Notes on personhood, age proof, and open standards.

Fake accounts are no longer just spam. They shape what people see, believe, and share online. When platforms cannot distinguish real humans from coordinated networks, online reality becomes distorted.

When social media verification became a paid badge instead of proof, trust collapsed. The Twitter/X verification failure revealed a deeper structural problem of the internet — and why proof of real human presence matters more than ever.

The EU Digital Identity Wallet is a foundational element of Europe’s digital future. However, strong digital identity alone does not address the trust challenges faced by open online platforms. This article explains why a minimal, privacy-preserving verification layer is still missing — and where OpenVPT fits.

A first public demo of OpenVPT showing how platforms can verify personhood and age group without learning user identity.

The internet can’t reliably tell humans from bots — and identity is the wrong solution. OpenVPT introduces verified personhood: proof of a real human and age group without revealing identity.