World, formerly known as Worldcoin, recently posted an apparent spoof of Spotify’s “Wrapped” year-end user reports, lampooning the music streaming service’s data privacy practices.
The seemingly playful jab came in the form of an image posted to X via World’s verified account with the statement, “World ID lets you & your actions stay anonymous online.”
The attached graphic featured text and imagery in the style of Spotify’s “Unwrapped” data-centric usage reports, which are tailored to individual users.
Among the comedic quotes used in the Unwrapped meme were “to the human who played the Heavy Metal Sleep playlist every night for months,” to which World added, “We don’t know anything about you (but we are intrigued).”
World ID Unwrapped
Spotify’s Unwrapped year-end reports have been both lauded for their shareability and community-building nature and criticized as exploitative of users’ data and privacy. More recently, a partnership with Google’s generative artificial intelligence services has led to what appears to be widespread customer disappointment with the 2024 “Wrapped” reports.
Meanwhile, despite World’s evident teasing, the identification firm has faced its own consumer and government scrutiny as of late.
The company’s primary product is its World ID anonymous verification service. World ID uses eye-scanning technology called “Orbs” to confirm an individual’s identity and records that information to an immutable blockchain ledger. Users registered with a World ID and verified via Orbs are then given a stipend of the company’s cryptocurrency.
World has expressed its ultimate intention to develop a guaranteed basic income for World ID holders as well as a globally recognized anonymous identity verification service that would allow users to transact and travel anonymously while still meeting identification requirements.
However, it has faced an uphill battle in the European Union and elsewhere. In the EU, General Data Protection Regulation complaints have led to previous suspensions in Spain and Portugal. The service was also suspended in the Dominican Republic in November.
Related: Worldcoin says it’s legal in all countries it operates in despite Spanish ban
Sam Altman and Elon Musk
World’s services are available in the United States, with the exception of its “Worldcoin” token. According to previous company blog posts, regulatory uncertainty has prevented World’s Worldcoin from becoming available to US users.
The results of the 2024 US presidential election, however, could serve as a catalyst for change. US President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to overhaul the nation’s regulatory and policy efforts in the crypto sector and to make the nation a leader in both blockchain and cryptocurrency technology .
This could lend itself to a more receptive legal landscape for World’s operations. Though it bears mention that longstanding legal beef between World co-founder Sam Altman and Trump adviser Elon Musk over the former’s AI firm, OpenAI, has the potential to complicate matters.
As Cointelegraph recently reported, the Trump administration’s presumptive appointee for the position of “White House Cryptocurrency and AI Czar,” David Sacks, has close ties to Musk and his companies and has voiced his support for Musk’s efforts to prevent OpenAI from becoming a for-profit company.
While this ostensibly has nothing to do with World, which is a separate legal and business entity from OpenAI, it remains to be seen whether the new administration will bring about the regulatory certainty the company seeks ahead of launching Worldcoin in the US.
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