend reading the full article - there is a wild story about a grumpy AI agent.

DiResta’s argument

The internet wasn’t built with an identity layer and for the most part platforms have made their own choices for how to distinguish users from bots. But with AI getting more capable, old methods of catching bots aren’t as effective and new risks are appearing. This means we need a way to verify there is an accountable human somewhere in the loop. “Proof of personhood” is the fix, but how we implement it will impact who gets to contribute online. Any system will elevate the arbitror to a position of power, which incentivises scope creep. That means we need a good way of deciding how much information is needed in different domains and who can verify it.

The goal is to share the minimum amount of information for the need. High-stakes domains may need full ID verification; social media, ratings and reviews may just need to verify uniqueness, agent transactions may need to verify delegation. A user should be able to prove the most limited claim needed.

Here’s a summary of different approaches to slow down bots and verify personhood.

Approaches to the bot problem
Approach	Methods	Strengths	Limitations
Add friction Require a task that is easier for humans	CAPTCHAs Distorted text “I’m not a robot” (assessing mouse patterns) Behaviour scoring systems Phone number verification	Strength: Used to add more friction for bots than for humans Strength: Mostly safeguard one-person-one-vote systems (ratings, petitions, reviews) Strength: Can estimate number of human users (e.g. for ad deals)	Limitation: Less useful as AI capability increases
Legislate Create laws for how bots can or can’t be used	Some laws have been created around this, e.g. the FTC prohibited buying or selling reviews from people that don’t exist	Strength: Doesn’t depend on AI capabilities Strength: Doesn’t add friction for humans	Limitation: Can be hard to enforce
Content verification Systems to prove if content is human or AI generated	AI watermarks, e.g. SynthID Content credentials Edit history	Strength: Can store details about how images, videos and audio were created Strength: Can help identify AI-generated content	Limitation: Focused on content and not person
Proof of personhood Prove actor is a unique human
Prove identity	Digital IDs identifying a specific person Often issued by sovereign states	Strength: Can be used for high-stakes transactions like banking or signing documents Strength: Can be used to prove eligibility for services	Limitation: Can be used for surveillance Limitation: Some people may be excluded if they don’t have an ID Limitation: Central control over issuing Limitation: Risk of data breach
Anonymous verification	Prove you are a unique human Government ID Biometrics Physical device attestation Community vouching for you Present only what is needed Proof of uniqueness Verify over 18	Strength: Minimises what information is shared Strength: Can prove uniqueness and humanness Strength: Can be used to prove authorisation by a human	Limitation: Each method will exclude some people Limitation: Concentrates power in third-party verifiers

DiResta concludes with these recommendations:

There should be many methods of proof - no monopoly on proving identity
Correction and recovery should be easy
You should have transparency over when and by whom your identity is verified

Screenshot of the title and image of the article. A Red background with squares with human-shaped cutouts https://www.noemamag.com/we-need-a-way-to-prove-personhood-online/

📰 We Need A Way To Prove Personhood Online by Renée DiResta (2026)

DiResta’s argument