Klox

Requirement 3 was just nice to haves to make a better culture around ticketing to fight scalpers and related problems. The first two are mostly the meat of the ticketing ecosystem.

You ultimately need to trust the provider

That’s not the ultimate trust, and whether or not I trust them has no bearing on purchasing tickets. The point is, people can sell me a fake ticket and I won’t really know until I get to the venue. Providers committing fraud is pretty rare.

All the decentralised smart contracts in the world won’t help you if they’re scamming you.

You don’t know what you’re talking about then. You can absolutely prove the vender issued the NFT. And you can absolutely prove you own the NFT. And you can absolutely transfer ownership of the NFT in a provable way. I don’t know what other argument to make if you just believe incorrect facts.

So just trust them. With a database.

I really don’t understand the desire for you to want to pay 15 to 30% fees to go to a venue. Is it hard for you to imagine a world where that is not necessary?

If you really want, produce digitally signed tickets that can be verified against that database with an API.

That’s requirement 2. I should be free to hand my ticket to someone else, digitally. Now we both need to have some custom software talking to your database, and we are in integration hell trying to get ownership transferred in a secure way. Now we’re running a business equivalent to StubHub with thousands of staff trying to have clients upload their tickets to this database in a verifiable way, for no purpose other than you don’t want to admit blockchains solve some interesting problems.

why do I, as a event-goer, actually care about transparency?

Because you want to know you own the ticket. Can you imagine flying to a town, getting to a venue, and holding a fake ticket? Oof…

Or hell, just print physical tickets that can be physically transferred.

I don’t think we’re really having a debate anymore. You can print your physical tickets from Ticketmaster. It doesn’t remove their 30% fee. It doesn’t make ticketing more convenient. Why invent solutions to problems we aren’t talking about?

Throw in a Merkle tree if you really want transparency.

How does a retrievable Merkletree from a database meet any of the requirements I asked for? What does that even mean, to throw in a Merkle tree? Are you trying to convince me you can prevent double-writes to the database? What is this API you are imagining, where I can give ownership of a ticket to someone else? And now we’ve got thousands of venues with their own schemas. What are you even arguing here? It just sounds like you want to hate blockchains, heh.

And when courts disagree with the smart contract, or there’s a bug, or someone’s key is phished… It’s an interesting idea, but it isn’t practical.

The third requirement was to cover some of this. Vendor canceling tickets and other maintenance actions. Courts are involved all the time with existing businesses, so I am not sure why “courts” is a counterpoint to an NFT backed ticket ecosystem. If anything, it makes it stupidly clear to the courts who “owns” the ticket. People can be phished right now, so I am not sure how that’s a counter-point to any of the requirements I mentioned. If the customer can prove they were phished, it is extremely easy to revoke the NFT and issue a new one.

Anyways, I think we’ve run this course. Ive enjoyed chatting. My goal was just to raise some awareness since I only see poorly thought out critiques of NFTs. There are some good reasons to not want an NFT system, but there are also some unique benefits.

Cheers

Ok, here are your requirements:

1. A ticket exchange that provides permission less access and trust less verification of ticket authenticity and ownership (we should be free to use independent exchange services).

2. Tickets must be transferable between parties without intermediary controlling and approving exchanges (or you’re just the new middleman).

3. Rules around issuing tickets, resales, and revocation must be enforceable transparently.

Good luck friend. LMK what you come up with. I think what might be more productive to the conversation is if you state which of these requirements is not important (and why it is not important) because I can guarantee you can’t make a system that meets these without a blockchain-esque system.

FWIW, if you don’t understand why blockchain technology is unique, in that it can solve problems NOT POSSIBLE with other technology, then you haven’t studied it enough. There are tradeoffs of course when designing systems, including efficiency and cost, etc. which makes blockchain irrelevant for 99% of system designs. But that doesn’t mean the technology is not unique.

What is your background in IT? I briefly explained that a database is not “just” a database when it comes to building a marketplace/exchange, there is a ton of infrastructure and code. The problem is that it is all proprietary and not following any kind of open standard. In comparison, the database schema for “checking in” to an event is dead simple: (ticket id, checked in). You could literally print off paper and do it analog if you wanted, it’s that simple. If you tell me your background maybe I can make a more specific analogy, but the infrastructure + code + database schema for a marketplace is like the difference between a golf cart and an F1 car. Or a grocery checklist and a novel. These are many orders of magnitude different.

Why bother? Because it sucks paying fees. Literally billions of dollars extracted by middleware companies. Every stupid ass website is charging fees for everything because it’s all centralized crap. My wife wanted to go to a popular musical, and for 5 tickets I’m paying literally an extra ticket worth in “convenience fees”. I paid for a couple more tickets for my siblings to join, and they ended up not being able to make it day of. I posted them on StubHub and one sold for less than value (and more fees!), and the other didn’t.

The “general problem” of ticketing infrastructure - generating, marketplace, exchanging - has been solved with an NFT open standard at a fraction of the cost in comparison to what these parasitic companies are extracting. Why bother? Because I’m tired of our fees culture.

Ack. I’m not going to pretend like I’ve thought up the whole business plan, but it’s well known the centralized ticket agencies have huge markups. Ticketmaster’s ticketing business is something like $3B in revenue with $1B in profit.

I’m sure there’s still a need venue services, I didn’t mean to suggest the venue could or want to be entirely in-house. Maybe I’m minimizing that part of their business, but if tickets are NFTs it’s so much easier to avoid vendor lock-in for expensive scanners and day-of services.

A database indexing scanned tickets is cheap if you don’t want to burn/transfer the NFT at the door (depends on the network costs too). But again maybe I’m trivializing what Ticketmaster does (IMO I don’t think I am).

You aren’t seeing a difference between what I described and a SQL database? I work in IT and I’m not sure of your background. First, nobody opens a SQL database to the public. There’s a ton of code surrounding every database. How do you think a SQL database ensures only “one owner” of a ticket? It requires identity tracking and management as the tip of the iceberg. And how do you think a SQL database allows people to exchange ownership of the ticket? It requires creating uniquely identified tokens, and code to bridge across systems and exchange the UIDs around. On and on. Almost no venues are doing this in-house, I am not sure what you mean by that.

You’re not thinking of any complicated scenarios if you think ticket sales can be “just a SQL database”. Ticketmaster offers a ton of management around tickets specifically because they are not using any generalized exchange platform (e.g. an NFT standard). With NFTs the bar is lowered for venues to manage it themselves. Posting NFTs to a NFT exchange is dead simple. You don’t need an IT department, hosting costs, staff, call center, etc. to support it. You need a couple of point of sale devices for verification at the door (something they generally already need).

And I certainly wouldn’t trust each venue to securely implement it themselves.

I feel like you’re putting out mixed messages or I’m not understanding your point. You wouldn’t trust venues to use NFTs successfully because they need to do something specific? Or you are referring to in-house development not being done securely? My overall point is, NFT exchange becomes a standard around which venues can operate independently with significantly less overhead, is simpler for the consumer, and cuts out predatory centralized ticket services.

Anyways, cheers. I think there’s a lot of other interesting cases for NFTs but people tend to focus just on jpeg thumbnails.

It’s not that different from how it currently works, but the difference is the platform is distributed and not centralized. NFTs are nonfungible, and the contract process guarantees the NFT can’t be owned by multiple wallets. There can be only “one”.

A venue generates 5000 NFTs (could be individual seats, could be general ticket) and puts them on an NFT marketplace (e.g. OpenSea) for the ticket price (e.g. $100) + 1% (OpenSea will also charge a fee). I buy one of those tickets for $101. I go to the venue. The ticket scanner sends a challenge to my phone, and my phone generates a signature that proves I have the ticket, and I go in.

If I can’t go for whatever reason I can’t go, I can post the NFT to the same or a different marketplace. Note that NFTs don’t necessarily prevent ticket scalping, however because it’s part of a digital contract you can also code an upper limit for the resale of the NFT which would definitely hurt scalpers. But just eliminating the vendor lock-in of the ticket exchange would cut fees between 95 and 99%.

Logistically, what if I lose my phone, and can’t verify the challenge proving I have the NFT at the gate (or whatever similar scenario). The same system intended to prevent fraud also means the system is not flexible for human error. But maybe that’s worth it for everyone to not have to pay 15-30% fees by centralized ticket management systems.

“Digital ticket platform” is literally the poster boy of middle-man grift. Are you not familiar with Ticketmaster? Even smaller platforms are taking 15-30% fees for very little value-add. They “exist” to reduce the operating expenses of venues, but if there was wider infrastructure of NFTs these venues wouldn’t need to contract it out.

NFTs as a mechanism for exchanging and authenticating contracts is pretty revolutionary. But the only thing that reached public awareness were the dumb NFTs of a single image. The closest breakout was probably the effort for ticket sales and club memberships – your “ticket” is the NFT itself, and you can move it around (sell, exchange) as you want before the event. There are still human-errors/logistical problems but in the end whomever has the NFT gets the seat. For club memberships, you were a member as long as you held the NFT. If you wanted out, you could sell it to someone else that wanted to join the club.

I could imagine all kinds of interesting use cases. But everything is just dumb about it now. Oh well.

Outlawing sociology is just outlawing statistics. These people need to be delt with, and quickly. Remove them from every position of authority asap.

Friend, you are the one that brought a legal argument to the discussion. You’re being disingenuous by saying it’s now irrelevant when I asked for specific evidence supporting your claims.

I don’t know what a formal right is.

A “healthy kid” can also understand the need for parental guidance, particularly before teen years.

There is no general case. We’re discussing minors. Kids are not being victimized by being raised by competent, privacy minded parents. They don’t need the privacy in their digital communications while they are a minor. They need it when they are an adult, and my kids will know the value of that privacy better than you understand it.

Take care.

I guess I didn’t explicitly say this in my original comment, but my intended point is that kids do not have a right to privacy. I explained from a personal POV why I as a parent make this choice, but since you’re interested in the legal side: kids cannot provide or revoke consent because they do not even have this right. Legal guardians have this right on behalf of their kids. This is true pretty much universally across governments. If you have a specific example I am happy to change my mind. Particularly for ages 3 to 9, which is what this toy is targets to (which I would never buy heh).

The government provides many legal safety protections for kids (so we can skip the arguments related to invasive privacy that is violating some other protections), but by and far most countries and US states do NOT provide kids a self-managed right to privacy. Parents/legal guardians control the consent of their kids. So you’re simply wrong.

With that said, kids should absolutely bring up home problems and concerns with other trusted adults. If privacy is being violating another legal safety protection for kids, then they should absolutely bring it up. If the kids don’t like that the parents are violating their privacy (even if it’s legal), they should bring it up. I personally would never hide any monitoring I have on my kids, and wouldn’t recommend that approach to any parent.

There could be a legal issue for violating a second party in a two-party consent state, or third-party monitoring. But it’s almost universally true again that single party monitoring is allowed for minors. And I’d be happy if you brought any specific claims if you disagree.

I think you’re missing the major thesis of my comment. This is not at all about trust. For example, they literally do not understand when they are behaving like a bully. It requires educating them. They don’t understand when they are being rude sometimes. They don’t understand many aspects of culture, why would they? I’m not going to let middle school group dynamics shape my kids moral compass. Empathy needs to be taught, sometimes very explicitly.

I’m sure they will come to us for advice and help, and I also know they won’t come going to us for everything, which is fine. But I’m not going to half ass raising my kids. That goes for dozens of topics.

Well we are out there. Cheers

deleted by creator

Middle schoolers don’t need to be sexting classmates. Are you a moron every day or just today?

Well my kid was texting other middle age kids from her school. There’s already been cases of kids screenshotting conversations that are just “between friends” to share with others. I also have no idea what those kids are aware of – maybe they have seen these movies and understand the memes better than she does.

Yeah, there is a shit load of potential harm. Are you not aware of cyber bullying? Are you not aware of how mean kids can be? You think kids fully understand gaslighting, manipulation, and scams? Most adults don’t understand this, and this privacy forum thinks I should just let the events unfold randomly for my kids? I am not being a helicopter parent simply by monitoring and educating my kids. I understand the stereotype. I discuss science, philosophy, politics, finances, privacy, anonymity, permanence of digital communications, atheism, world tragedies, case studies in exploitation/scams, and dozens of other topics with my kids.

My spouse and I are both sex positive, so it’s not that it’s something we “dislike” our kids discovering. Frankly, we are excellent parents because it’s something we value, discuss, and try to be intentional about. But thinking they will just intuitively navigate digital communication is very naive. We have an excellent relationship and I’ll do my best to keep making it stronger. I hope they will feel comfortable coming to me for any topic, including sex. I’ll basically be setting them up with a much better understanding of the values of privacy than 99% of parents.

But kids are dumb. You can’t just lecture at them. They are learning, but they are dumb, and will make mistakes as they learn. Why would I not be involved in that?

I appreciate the conversation. I fully expected a lot of downvotes on an anonymous privacy sub about kids not having privacy. It doesn’t bother me. Someone asked an interesting question about the intersection of kids and privacy, and it’s a topic I am passionate about. So yeah, I am happy to defend my choices as a parent if there’s more questions even if it goes against the norms of the community.

Last I checked this is an anonymous platform. I also generally rotate accounts when it feels relevant. You have a problem speaking about generalities in a public platform? The more specific example seemed necessary to clarify the discussion.

lmao. Sure buddy. My kids are fantastic and they are becoming amazing people. Good luck with your life.

That’s somewhat my point. They were not having those thoughts, but using memes in a way that it could be construed.

edit: Specifically, they were using a bunch of mayonnaise memes from movie scenes that they haven’t seen, but in the movie context it’s intended to be cum.

In my experience, absolutely not. And it’s not about sheltering kids. It’s about teachable moments. My spouse and I review the conversations my kids are having with their friends a couple times a month (and they know this) and I know a few other parents are doing the same. There’s so much harassment and bullying that IMO you are being a negligent parent if you don’t review and step in. We don’t need social interactions to be unhealthy and feign ignorance when they grow up to be a shitty person.

Kids are kids. They aren’t fully developed, they are impulsive, and groups of kids are just exponentially dumber. IMO empathy should not be treated as a natural skill. It can be taught and that often requires lessons, teachable moments, and correcting course through interventions. I’d say the toughest is the group texts with their friends.

My 11 year old was having super obnoxious “meme conversations” a couple weeks ago, often with unintended sexual inuendos. I can’t imagine that someone else is going to tell me I’m violating her privacy by being proactive. We discussed the memes and how they should conduct themselves in conversations. Another time, we saw her agreeing with a bullying conversation from another kid. We’re going to step in because that’s not a healthy conversation.

It won’t be like this forever. They will have their privacy at some point, but they need to demonstrate their maturity much clearer before that can happen.

And no way in hell am I giving my kids an Internet connected chat bot stuffed toy.