Fiveplus 1d ago

Anyone reading this purely as a child safety or campaign finance story might miss the broader architectural war happening here. If you zoom out a little, this is the inevitable, scorched-earth retaliation for Apple's ATT rollout from a few years back.

Apple cost Meta billions by cutting off their data pipeline at the OS level, justifying it with a unilateral privacy moral high ground. Now, Meta is returning the favor. By astroturfing the App Store Accountability Act through digital childhood alliance, Meta is forcing Apple to build, maintain and also bear the legal liability for a wildly complex state-by-state identity verification API.

Gotta give it to Zuck. Standing up a fully-fledged advocacy website 24 hours after domain registration and pushing a bill from a godaddy registration to a signed Utah law in just 77 days is terrifyingly efficient lobbying.

radicalbyte 1d ago

It's the US, all you have to do is drive a truckload of cash into Mar-A-Lago and you'll get whatever you want.

throwaway-blaze 19h ago

Arabella Advisors is about the farthest thing from MAGA you can imagine.

zahlman 16h ago

Sorry, who are they, and what is ATT in this context?

Spartan-S63 16h ago

App Tracking Transparency. I first through "AT&T" and then actually realized the acronym.

john_strinlai 1d ago

>Gotta give it to Zuck.

if "it" is the middle finger, for sure. "terrifying" is a great choice of word for it.

bigyabai 1d ago

I was equally impressed/terrified by Apple's marketing blitz around client-side-scanning. So many people got paid to advocate for that, and the community barely convinced them it was a bad idea. There's not much hope left for any of FAANG deliberately resisting surveillance.

classified 1d ago

Why would they resist surveillance? They're making massive profits from it.

hsuduebc2 7h ago

Well they can profit from that so why resist if ordinary user usually cares only about colors being pretty and Instagram/tiktok/x/your slop generator of choice working properly.

dfedbeef 1d ago

Idk the low road is generally the easier one.

mentalgear 1d ago

Well, I certainly prefer if big tech fight each other instead of the user as sometimes there might even come something good out of it - like elevated privacy in Apple's ATT case.

Overall, that's the reason anti-trust laws must be applied rigorously, otherwise the normal population has no chance.

mlyle 1d ago

Sometimes something good (ATT). Sometimes something bad (this terrible age-verification thing that is a huge barrier to entry for small entrants and comes with massive state surveillance risk).

In the end, all the little people are just collateral damage or occasionally they get some collateral benefits from wherever the munitions land.

NBJack 4h ago

If ATT had been applied uniformly, sure. But Apple has exemption from its own rules. So, less trickle down benefit, and more tilting the playing field wildly in their favor. Its new advertising system is doing great!

PaulHoule 1d ago

Personally I've lived in the world of "small entrants" and can see that but I think the average voter doesn't really understand that "just anybody" could have created an online service. That is, they think you have to have VC money, be based in Silicon Valley, have to have connections at tha pp store, that it's a right for "them" and not for "us".

mlyle 23h ago

This isn't about the average voter-- this is about an entrenched industry creating structural barriers to entry to protect growing monopoly power.

djao 8h ago

All they had to do was exempt free and open source software from the requirements, which are unworkable in the FOSS context anyway, and they would have gotten away scot-free with their tech company pillow fight.

But no, they had to let collateral damage frag the free software crowd, which is inconsequential to their aims anyway, but 100% a huge concern for those suffering the collateral damage.

ori_b 9h ago

They fight each other by stomping on users.

cyanydeez 3h ago

Or its a prelude to nationwide digital censorship.

matheusmoreira 20h ago

Truly disgusting. Wish these corporations would find ways to screw each other over without also screwing over normal people.

d--b 1d ago

That law is perhaps an annoyance for Apple, but it can't cost them billions, can it? I seriously doubt that it would cost Apple more than the several hundred million dollars Meta still needs to funnel in order to get those laws passed in more states.

Plus, Apple gets to be the gatekeeper for Meta and other apps which can't be good for meta, and Apple gets to know the age of its users, which in itself is monetizable.

bitpush 22h ago

> That law is perhaps an annoyance for Apple, but it can't cost them billions, can it?

The CEO has 24h in the day, and he/she is asked to be deposed (laws and legal system has that power), it chips away from grand visions. It isnt just money, you cant just stand up a team and be done with it. Everybody will be coming at you.

Expect to see a lot "Y alleges Apple didnt do enough to protect kids" and the burden of proof will be on Apple to make their executives available.

rockskon 16h ago

An offensive against Facebook is in order, then. If they're pushing war, then they shouldn't be surprised when they're targeted in turn.

intended 12h ago

I would hesitate with reading this and drawing any conclusions at all.

The methodology appears to be LLM driven, and the contextual framing which the conclusions are couched in, drive conclusions to a specific direction.

It does not clarify between two readings

1) Meta is driving Age verification efforts

2) Meta is being opportunistic with age verification efforts to further its own goals

The larger macro picture is that voters globally are tired of Tech firms and want something done about it.

The second macro trend is the inability of governments to handle/control tech, and are looking for reasons to bring tech to heel.

That’s context results in a sufficiently different degree of culpability and eventual path to resisting privacy reducing regulations.

jayers 1d ago

I'm incredibly dubious of the conclusions of this researcher. Claude Opus was used to gather and analyze all of the data.

I am not skeptical of any of the research, the sources seem to be cited properly. I am skeptical that this researcher has thought through or verified their conclusions in a systematic and reliable fashion. This part gives it away: "Research period: 2026-03-11 to present." This individual dropped his investigative report two days after beginning research!

Yes, AI is an incredibly good research assistant and can help speed up the tasks of finding sources and indexing sources. The person behind this investigation has not actually done their due diligence to grok and analyze this data on their own, and therefore I can't trust that the AI analysis isn't poisoned by the prompters implicit biases.

Aurornis 1d ago

I agree. I tried reading some of the documents and they're full of this:

> LIMITATION: Direct PDF downloads returned 403 errors. ProPublica Schedule I viewer loads data dynamically (JavaScript), preventing extraction via WebFetch. The 2024 public disclosure copy on sixteenthirtyfund.org was also blocked.

> Tech Transparency Project report: The article "Inside Meta's Spin Machine on Kids and Social Media" at techtransparencyproject.org likely contains detailed ConnectSafely/Meta funding analysis but was blocked (403)

The least they could have done is read their own reports and then provided the documents to the LLM. Instead they just let it run and propose connections, asked it to generate some graphs, and then hit publish.

inkysigma 1d ago

Some of these are also just like really weak? One of them for example seems to be some random employee at FB donating ~$1k to a politician and calling that a link. The entire "Proven Findings" is all over the place and provides no coherence. I don't think it's a particular secret that Meta would prefer age verification be done at the OS level so I'm not really sure what the added claim here is.

> A Meta employee (Jake Levine, Product Manager) contributed $1,175 to ASAA sponsor Matt Ball's campaign apparatus on June 2, 2025. Source: Colorado TRACER bulk data.

> No direct Meta PAC contributions to any ASAA sponsor across Utah, Louisiana, Texas, or Colorado. Source: FollowTheMoney.org multi-state search.

While it is true that Meta has funded groups that advocate for age verification, a lot of them also appear to have other actors so it's not like this is some pure Meta thing as some of the other commenters are suggesting.

thoughtfulchris 17h ago

This is a fascinating report, not because of the content or even quality of the report, but because of the way it was generated. It is an AI generated report dumped into GitHub and has made it onto the front page of Hacker News with over 1,000 upvotes and many comments.

This type of GitHub-based open-source research project will become more common as more people use tools like Claude Code or Codex for research.

dalmo3 15h ago

It's not slop when it confirms my biases. /s

spondyl 18h ago

I came here to say that this is pretty much my view having poked around a little bit as well.

This file does not exactly fill me with confidence: https://github.com/upper-up/meta-lobbying-and-other-findings...

In one part of the report, there seems to be this implicit assumption that Linux and Horizon OS (Meta's VR OS) are somehow comparable and that Meta will be better equipped than Linux if age verification is required.

It doesn't explicitly say "This will allow Horizon OS to become the defacto OS and Linux will die out" but that seems to be the impression I'm getting which uhh... would make zero sense.

More broadly, this entire report (and others like it) are extremely annoying in that I've seen some Reddit comments either taking "lots of text" as a signal of quality or asking "Does anyone have proof that these claims are inaccurate" which is

a) Of course entirely backwards as far as burden of proof

b) Not even the right rubick because it's not facts versus lies, it's manufactured intent/correlations versus real life intent/correlations (ie; bullshit versus not)

All of this could be factually true without Meta being smart enough to play 5D chess

washadjeffmad 2h ago

>taking "lots of text" as a signal of quality

Or of authority, when they're not equipped to evaluate the data first-hand.

The Gish gallop technique in debate overwhelms opponents with so many arguments that they're unable to address them all before the time limit. Reports presented like this are functionally that, but against reader comprehension and attention.

Similarly, being the first, loudest, or only voice claim is unreasonably effective at establishing perception of authority, where being unchallenged is tantamount to correctness. This also goes both ways; censorship in media, for instance, can be used to promote narratives by silencing competing views, like platforms selectively amplifying certain topics to frame them as more proven and widely supported than they might actually be.

It's unfortunate that inexpert execution often positions well-meaning and potentially correct arguments to be discredited and derided by prepared opponents before their merits can be established. In this case, it may be true that Meta may have organized a well-coordinated shadow campaign for legislation using technically legal channels, but I'm sure they've anticipated this at some point, or are relying on the inertia of the system and initial buy-in to force the course.

intended 12h ago

Concur. The data is not independent of the conclusions reached, and feels very Reddit research like - (à la Boston bombing).

In this case they have named individuals and firms as well, without the degree of diligence that such call outs should warrant.

In its current state, I would count it as a prelude to witch hunts.

khat 1d ago

Does this surprise anyone, just over a decade ago there was a whistleblower who said the government was spying on its own citizens. The president and half the country called him a traitor. The only way to stop this from happening is half the country refuse to buy any tech that implements OS age verification. That includes working any job that also requires the use of that tech(Basically all jobs). The only thing that talks is money and when half your workforce is not working(or buying anything because they aren't working) then things will get changed real quick. But most people don't want to do that because no one is willing to suffer short term for long term gains. The govt and 1% know this that's why they increment it slowly overtime with generic causes like "save the children"

0xbadcafebee 1d ago

> The only way to stop this from happening is half the country refuse to buy any tech that implements OS age verification

No, the way to stop it is to talk to your representatives.

You have the power. You just have to pick up a phone, and ask your friends, relatives, neighbors, to do the same. (They will, because it affects all of them.) Tell your reps to remove the legislation or you're voting them out. They don't want to lose their jobs. They will change if you tell them to. But only if you tell them. That is your power. Use it or lose it.

HerbManic 18m ago

I hate to be negative here but every single time I have spoken with a representative, they will just take the party line. "Thank you for reaching out. We are doing X as advised by the department of Y based on our evidence of Z."

Then they just continue with that was already happening.

nico 23h ago

> the way to stop it is to talk to your representatives.

I keep seeing this advice, yet whenever it actually matters, it doesn't really work

No amount of talking to representatives stopped the genocide in Gaza, no amount of talking to representatives is stopping what the US is doing now in Iran

Majority of Congress voted to continue war in Iran, despite an overwhelming majority of Americans being opposed to it

DivingForGold 18h ago

>The only way to stop this from happening is half the >country refuse to buy any tech that implements OS age >verification.

Or, refuse to participate or use any tech that implements OS age verification (start with communication app Discord).

pessimizer 1d ago

> The only way to stop this from happening is half the country refuse to buy any tech that implements OS age verification.

You have consumer activist brain. Next you're going to suggest that we complain to the manager or start our own government and compete in the marketplace.

> The only thing that talks is money

No, the only thing that is talking is money. Money wants this. You're busy pretending like you're going to do a boycott; they're going to boycott you.

Complain about the internet? They'll just blacklist you from it. Complain about the phone? Well now you can't use one; try smoke signals. Complain about the landlord? They'll settle the case, kick you out on the street, and blacklist you among all private equity landlords and the management companies that service small landlords. You'll just go to a small landlord that doesn't use one of the management companies? Well they won't have access to a bunch of vendors that have exclusive contracts with and share ownership with the management companies; now they can't make any money and have to sell to private equity.

You've been fooled into thinking that being victimized is a moral failure of the victim. The perpetrators taught you that. They taught you that the only appropriate action is to beg and threaten to leave, and they shut down customer service and monopolized the market. But, again, the worst thing they trained you to do is to blame the victim.

jancsika 1d ago

Give your interlocutor an explicit alternative to consumer activism!

Just because you're a pessimist doesn't mean you have to be coy. :)

array_key_first 17h ago

Protesting, voting, and civil disobedience.

At the end of the day, this stuff is headed by humans. Humans are fragile, weak even. They like silly things like food and safety.

Look, I'm not saying we need to be killing people. However, I AM saying that just about every single significant rights progression in human history was achieved that way. So, draw whatever conclusions you want.

Ideally, we are above that. Christ, it's not the 20th century anymore. So hold up a sign or something.

jancsika 15h ago

> Protesting, voting, and civil disobedience.

Protesting, voting, and civil disobedience are all great, I agree.

Guy with the root of "pessimism" in his moniker: start writing about that in your posts!

johnnyanmac 1d ago

>You're busy pretending like you're going to do a boycott; they're going to boycott you.

What do you mean? They still need people purchasing software and hardware.

You can argue effectiveness, but if enough people say no, then a boycott is extremely effective. The issue is always on awareness and making people take hard actions.

hedora 1d ago

Short of a general strike, this sort of thing is going to move forward.

They don’t need you to purchase hardware or software any more. We’re moving to centralized economic planning, where resources for datacenter buildouts are reserved for people with sufficient political loyalty (and come from tax dollars), and the only products are surveillance and collective punishment.

If you don’t want that to happen, then you’ll need to help build an alternative.

johnnyanmac 1d ago

>Short of a general strike, this sort of thing is going to move forward.

Yes, I agree.

>They don’t need you to purchase hardware or software any more.

Need? No. But they still want as much money as possible. That's why a boycott/strike will still be effective. They don't need money anymore but will still bend over backwards for it.

>If you don’t want that to happen, then you’ll need to help build an alternative.

I want to help. Not sure what I can do to help, though. Seems like simply calling my reps is talking to the wind.

hungryhobbit 1d ago

>You've been fooled into thinking that being victimized is a moral failure of the victim.

And you seem to have been fooled into thinking all victims are powerless.

TiredOfLife 23h ago

> The president and half the country called him a traitor.

Turns out they were right

jgord 17h ago

Did Meta spend around 60Mn lobbying for age verification to be forcibly added to every OS install ?

If not, who has been paying to lobby for these age verification laws ?

That seems a question that we should have an answer to.

Forcing an age check upon linux install seems anti-competitive, and a violation of freedom of speech allowed by the Constitution.

Also impractical and ineffective, unless they plan on some sort of bio-metric confirmation of age.

Will they outlaw computation itself, or constrain a personal quota so that only corporations can access approved LLMs and certainly not run a local AGI ?

As with the insane "encryption is a weapon and cant be exported" policy of the 80s, this will surely force innovation to migrate outside the US.

infotainment 16h ago

> Did Meta spend around 60Mn lobbying for age verification to be forcibly added to every OS install ?

Of course they would want this -- as long as the OS reports that the user is over 18 via such a system, then Meta is legally off the hook for any COPPA violations.

creddit 16h ago

> As with the insane "encryption is a weapon and cant be exported" policy of the 80s, this will surely force innovation to migrate outside the US.

Not advocating for this policy but if a critical argument against it is that policymakers can expect an analogous amount of computer innovation migrating out of the US as it saw in the 80s, then I think policymakers won't care remotely. Quite literally I think the lower bound for the proportion of global computer innovation happening in the US is 70%.

Mars008 14h ago

> age verification to be forcibly added to every OS install ?

This should be easy. Just in one of dialogs ask user to create a file 'me_age.txt' with age inside. No changes to OS at all. This will be the 'interface'. Any program can read the file. As far as I understand that's all California law requires (or will require).

Not sure about other versions. Strict verification would require binding to property software/services. Which is equivalent of reporting every user on every install.

hsuduebc2 16h ago

I honestly wouldn't be surprised. They are absolutely negative player. But I'm kinda confused how this could even pass and what is the functional reason for this? Because "think about the children" it absolutely isn't. You can of course chain child to the radiator and let him out but that's obviously not an protection.

iamnothere 1d ago

For a project attempting to track these and coordinate technical resistance, see: https://github.com/AntiSurv/oss-anti-surveillance

These bills also need to be opposed on a legal/political level.

Something I realized last night is that people who lie about their age to send false signals may inadvertently open themselves up to CFAA liability (a felony). So this is a serious matter for users who want to maintain anonymity.

gzread 1d ago

I believe CFAA talks about exceeding authorization, not just typing in things that are not true.

iamnothere 1d ago

CFAA has been narrowed in scope through legal decisions but AFAIK it still applies to anyone using false information to bypass security measures. In my view, a federal prosecutor could easily make the argument that age gating is a security measure. You’re welcome to be a test case if you disagree!

dml2135 1d ago

But are you bypassing a security measure if you provide false information, when true information would also have let you pass?

iamnothere 1d ago

Again, you’re welcome to be a test case.

I do think there is a stronger case against the next under-18 Aaron Swartz, who will get hit with 200 felonies for setting his age wrong (one felony per app/service) after pissing off someone important.

ryanmcbride 1d ago

I'm more than happy to be a test case. I'm pushing 40 but I will do every single thing in my power to give false information to the surveillance machine.

If I get arrested for lying about my age, when I'm of age, then they could probably get me on a whim already anyway. No point in trying to fall in line.

iamnothere 1d ago

Another one I just thought of is when they arrest a parent for setting their 17 year old kid’s age to 18 (again under CFAA) because said parent thinks the kid is mature enough to access whatever the hell they want to. Easy to imagine in a red state, especially if the kid tells others about their 18+ access.

mrtesthah 1d ago

Did that link just get taken down?

iamnothere 1d ago

I can still access it, is it blocked for you?

esseph 1d ago

No? I just hit it.

khimaros 1d ago

inetknght 1d ago

Age verification is merely the background task to set up infrastructure for OS to provide many many other signals about who's using the device.

Age signals from the OS? Need to provide a channel of information available to applications. Applications already talk to servers with unchecked commonality.

Biometric data? Today it unlocks your private key. Tomorrow it's used to verify you are the same person that was used during sign-up -- the same that was "age-verified".

Next year, the application needs to "double-check" your identity. That missile that's coming to you? Definitely not AI-controlled, definitely not coming to destroy the "verified" person who posted a threatening comment about the AI system's god complex. Nope, it's coming to deliver freedom verification.

Muromec 1d ago

Nobody stops the government from sending goons to your door right now for a snarky comment. Some govts in fact do it today. It is also cheaper than ai rocket and more precise too

Arubis 1d ago

Goons don't scale well. Wide-scale intimidation does.

gzread 1d ago

In a sense, surveillance is a multiplier on your goons, creating virtual goons. If you have 5 goons but you can send them directly to the house of people who disagree with the government with 99% accuracy, it's like you had 500 goons waiting outside 500 houses then only entering the ones where people disagree with the government.

rembal 1d ago

Goons work MUCH better than rockets for intimidation, and actually scale much better.

Rocket is obvious and spectacular. Those are for amateurs.

A journalist got beaten up to the brink of death and will never walk again by 'unknown perpetrators'? Well, it's a dangerous country, and he had it coming, maybe some concerned citizens went a bit too far, but our dear leader cannot watch over everybody.

Scaling: do you think other journalists will not take notice?

And he will still be alive to reminder them how they may end up.

If you want to see how far imagination can go here, look up Artyom Kamardin and think how would you behave after hearing his story .

ghywertelling 1d ago

Goons are bad publicity. Doing your dirty stuff as hidden from view as possible is best option

mystraline 1d ago

Its called police. And they scale extraordinarily well.

And turns out power-tripping men offered raw power over other humans on threat of violence is something they like.

And ICE? Remember J6 and Three Percenter's and all those right wing militias? They ended up in ICE. Same reasons.

brewcejener 1d ago

A very bold claim I have heard repeatedly, backed up with zero evidence. Care to share any proof you have found?

pessimizer 1d ago

It's very important to pretend that ICE goons are significantly different from regular cops, because Democrats are going to wave a magic wand and declare ICE to be regular cops again when they are in control of them again.

Meanwhile, regular cops have been doing the same awful things that they've always been doing, literally at the command of Democratic mayors who are pompously declaring that they won't enforce immigration law in speeches. They'll send cops to throw your shit into the street when your rent suddenly doubles, and won't report an illegal immigrant felon (whose history we know nothing about) to ICE.

Organized white supremacists are nobodies with no power, they're all over the military, the cops, prison guards, and ICE. Meanwhile, Parchman Farm in Mississippi doesn't even report the people who are dying there, and has plastic all over the floors because the roofs are open to the elements. That's just legal American black people who this country actually owes something to, though. That was trendy like five years ago, it's so over now.

ToucanLoucan 1d ago

If you set aside social justice issues, the Democrats and Republicans basically agree. Republicans want a theocratic authoritarian state that can micromanage the workers and keep the economy going. Democrats want the same thing but with freedom of religion and more female CEOs of color.

Now you obviously shouldn't set social justice aside, and given the choice, I absolutely prefer the capitalist hellscape where my friends and I are not being rounded up and killed, but that's a REMARKABLY low standard I've had to settle on as a voter.

KerrAvon 1d ago

GOPs and Democrats are the same on environmental, science, and public health policy completely, huh? You sure you wanna both sides it that hard?

ToucanLoucan 3h ago

> GOPs and Democrats are the same on environmental, science, and public health policy completely, huh?

Environmental: Democrats Joe Manchin, Jon Tester, Michael Bennet, Bob Casey, Martin Heinrich, John Hickenlooper, and Ben Ray Lujan all backed the pro-fossil fuel position and blocked the Biden admin's ban on fracking. And that's before you get to the eleven House Democrats who crossed the aisle to vote for gutting NEPA, which is basically the foundational law for environmental review in this country.

Science: Democrats continue to stall on GMO foods despite thousands of studies confirming they're safe, and have pushed heavy restrictions treating them like health hazards with zero scientific basis. This is basically their version of climate change denial and it deserves way more attention than it gets.

Public Health: The entire mess with the ACA, juicing the insurance industry while keeping healthcare gatekept behind financial hooks and ensuring workers MUST stay employed to have any reliable access to it. Yeah they get some points for trying to keep Medicare and Social Security afloat, they don't want all the poor people to just die about it, but those are remarkably low bars.

So, the same? No. That said, NOTHING about ANY of that could be called "Left" by anyone being remotely intellectually honest.

mystraline 1d ago

Indeed.

The Democrats and Republicans both are different approaches for the same billionaire class.

They're not "opposite sides of the same coin". Instead, they're more akin to 2 sock puppets. One wears red, and the other blue.

Like the Trump tariffs? They were initially Biden's tariffs that Trump increased and extended. Different clothes, same game.

But I'd be willing to try a good run with democratic socialism, or hell, communism. What we have is the cushy gold-parachute socialism for the elite, and unabashed hardcore capitalism for the poorest. And that fucking sucks. Burn it down.

ToucanLoucan 3h ago

Yeah and you say that and people are like OH SO YOU'RE FINE WITH REPUBLICANS and, no, categorically not. As a transwoman the Republicans have made it pretty clear my existence and rights are up for debate, so you know, not ever gonna vote for one. That said, the Democrats are not saints by a long, long way and their mealy-mouthed resistance can most often be summarized as twitter posts and flashy statements, and then they go fuck us over in the congressional chamber anyway.

My argument isn't pro-Republican, I just want Democrats to follow through with the shit they talk, and actually live up to the progressive label they try to retain with actual progressive policies, not just more female oppressors of color. That's nice but it's not a solution to the problems we're having.

pstuart 1d ago

https://archive.is/nwxkh

That was from a quick search, no doubt there's more. Now it gets down to trust issues on reporting.

nurettin 1d ago

It is called swatting.

nesky 1d ago

Cost kind of stops the government from sending goons right now, sure some governments do it but, it's costly at scale.

jpadkins 1d ago

The UK gov has shown to be incredibly efficient at arresting and imprisoning citizens for social media comments.

dontwannahearit 1d ago

Please share evidence.

QuantumFunnel 1d ago

https://www.forbes.com/sites/steveforbes/2025/09/09/people-a...

dboreham 1d ago

This is widely promoted but not true.

justsid 1d ago

Missiles are a lot more expensive and much less reusable than goons though. If the nation state can’t afford the goons, it can’t afford to missile you either

c22 1d ago

With the digital panopticon neither goons nor missles are really necessary. Opressive forces can just disable your spending and travel credits. If they need you dead or in custody they can just grab you the next time you pop up on camera near one of their agents.

riffraff 1d ago

> Opressive forces can just disable your spending and travel credits

"Disabled spending" already happened to the people in the ICC that acted contrary to Trump's diktats[0], without the need for a digital panopticon, both the banks and the government know who you are.

[0] https://www.irishtimes.com/world/us/2025/12/12/its-surreal-u...

collingreen 1d ago

Drones aren't though. Plenty of ways to use the data above for evil deeds.

brewcejener 1d ago

Reaper drones will be the more cost effective way to eradicate amalek.

motbus3 1d ago

There are cheap drones with guns now thought

vikingerik 1d ago

The cost effectiveness is the intimidation and chilling effects on a wider population, when that can be achieved with a small number of actual goons.

rdn 1d ago

The OP's point can be understood as an automization and mechanization of such targeting. Which will be necessary if the scope of thoughtcrime prosecution is to expand

dormento 1d ago

> It is also cheaper than ai rocket and more precise too

Never stopped people overengineering :P

rapind 1d ago

Wasn’t ICE pretty much doing exactly that with no oversight or accountability?

QuantumFunnel 1d ago

Who needs rockets when you have autonomous mini drones

Muromec 1d ago

But you don't have autonomous mini drones, only the leader of the free world does.

motbus3 1d ago

Stop justifying more horrible stuff with "there is already some horrible stuff"

ImPostingOnHN 1d ago

The government already does that. The only challenge is scale.

pessimizer 1d ago

You're being silly, the missile thing was hyperbole. Your computer will direct the thugs to your door.

> Nobody stops the government from sending goons to your door right now for a snarky comment.

This is just dumb. They literally don't know who wrote it, and have to assign somebody to track you down. The fact that they're putting infrastructure on your computer and on the network to make this one click away for them matters.

marcosdumay 1d ago

The goons are. Almost no government can create goons that are submissive enough to comply with any kind of crazy order.

XajniN 1d ago

Are you living under a rock?

marcosdumay 1d ago

I dunno? Are you referring to the USA? Did your military take over the Democrat-run states when Trump sent them there last year?

randusername 1d ago

Not just governments, though.

I've wondered if FaceID and the Android counterpart are actively creating an extraordinary labeled dataset for facial expressions at the point of sale.

With users trained to scan their face before every transaction, tech companies could correlate transactions to facial expressions, facial expressions to emotions, and emotions to device content. I can imagine algorithms that subtly curate the user experience, selectively showing notifications, content, advertising to coax users towards "retail therapy".

peyton 1d ago

Any webconferencing app on iOS probably fires up the TrueDepth camera to power background replacement and could conceivably do that, albeit not so responsively. Recommend heading to your provider and opting out of share-or-sell if you can.

Also keep in mind keystroke dynamics can probably do that too and has been a topic of study in one form or another since the nineteenth century vis-a-vis telegraph operators.

gzread 1d ago

The application has access to your entire home folder, isn't that enough information?

prox 1d ago

“This isn’t freedom, this is fear”

Cpt America in the Winter Soldier

shevy-java 1d ago

Indeed. They hate us for our freedoms.

aesoh 1d ago

[flagged]

ccvannorman 1d ago

[flagged]

inetknght 1d ago

Buddy... I've been called a robot since long before AI became mainstream.

scottyah 1d ago

Ha! We should have a T shirt with this.

gruez 1d ago

>Age signals from the OS? Need to provide a channel of information available to applications. Applications already talk to servers with unchecked commonality.

This is a non-issue because it's almost certainly going to be gated behind a permission prompt. There are more invasive things sites/apps can ask for, and we seem to be doing fine, eg. location. Moreover is it really that much of a privacy loss if you go on steam, it asks you to verify you're over 18, and the OS says you're actually over 18?

>Biometric data? Today it unlocks your private key. Tomorrow it's used to verify you are the same person that was used during sign-up -- the same that was "age-verified".

Given touch id was introduced over a decade ago, and the associated doom-mongering predilections did not come to pass, I think it's fair to conclude it's a dud.

vachina 1d ago

> permission prompt

Watch as apps refuse to work when you deny them permission. Also the OS (and “privileged apps”) don’t ask for permission, they have full unfettered access to everything already.

gruez 1d ago

>Also the OS (and “privileged apps”) don’t ask for permission, they have full unfettered access to everything already.

If you can't trust the OS, you have bigger issues than it knowing whether you're 18 or not. At the very least it has a camera pointed at you at all moments you're using it, and can eavesdrop in all your conversations.

Nevermark 1d ago

Of course you can trust an OS that is engineered against you.

If your OS prevented encryption, because one of the anti-encryption laws got passed, would you still trust its privacy and security?

inetknght 1d ago

> This is a non-issue because it's almost certainly going to be gated behind a permission prompt.

lol.

> Moreover is it really that much of a privacy loss if you go on steam, it asks you to verify you're over 18, and the OS says you're actually over 18?

Slippery slope, but an interesting argument. While SteamOS is a thing, Steam isn't my OS.

> Given touch id was introduced over a decade ago, and the associated doom-mongering predilections did not come to pass, I think it's fair to conclude it's a dud.

Really? You think that things built decades ago can't be further built-upon in the now or the future?

gruez 1d ago

>Slippery slope, but an interesting argument. While SteamOS is a thing, Steam isn't my OS.

You mean non slippery slope?

>Really? You think that things built decades ago can't be further built-upon in the now or the future?

If there's no deadlines for predilections, how can we score them? Should we still be worried about some yet undiscovered way that cell phones are causing cancer, despite decades of apparently no harmful side effects?

sylos 1d ago

This is the doommongering coming to pass. Did it happen overnight? No! But you just provided the excuse! "gee see nothing bad came to pass. We can just use that tool"

a456463 1d ago

I bet you are the same clown that also says that we don't need QA because there are no incidents in production

theptip 15h ago

> the sponsor of Louisiana's HB-570, publicly confirmed that a Meta lobbyist brought the legislative language directly to her. The bill as drafted required only app stores (Apple, Google) to verify user ages. It did not require social media platforms to do anything.

Thing is, when these “make the websites collect your ID” proposals come up, the overwhelming sentiment here is “this is terrible and we need to do it lower in the stack”. I think the OS is a better place than the website. (Let security conscious folks use a standalone device too if desired.)

The astroturfing stuff is obviously sus, I don’t have a feel for whether this is egregious by the standards of $T companies or just par.

Of course, the EU option of using proper ZK proofs etc sounds way better as portrayed in the OP. But when you actually dig in, doesn’t the EU effectively mandate OS support too, eg https://eudi.dev/1.7.1/architecture-and-reference-framework-..., https://github.com/eu-digital-identity-wallet/eudi-doc-archi... ? Maybe this isn’t set yet but it seems a likely direction at least.

inetknght 14h ago

> Thing is, when these “make the websites collect your ID” proposals come up, the overwhelming sentiment here is “this is terrible and we need to do it lower in the stack”.

Perhaps the "overwhelming" sentiment is paid actors? Or people whose jobs depend on not having that risk assigned to their employers?

PeterisP 1d ago

What I'm confused about is how the proposed bills would apply to servers.

Like, in general, a software change to add an "age class" attribute to user accounts and a syscall "what's this attribute for the current user account" would satisfy the California bill and that's a relatively minor change (the bad part is the NY bill that allegedly requires technical verification of whatever the user claimed).

The weird issue is how should that attribute be filled for the 'root' or 'www-data' user of a linux machine I have on the cloud. Or, to put aside open source for that matter, the Administrator account on a Windows Active Directory system.

Because "user accounts" don't necessarily have any mapping (much less a 1-to-1 mapping) to a person; many user accounts are personal but many are not.

khafra 1d ago

We're all going to have to use service accounts created on Windows Server 2003 or RHEL 4, otherwise they won't be old enough and will require manual login from an of-age administrator

anthk 1d ago

Good luck enforcing that on Guix, or 9front.

The auth server would lie in Colorado. The FS server, in New Mexico. The CPU server, in Nevada. The terminal (the client), in Alaska. Shut down and repeat at random. Watch the lobbies collapsing down tring to sue that monster.

singron 1d ago

In the CA bill, "User" means child. It's pretty clear that non-human users aren't covered and don't have to participate. E.g. the API can return N/A or any other value for non-humans. If there is a way to make the API applicable only to human children users, then it doesn't even need to be callable for other entities. E.g. on android, each app gets its own uid, so the unix user doesn't correspond to a child, so the API will instead (probably) be associated with another entity (e.g. their Google account, an android profile, or an android (non-unix) user)

troyvit 1d ago

Honestly what I hope is that if these bills pass, sysadmins just turn off any server that doesn't have attestation and go off to the beach to collect shells.

anymouse123456 1d ago

Every single Linux kernel currently operating within the borders of any of these states should turn itself off and refuse to boot until an update is installed after these bills are rolled back.

We should also update all FOSS license terms to explicitly exclude Meta or any affilites from using any software licensed under them.

someguyiguess 1d ago

I probably don't have all the info on the various laws across the US and EU that are being pushed, but I'm confused why Linux distros don't just update their licensing and add a notice on the installation screen that it is illegal to run their OS in places where these laws exist?

Heck, Linus Torvalds should just add an amendment to the next release of the Linux Kernel that makes it illegal to use in any jurisdiction that requires age verification laws.

This would obviously cause such a massive disruption (especially in California) that the age laws would have to be rolled back immediately.

This seems like a no-brainer to me but I am admittedly ignorant on this situation. I'm sure there's a good reason why this isn't happening if anyone cares to explain.

PeterisP 1d ago

That would be a violation of the copyright law or the GPL licence - you aren't permitted to take GPL code and redistribute it with some extra restrictions added on to it.

If it's not (fully) your code, you aren't free to set the licence conditions; Linus can't do that without getting approval from 100% (not 99% or so) of authors who contributed code.

What one can do is add an informative disclaimer saying "To the best of our knowledge, installing or running this thing in California is prohibited - we permit to do whatever you want with it, but how you'll comply with that law is your business".

BeetleB 1d ago

You can if you own the copyright to the content. I don't know the state of Linux, but this is a reason the FSF (and many other projects) requires people assign their copyright to them when they submit code.

It also helps when you take an offender to court. If I contribute to a project but don't assign copyright, then they cannot take offenders to court if my code was copied illegally. The burden is on me to do so.

Of course, all code released prior to the change still remains on the original license.

eikenberry 1d ago

The FSF stopped requiring copyright assignment in 2021.

bregma 1d ago

The Linux kernel is licensed GPLv2. The GPLv2 license forbids adding addition terms that further restrict the use of the software.

A "Linux distro" is not the Linux kernel. It's possible for some distros to add such license terms to their distribution media, but others like Debian and Debian-based ones adhere to the GPL so no go.

gzread 1d ago

Because they want market share, and throwing a hissyfit over being asked to add an "I am over 18" checkbox is not good PR. If Debian starts refusing to work in California because it doesn't want to add a checkbox, it will simply be replaced by someone who adds that checkbox and doesn't throw the fit.

troyvit 1d ago

As the article says, it's not about just checking a box:

"Every OS provider must then: provide an interface at account setup collecting a birth date or age, and expose a real-time API that broadcasts the user's age bracket (under 13, 13 to 15, 16 to 17, 18+) to any application running on the system."

Aunche 1d ago

There is no requirement that the OS has to verify the person's ID. It literally just requires a dropdown menu to select your age bracket.

gzread 1d ago

Fine, a drop-down menu, not a checkbox. They're throwing a hissy fit over a drop-down menu with 4 items.

troyvit 20h ago

You're missing the rest of it. It takes whatever you put in that dropdown menu and broadcasts it to the rest of the operating system including -- for instance -- your browser. The browser then uses that information to decide what to show you. The same would apply to any other app designed to receive it.

You can call what's happening in this thread a hissy fit, but how does that compare to $70 million in lobbying to get this added to operating systems? Isn't that a bit more of a fit? When you look at who is behind the bills, do you look at their history and wonder whose best interest they might have at heart?

gzread 19h ago

How many other things in the operating system are like that already? Every file in your home directory, for instance?

kbelder 1d ago

I disagree slightly. It may not be good business, but it could be good PR, situationally. I expect a lot of 2nd-tier distros will refuse to implement it, and see a boost in their installs as a result.

Debian, Ubuntu, etc., they'll all fall right in line because the clear and immediate losses will outweigh any PR issue.

gzread 1d ago

When they fall in line and add the age bracket drop-down menu, we'll keep using them because throwing a hissy fit over a distribution allowing you to select your age bracket is very obviously stupid.

anymouse123456 6h ago

Stupid take.

The issue is obviously not with adults needing to click a drop-down.

Some of the main issues with this legislation are:

1) Makes it much easier for predators of all kinds to identify and target children on their computers

2) Impossible to implement (i.e., servers don't have a person)

3) The infrastructure this bill introduces will be used by the state and corporations to destroy our last vestiges of privacy and anonymity

gzread 6h ago

The age bracket dropdown will not be used to destroy your last vestige of privacy and anonymity.

mvdwoord 1d ago

Would be funny indeed... And also curious why nobody does that.

shagie 1d ago

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.en.html

    6. Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to these terms and conditions. You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein. You are not responsible for enforcing compliance by third parties to this License.

It would be in violation of the GPL and such a license would not be an OSI approved license.

https://opensource.org/osd

    5. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups

    The license must not discriminate against any person or group of persons.

ivanjermakov 1d ago

> should turn itself off

If this was somehow introduced without anyone noticing and deployed, imagine the damage it would cause.

If we're fantasizing here, I like to imagine two major OS makers trying to comply these laws, fail miserably, and let FOSS OSes and kernels more recognition in the desktop market.

user_7832 1d ago

Honestly, like the Left-pad incident [1], getting things to go suddenly dark is extremely effective at getting people to drop everything else to fix an issue.

Ideally, getting these servers to auto turn off the day this goes into effect ("In compliance with this new law, Linux is now temporarily unusable. Please <call to action>.") would be glorious for getting the bill staved off, or killed.

It would hurt some productivity, but that is a risk these lawmakers taking donations are probably willing to make.

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Npm_left-pad_incident

edgyquant 1d ago

It would make people move quickly to use a forked version of the kernel and would be an all around blunder by the Linux foundation

user_7832 1d ago

My comment was half in jest (I wasn't super serious about it.) In another sibling comment below I wrote how it's still possible to leverage this without actually implementing it.

user_7832 1d ago

Side note, this comment is evidently quite controversial, it went from +3 to +1. If anyone is angry at me I would like to assuage them that I am not, in fact, any owner or maintainer of anything in the linux distribution system.

voidUpdate 1d ago

"some"? It would hurt a lot of productivity lol. If all linux boxes turned themselves off suddenly, I think the internet would fall over pretty fast. I dont know how much of the internet runs on windows or apple (or others), but I cant imagine it's very much

user_7832 1d ago

> It would hurt a lot of productivity lol.

I know. That's exactly the point.

In such situations where one party (Meta) has enough money to lobby and is playing dirty, it's a massively asymmetric situation. In such cases, if you really want to make sure you're heard (which I'm not sure distributers want or care about tbh), you've got to play the game too.

Malicious compliance, if you will.

PS: For a "practical" variant, simply a warning might be sufficient - given how many hospitals/critical infra uses linux. For eg "There is a chance this server will fail to work on x date due to this y law. Not as glamorous/all-guns-blazing, but probably much more sensible and practical.

PPS: For an even more "safer" variant, one could go "Post x, please note that using linux/this server is a violation of law y. Please turn off the server yourself manually. Failure to comply with these instructions and violating the law will be borne entirely by the (no informed) sysadmin/manglement.

voidUpdate 1d ago

Most hospitals I know of, at least in the UK, still use windows, its why WannaCry was such a big deal here

officeplant 1d ago

It still blows my mind that anyone trusts npm after this whole incident.

edgyquant 1d ago

Someone would just submit a patch overriding this

pessimizer 1d ago

> Every single Linux kernel currently operating within the borders of any of these states should turn itself off and refuse to boot

What exactly do you think Linux is? I would say that Linux would be forked in like 2 seconds, a bunch of different companies would start offering "attested Linux," and all you'd have to do was change your repos and update.

I would say that, but what would really happen is that we'd find out that Canonical, Red Hat, and a bunch of other distributions had been talking to the government for a year behind closed doors and they're already ready to roll out attested Linux. Debian would argue about it for six months, and then do the same thing. Hell, systemd will require age attestation as a dependency. Devuan and any other stubborn distribution would face 9000 federal lawsuits, while having domain names blocked, and the Chinese hardware necessary to run them seized at the ports with the receivers locked up on terrorism charges.

I have no idea where the confidence of the IT tech comes from. You (we) are something between a mechanic and a highly-skilled janitor.

anymouse123456 1d ago

Obviously not a serious proposal, but I do like the alt mentioned below:

Update the terms to indicate that you can do what you want, but this OS is probably not compliant with states run by evil dipshits.

esseph 1d ago

Microsoft would love that.

827a 1d ago

I'm not sure I fully grok the hypothesis that Meta is materially advantaged by pushing for OS-level age verification. I suppose its another intelligence signal for ad targeting, but they have to believe that at least on platforms like iOS this signal is going to be obfuscated from them. Its hard to believe it'd be any more valuable than the other non-verified heuristics they're already gathering.

Arguably they would be more materially advantaged if they were forced to KYC/validate ages, not the platform; because sure, there's a cost to doing it, but presumably having hard data on who your customer actually is, with age and address and everything, is worth a lot more than the verification cost. And being able to say "We're legally required to gather this" gives a lot of PR cover (even though it'd be followed with "but we're giddy to do so and we will abuse this data and you every way we possibly can. No one at Meta believes you are human. We hate you as much as you hate us, but we're stuck in this together, endlessly loathing the supernatural force that keeps us working together.")

But, On the flip side: I also don't doubt that Meta is doing this, because the purpose of a system is what it does, and the leadership at Meta has done nothing in the past four years to demonstrate that they're capable of cogent thought and execution. We want to believe there's some evil plan, and maybe there is, but in all likelihood one day we'll learn that they're just... unintelligent.

pwg 1d ago

> I'm not sure I fully grok the hypothesis that Meta is materially advantaged by pushing for OS-level age verification.

These laws, that attempt to move "age verification" into the OS, 100% absolve Meta (and all the Meta owned "properties") from any legal liability so long as all of Meta's app's follow the law's required "ask the OS for the age signal of the user".

Any "bad stuff" which then gets shown to "underage users" then becomes "not Meta's fault, they followed the legally proscribed way to check the age of the user, and the OS said this user was 'old enough'" and Apple/Google then get to shoulder the liability (and pay out for the class action lawsuits) for failing to provide a proper age signal.

That's the "material advantage" gained by Meta by pushing these laws.

827a 22h ago

My point is that they already know how old you are, within some confidence interval, even if you never tell them or you lie to them, because they actively watch what you do and classify your behaviors with your age cohort. So why do they care so much that they gain another signal that only says "the user is over 18" rather than a much more valuable signal like "the user is 36 and lives in Albany" that they'd gain by doing the KYC internally?

I don't think absolution of legal liability has ever crossed any of these fools' empty heads. The threat of being fined & punished by the USG for doing something bad hasn't been a factor in corporate decision-making for decades.

CarVac 1d ago

The same sort of thing is happening for the 3d printer laws. Some company is trying to legislate its own software into ubiquity (guns first, then copyright enforcement) and then double-dip by charging both IP holders and printer manufacturers for their "services".

gosub100 1d ago

This was the thing the saws-all (or whatever it was called, the brake that stops you from cutting your fingers off with the table saw) tried, right? I don't know if it succeeded but the idea was a government mandate for an otherwise good idea. Everyone then pays more.

busterarm 1d ago

SawStop

bryan0 1d ago

Main takeaway:

> Meta spent a record $26.3 million on federal lobbying in 2025, deployed 86+ lobbyists across 45 states, and covertly funded a "grassroots" child safety group called the Digital Childhood Alliance (DCA) to advocate for the App Store Accountability Act (ASAA). The ASAA requires app stores to verify user ages before downloads but imposes no requirements on social media platforms. If it becomes law, Apple and Google absorb the compliance cost while Meta's apps face zero new mandates.

mentalgear 1d ago

A comment someone made on the post about OpenAi lobbying the DOD against Anthropic to mind: "Not only are the whores - they are cheap ones too".

flowerthoughts 1d ago

When I moved from Sweden to Ireland and realized the Swedish central address registry makes moving fantastically easy, I started dreaming of a central registry where consumers and producers could meet. I can give my supplier access to exactly the information they need, and nothing else. I can revoke access when I feel like it. Like OAuth2 for personal data. They can subscribe to updates. It could be a federated protocol.

Not saying I think it's a good idea to provide the year of birth to all sites, but (session ID, year of birth) is the only information they would need. The problem is proving who's behind the keyboard at the time of asking, which would require challenge-response, and is why I think this should be an online platform, not a hardware PKI gadget with keys inevitably tied to individuals.

itopaloglu83 1d ago

Knowing what we know about the current environment, each company is going to start selling everything they know about you to anybody who's willing to pay. Enforcing privacy is hard not because it's not possible, but companies have greater financial incentives to just breach your privacy to track and manipulate us.

deaux 1d ago

> Enforcing privacy is hard not because it's not possible, but companies have greater financial incentives to just breach your privacy to track and manipulate us.

No, enforcing privacy is not hard, all it takes is imposing penalties _much greater than_ those financial incentives.

pietervdvn 21h ago

Your idea has been implemented as datapods: https://www.capitalnumbers.com/blog/data-pod-decentralized-d...

It seems dead though...

neya 1d ago

Damn, had to scroll a couple of comments to find this:

    Anthropic donated $20 million to Public First Action, a PAC that promotes Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn and her sponsored Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), a bill that will force everyone to scan their faces and IDs to use the internet under the guise of saving the children.

    The legislative angle taken by companies like Anthropic is that they will provide the censorship gatekeeping infrastructure to scan all user-generated content that gets posted online for "appropriateness", guaranteeing AI providers a constant firehose of novel content they can train on and get paid for the free training. AI companies will also get paid to train on videos of everyone's faces and IDs.

    As for why Blackburn supports KOSA:

    Asked what conservatives’ top priorities should be right now, Senator Blackburn answered, “protecting minor children from the transgender [sic] in this culture and that influence.” She then talked about how KOSA could address this problem, and named social media platforms as places “where children are being indoctrinated.”

    If Anthropic, the PACs it supports and Blackburn get their way with KOSA, the end result will be that anything posted on the internet will be able to be traced back to you.

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/12/anthropic-gives-20-million-t...

tclancy 1d ago

Christ on a crutch, had they donated $25k or something you'd figure it was just a rounding error, but why this much from a company that isn't profitable? This is doing nothing to disabuse me of my theory 90% of "Startup Culture" is just an excuse for rich people to move money around. "Need to get your stoned mope of a C student a head-start on a resume that will let him stay gainfully employed? Well, I just brokered a VC deal for these kids that want to throw micro-concerts in parking spaces, we'll get your boy in as Senior Music Programmer."

kurvexa 1h ago

Hey, my favorite youtuber just made a video on you!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o41VCmCgm9I&t=24s

slacka 1d ago

It was removed. Here is the archived version:

https://web.archive.org/web/20260313125244/https://old.reddi...

bboozzoo 1d ago

I wonder what made them do it. The conspiracy theorists are really going to enjoy this.

triceratops 1d ago

Bravo, some actual journalism! I wish a professional media organization had done this research. It seemed obvious this was a coordinated wave but I always figured it was moral busybodies.

EDIT: why is it deleted now?

narrator 1d ago

The wayback machine got it: https://web.archive.org/web/20260313090844/https://www.reddi...

jpadkins 1d ago

that goes against the goals of the professional media organizations.

triceratops 1d ago

Keep being cynical and that's the media you'll get.

In the real world, professional media organizations regularly expose corruption. More often than not? No idea. But to pretend they only engage in cover-ups is cynical fatalism.

bryan_w 16h ago

Oh no, you fell for it.

qoez 1d ago

Only 26 million is way way lower than I expected, especially given how much these companies make in profit

bondarchuk 1d ago

Scott Alexander had a few posts about that ("why is there so little money in politics?"): https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/tech-pacs-are-closing-in-on...

lapcat 1d ago

I think one of the reasons politicians can be bought so cheaply by interest groups is that the opponents of the interests groups have practically no money. The interest groups don't need to spend a ton as long as they spend more than their opponents.

The linked post talks about the effectiveness of AIPAC but fails to mention how much is spent by say, Palestinian interest groups. Perhaps there's a good reason for this: do Palestinian groups have any money to spend on US elections? Try fundraising in Gaza right now.

Likewise, business interest groups have a lot more money to spend on elections than, say, environmental groups. The latter have to beg for small donations from individuals just to stay afloat. Thus, it's relatively easy for business groups to outspend environmental groups. To win an auction, you just have to be the highest bidder.

bee_rider 1d ago

We should really come up with a system where the entire population chips in a little bit of money and we hire some lobbyists to represent us.

pear01 1d ago

This assumes enough of the small dollar population agrees on anything to meaningfully compete on the cost of buying.

They may on paper, but of course a lot of money goes to dividing us up come election time. What you are suggesting is no shortcut - it would rather be almost like inventing an alternative political party.

bee_rider 1d ago

The joke is that we’re already paying for representatives, they just don’t seem to be very loyal to their employers.

pear01 1d ago

Exactly, that is the proof. We are already losing this game. Trying to outspend lobbyists using some kind of crowdfunding sounds interesting at first, but is just restating the same terms on which the game is already rigged, which means you will just lose again.

I think there might be a way to make it work, however you would have to be very aware and plan for a way to not reinvent the same losing dynamics. It might not be possible.

edgyquant 1d ago

I don’t think this is a great example as a big complaint recently has been the influence of the gulf states on American politics.

pear01 1d ago

Humorous of you to think they would be against AIPAC.

Gulf states have little to nothing in common with Palestinians. Citizens of most gulf states are born into relative wealth merely by the fact their countries are rich in petrodollars. They build lavish cities and have standards of living (for their citizens) that increasingly put the West to shame. They are "diversifying" from oil by building massive AI datacenters and essentially catering to Westerners who want to live unencumbered by Western pretensions of civic duty, avoid taxes in their home countries, etc. They make deals with the Israelis and have for over a decade now, even if under the table. They buy American weapons, their elites have frequently been educated at the most exclusive British or American universities. They like expensive Italian cars. Money is money.

Meanwhile Palestinians are born poor, in a failed state with no autonomy. Some UAE crypto influencer is yolo gambling away more money than most Palestinian kids will see in their lifetimes. They live under an occupation and have basically no rights in that regard. They are poor. Just google image a picture of Gaza vs the UAE. It just doesn't even compare. Maybe on some level they are both Arabs. But the same rule applies. Money is money.

The gulf state governments gave up on trying to care about them many many decades ago. They realized it was cheaper (and more prosperous) to go along to get along with the United States and Israel. If they hadn't, their capitals might look like Tehran right now. Over the years it became easy to blame other people for the problem - Iran, even the Palestinians themselves. They have long since washed their hands of caring.

Don't conflate the Gulf States with Palestinians, or associate them with anyone on the losing side of anything when it comes to money and power. They are as corrupt and bought-in to this system of wealth/might makes right as anyone.

yunohn 1d ago

Feels like a lot of words to avoid thinking about “black” money and favors in kind. For example, nobody would include Trump’s golden bar from Switzerland in such ann estimate - repeated ad nauseam for all lobbying corruption.

Aunche 1d ago

The Internet thinks that lobbying is bribery. If you wanted a bribery like vehicle, you'd just donate to a PAC or more recently, the new ballroom. Lobbying is just paying people to speak to politicians. After a company has said everything that wanted to every politician that can possibly support their cause, there isn't anything left for them to do.

christoph 1d ago

"Emails from October 2005 show that after Mandelson complained to Epstein about a lack of British Airways air miles, Epstein offered to pay for his plane tickets to the Caribbean."[1]

The biggest shocker to me has been just how "cheap" a lot of people are to buy off. Mandelson is complaining about air miles FFS. So much of this is a few thousand here, some fancy tickets there, a jet ride elsewhere, etc. In my mind it was always much, much bigger sums that people were selling their countries & souls out for, sadly, it turns out a lot of people, even in really high positions, are shockingly cheap.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relationship_of_Peter_Mandelso...

jaggederest 1d ago

I donated $100 to my state's gubernatorial campaign as a part of my annual "make the world a better place" campaign, and was surprised to receive a call from an unknown number the following day. It was the Governor, thanking me for my donation personally, and wondering if there were any issues close to my heart that she could keep in mind. Note that this was from her personal cell phone (for whatever value of personal an executive politician actually has, but still), and she invited me to phone her if I had any issues that the state government could resolve.

That's a wildly low sum of money for a 5 minute personal call, let alone even a modest intervention.

bix6 1d ago

O great more big money warping our lives for the worse.

I’d write my senator but they won’t do shit. Is there anything that can seriously be done?

iamnothere 1d ago

Download the source code and ISOs of distros without age gating and put them on durable media. Tell your friends about the issue and its implications (legislating how an OS works is a huge deal, is likely unconstitutional, and opens up the door to all kinds of future abusive laws). Find like minded people so if the worst happens you will have mutual support and can work together on circumvention of any future restrictions. Work on your C skills.

0xbadcafebee 1d ago

That is the most serious thing you can do, and the most effective.

Do you know how democracy works? There are these people called representatives. They are hired by you. They pass laws. They only get to continue having a job if people like you vote for them. When you tell them "I don't like the law you are passing", they are hearing "the people who hire me are angry with me". The more people that are angry at what they're doing, the more their job is at risk.

They do what the lobbyists say because somebody else is doing the work, and they get paid (by the lobbyist). But they won't have a job to get paid for if the voters don't vote for them again. So your entire defense against tyranny and bad laws is you speaking out. If you never talk to your reps (or vote), you're telling them you don't care what kind of government it is, and they really will do whatever they want.

You have to tell them how you feel, along with all the rest of us. That's the only power we have.

In addition to that, tell everyone you know. Your friends, family, coworkers, the dude running the local gas station. Explain to them why government-mandated surveillance of everything they do on a computer is a bad idea. Ask them to talk to their reps.

bix6 1d ago

It’s not the most effective though. I’ve been writing all my reps at various levels and yet the things I don’t want keep happening.

SubiculumCode 1d ago

The problem is hat there are too many citizens per Representative. They barely know your community.

nobodyandproud 1d ago

The hard part is writing in a way that these legislators and their help can instantly understand.

Ideas? Time to spin up a local LLM for some editing advice.

busterarm 1d ago

Every election boils down to Kang vs Kodos.

bogwog 1d ago

Do your homework, vote, and help inform other people so they vote too.

bix6 1d ago

O yeah that worked so well in this last election.

ExpertAdvisor01 1d ago

I don't understand it . There are so many ways to child-proof a device . Google Family Link and the Apple equivalent . Use cloudflares Family dns (blocks porn websites etc ..)

Instead of just creating a course that explains how to child-proof a device, we have to surveil everyone.

actsasbuffoon 1d ago

Because they’re not really trying to protect kids.

onlyrealcuzzo 1d ago

Please scan your asshole to use the toaster.

It's to save the kids.

We care about the kids. We don't bomb them.

eigencoder 1d ago

Do you have a child? Because I think the device makers haven't really done a good job, there are just too many workarounds.

array_key_first 17h ago

Solution: don't give your kids the device. Put up a computer in the family room like it's 1998. Perfect, now little Timmy can do his homework. And if he looks up "boobies", he won't be able to sneak it past you!

The best part? This is cheaper and easier. You're literally doing less. Locking down a smartphone is hard? Great, so don't do that. Problem solved, you're welcome, I'll send you my invoice.

cindyllm 16h ago

[dead]

heavyset_go 18h ago

Why are you buying your child devices made for adults and not devices purpose built for children?

kjkjadksj 1d ago

Tell me how a whitelist isn’t going to work for you

0xbadcafebee 1d ago

I don't understand why nobody in the comments is freaked out about this. This isn't just "oh Google knows my age", or "oh politicians being corrupt again!" This is "the government made a law that every computer in the world must track every person's identity and send it to the cloud".

No offline devices. Commercial vendors get your biometric data (and the equivalent of your driver's license / SSN). Every application on the OS can query your data.

If you think it stops with one bill, after they get all the infrastructure for this in place? You're fooling yourself. The whole point of this is to identify you, on every web page you visit, every app you open, on every device you own. Once bills are passed, it's very hard to get them revoked or nullified.

This is the most aggregious, authoritarian, Big Brother government surveillance system ever devised, and it's already law. I am fucking terrified.

(Yes, the EU has a less horrifying version of this. But Google, Apple, and Microsoft still control most of the devices in the world, and they are US companies.)

SkyeCA 1d ago

> I don't understand why nobody in the comments is freaked out about this.

Because it's hopeless? It's been proven time and time again there's nothing the average person can do to fight this sort of thing.

It's just better to sit back and watch as everything gets ruined.

0xbadcafebee 1d ago

Actually it's the opposite. Average people speaking out is how the world gets better. It's when they don't speak out that things are allowed to get worse.

You literally live in a Democracy. There's 5.8 billion people on this planet who wish they had the kind of power you have. If you give up your rights without a fight, you don't deserve them.

turbinemonkey 1d ago

    Compare this to what the EU built. The EU Digital Identity Wallet under eIDAS 2.0 is open-source, self-hostable, and uses zero-knowledge proofs. You can prove you're over 18 without revealing your birth date, your name, or anything else. No per-check fees, no proprietary SDKs, no data going to a vendor's cloud. The EU's Digital Services Act puts age verification obligations on Very Large Online Platforms (45M+ monthly users), not on operating systems. FOSS projects that don't act as intermediary services are explicitly outside scope. Micro and small enterprises get additional exemptions.

    The US bills assume every operating system is built by a corporation with the infrastructure and revenue to absorb these costs. The EU started from the opposite assumption and built accordingly.

Just another reminder of how we need to protect what we have in the EU (not a guarantee, but at least a chance of fair dealing and a sustained commitment to civic values). Now that the mask has fully fallen, we have to take every step possible to root out American influence.

sidewndr46 1d ago

Isn't eIDAS the same technology stack that would put the government in total control of what websites you can view & what ones you can't?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualified_website_authenticati...

turbinemonkey 1d ago

QWACs exist to provide a more stringent and user-accessible way to assert a website's identity, mostly to foil phishing and other exploits that regular certificate systems don't address well. Where does this cross into censorship at all?

sidewndr46 1d ago

When the government decides not to issue certificates to websites they don't like.

turbinemonkey 1d ago

Oh, stop. Tinfoil-hatting like this is how privacy and internet freedom activism gets a bad rap.

QWAC certs are only for "high value" sites: banks, government services, etc. They can only be issued by "Qualified Trust Service Providers" (e.g. digisign, D-TRUST, etc -- not governments), and cost many hundreds of euros. Your blog and mastodon instance and 98% of businesses just aren't affected.

People operating in "high risk" sectors that need access to payment infra (porn, drugs, etc) are, as always, going to have a hard time. That's a worthy conversation, but nothing about QWAC or eIDAS is about "the government not issuing certs to people they don't like".

sidewndr46 1d ago

This is how total control of a platform always starts. Google starts with Android and just does digital signing for applications through their store. Until they achieve control of the platform, then suddenly you can't load your own applications without them signing it either.

Secure Boot is just a technology for those that need it, until Microsoft decides it's mandatory for everyone.

gzread 1d ago

It's not really tinfoil hatting, EU countries already deny privileges based on political affiliation and so on. Germany shut down a Muslim cultural center for refusing to censor a speech by someone who came from Gaza, merely because of the fact they came from Gaza. Limiting government power is still something the EU needs - they're not all good.

layer8 1d ago

It’s not the government that is issuing the website certificates.

Magnusmaster 22h ago

Zero knowledge proofs stops corporations from tracking you, but they don't stop the government from tracking which websites you visit. They also require hardware attestation for them to work, which means you will be only allow to use a locked-down goverment-approved OS for age verification, and that opens the door for the government to control the software running on every device.

deaux 1d ago

> Just another reminder of how we need to protect what we have in the EU (not a guarantee, but at least a chance of fair dealing and a sustained commitment to civic values).

What you have in the EU is this: https://noyb.eu/en/project/dpa/dpc-ireland

> Now that the mask has fully fallen, we have to take every step possible to root out American influence.

You have literal rogue states in your union that neutralize the entirety of it, as the above shows. It's a joke. The EU is a joke. A single country is enough to mean US tech can do whatever it wants, similarly a single other country is enough to mean Russia can largely do what it wants.

The others are of course in on it too. Which is why for all the empty EU talk on US big tech you've never heard them talk about the Irish DPA and what they all enable. Strange right? Would think that this would be a priority. But it shows that even if the rest weren't in on it, just one country would be enough. And it could even be a tiny place like Luxembourg.

Laws and regulations aren't worth the paper they're written on if they're not enforced. The current ones aren't enforced at all, why would any new ones be? Did you know that there was a long period where hosting European citizens' PII on US-controlled servers (like Amazon instances in Europe) was illegal, after the "Privacy Shield" was deemed unlawful? No one cared. Did you know that this is currently the case again, because the thing that replaced it has once again had its basis ripped out from under it by Trump? Once again, no one cares, and indeed EU governments and corporations are _still_ making migrations _to_ US clouds.

Not that it matters, within a few years RN will be running France and AfD will be running Germany and you don't have to pretend any more as the "mask will have fallen" just as much.

xbar 1d ago

Wrote to my state representative this morning.

"You implemented a law that enables vibe-coding pedophiles to deploy apps that find all the children. Please resign."

hedora 15h ago

After looking at the California bill a bit, I'm equally worried about the implications for application developers as I am for the implications for OS developers.

It says apps must use the age signal as proof the user is a minor, and then behave according to all California laws regarding that. (I'm not a lawyer, but that's my read.)

So, does this apply to applications that run locally? What if an under 13 year old tries to read a text file with lots of swear words or ascii b00bs? Does emacs need to stop them? cat? xterm?

creddit 16h ago

I have no idea if Meta is driving these, but the only way it would make sense for them to do it is if they saw age-verification as inevitable and would prefer to pass on the costs/liability of implementation to the app store providers. If they didn't see them as inevitable, then it makes no sense for them to be pushing for these as they are fundamentally against their own growth.

herf 1d ago

It's easy to lie to an OS about your age because it's a single-user experience, and if your parents allow you to lie (or don't know), that's all it takes. Social networks are so much better equipped to estimate age because they have a simple double-check, which is that most kids follow other kids in their grade level.

The patches on top of this are really bad. For instance, we are seeing "AI" biometric video detectors with a margin-of-error of 5-7 years (meaning the validation studies say when the AI says you're 23-25 you can be considered 18+), totally inadequate to do the job this new legislation demands.

istillcantcode 1d ago

This feels like a waste of time and money. Why are people so interested in tracking people who on average can't read or write better than a 12 year old child? By my count, I'm assuming things will be increasingly degraded for about the next 8-10 years or so.

tim-tday 1d ago

Age verification is surveillance. The organized campaign to push age verification is not actually trying to protect children. You can’t do age verification without identity verification. You can’t have internet privacy and identity verification.

Chance-Device 1d ago

TLDR: Meta want to push all the age verification requirements onto the OS makers (Apple, Google, everyone else gets caught in the crossfire) so that they don’t have to do anything AND they want it done in such a way that they can use it to profile people to push them targeted ads.

Its like they want to keep being seen as the bad guys.

chongli 1d ago

I think this is also a way of getting ahead of any “ban social media for teens and preteens” bills that might pop up in the US. They do not want repeats of Australia! By adding age verification into the operating system they can deflect responsibility but also respond to legislators with a scalpel rather than getting sledge-hammered.

user_7832 1d ago

…Honestly this seems something very likely, more than the other suggestions.

2OEH8eoCRo0 1d ago

I want age verification but not at the OS level.

JoshTriplett 17h ago

> I want age verification

Please feel free to verify your own age with anyone you like. If you mean "I want other people to", then no.

hackinthebochs 1d ago

Yes, let me send a picture of my ID to every app on the internet. That's so much better than having the device I own attest to my age anonymously.

gzread 1d ago

What would a world with your preferred age verification system look like?

triceratops 1d ago

If age verification has to exist at all, it could look something like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46447282

And responses to some common criticisms of the idea: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46459959

I also forgot to mention in my original post that the token issuer is not a monopoly. Any company that wants to participate can do so, just like there are many brands of tobacco and alcohol. Require websites to accept at least 5 providers to ensure competition.

To be clear though if it's being used as wedge for privacy violation then it should not exist at all. And from reading TFA preventing that may need a similarly coordinated counter-effort.

gzread 1d ago

That seems much more intrusive and bad for privacy than having the parent click a button that says the account is for a child under 18.

triceratops 1d ago

We already have that.

On a spectrum of options, no verification is the least privacy intrusive. Baking it in at the OS level or forcing passport uploads are the most intrusive. My proposal is in the middle.

A determined actor could maybe follow you to the store when you purchase your verification code, take a quick picture with a powerful camera (or bribe the store to do it sneakily) and unmask you online. But there's no way to do it at scale. And if you buy the code from a reseller (ask a panhandler to buy one for you, perhaps) then it's even more robust.

gzread 19h ago

We don't have that. If we did, California wouldn't have to mandate it.

inetknght 1d ago

> I want age verification

Why?

2OEH8eoCRo0 1d ago

Because it's absurd to allow children to simply click "I am 18." Nowhere else works like this.

inetknght 1d ago

> Nowhere else works like this.

Are you serious? Because this comment doesn't make it sound like you're serious.

EULAs and the like allow adults to simply click "I accept". That's apparently the way contracts work these days. Speaking of contracts: children aren't allowed to sign contracts. So those apps that children are using with EULAs? It's absurd to allow adults to simply click "I accept". We need to have "acceptance verification" laws to prevent this kind of abuse.

It's also absurd to allow children to simply enter a church. Churches teach dangerous thoughts. Have you read their books?! Those books have sex, murder, theft! Think of the children! There's many kinds of religions and we need to track the religion bracket of our children. It's absurd to allow a child to simply click "I am Christian." Nowhere else works like this. We need to have "religious verification" laws to prevent this kind of abuse.

What you want isn't conducive to a "high trust" society [0].

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-trust_and_low-trust_socie...

casey2 23h ago

R-rated movies, explicit graphic novels, health/anatomy books, romance novels. All example of material that are contemporary harmful to minors yet are simply accessible to minors. In the recent past you could add contraception and talking about STDs

The absurdity here comes from the fact that this is only illegal when one convinces a group of wetware about the dangers of porn addiction and LGBT, even more absurd this can only be done through misinformation since neither LGBT grooming rings nor porn addiction are real.

I see the absurdity in pushing for laws in the hope of preventing a disease that only exists in your mind? Can you? I believe you can if you step out of idpol and look at the cold data/dollars.

gosub100 1d ago

I want reverse age verification that lists the ages of every social network post. I think a lot of people that criticize social network toxicity don't realize their interlocutors are half their age. It's not one-to-one, meaning maturity doesn't follow from age, but I think there would be some affordances made in both directions. A younger person would be less surprised that a 60+ yr old would hold certain views. And vice versa.

kevincloudsec 1d ago

the post getting mass-reported off reddit twice is the best evidence that the research is accurate lol

jaesonaras 15h ago

Just ban lobby groups. Politicians are public servants, not corporate servants.

tpmoney 14h ago

I'm unclear how banning the ACLU and the EFF is supposed to improve the alignment of politicians to public interests.

retrocog 1d ago

This discussion, being so timely and important, inspired me to draft an article that explains a possible third way that might not have been fully considered. I would be humbled and honored to receive any feedback:

https://www.robpanico.com/articles/display/presence-derived-...

(posting link because it would be too much for a comment)

nobodyandproud 1d ago

Jesus. As an American I can do my part, but it’s not much.

$70 million is chump change for Meta, yet is far more money than I’ll ever have and does so much to influence state legislation.

trymas 1d ago

Time and time again it amazes me how incredibly cheap lobbied politicians are. They may be earning big sums for an individual, but if you go full corruption[1] to sell out a state or a country - sell it for a fair price.

I remember from peak net neutrality discussions during trump 1 maybe around 2017-2018 ant saw an article on theverge.com (that cannot find now) and biggest sum to individual politician was around $200k, when median values were much much lower.

Politicians are selling tens of billions of dollars (if not hundreds of billions) worth of revenue to ISPs for couple or dozen million. Literally 1000x return on investment (if successful).

I remember local politician (I am not from US) got caught taking 100k bribe from a company for helping with alleged highway construction procurement. Project was valued ~1B - 10 000x return on investment (if they wouldn't have been caught).

[1] I am sorry, not "corruption", but "lobbying".

budman1 1d ago

in the 1990's there was a woman prime minister of Turkey.

she ended up resigning in a scandal caused by her husband accepting a boat (or work on the boat..i don't remember). the scandal was caused by the amount of the bribe. it was too low. the Turkish people could understand some corruption, but to be able to bribe the top leader for $50k. Unacceptable. If it would have been $100 million, it would not have been a scandal.

NickC25 1d ago

This. Issue in the USA is that if you don't accept the money offered, you get primaried and they bribe money you would have gotten just goes to the campaign of your primary opponent.

Rinse and repeat. Unless, politicians band together and say "we need the full ROI of your project, and NONE of us will even talk to you unless we get half the profits, and you can't primary all of us at once"

trymas 6h ago

US needs to get rid of first past the post voting system.

kjkjadksj 1d ago

Bribed are even smaller. Some councilmembers got indicted in LA some years back for pay for play development. The bribes were things like steak dinners, 5 figure sums of cash in paper bags, and hookers. Astoundingly cheap.

mrtesthah 1d ago

We should ask ourselves why we continue to participate and perpetuate economic systems that result in levels of inequality so vast that they threaten control of our democracy.

john_strinlai 1d ago

for ~2 decades i have attended events, written to my representatives, proposed solutions to whoever i can, and encouraged my students to do the same as various attempts are made to strip regular people of their privacy. for ~2 decades now, i have been trying to fight this fight.

one scary observation is that each year, less and less people care. at least, this is true among my students. plenty of them believe the 'protect the children' line and are more than willing to do whatever the government/big tech suggests. or they just shrug ("what difference would i make?").

for context, i teach at a college level, in tech. a few of my classes are from the cybersec program, one of the programs that should understand and care about the implications of bills like these, and even the majority of them do not care about this stuff anymore. they grew up with instagram and facebook and cameras everywhere. they grew up knowing that any little fuck up they have is recorded and posted online. they know that by the time they go to college, all of their data has already been leaked a few times. they never really had an expectation of privacy in the first place, so it just isnt a big deal.

as someone who interacts with this next generation of "hackers" on a daily basis... the concept of cypherpunk is gone. i got into this field because of my beliefs. they are going into this field because they want a chance at buying a house some day, and know that big tech has big bucks.

i am tired. and i recognize that this is exactly what they (lobbyists, meta, etc.) want! but i am tired and discouraged. more and more i find myself having to actively fight the urge to give up. i am not ready to give up just yet... but, i am sorry to say that as someone closer to retirement than i am comfortable admitting, i only have so much energy left.

zoobab 1d ago

27 years against software patents in the EU, feeling the same unfortunately.

But sometimes very few people can make a difference.

julkali 1d ago

i felt that.

Terr_ 1d ago

Oh look, the Heritage Foundation, the ones who wrote up the "Project 2025" agenda for most of the corruption and authoritarianism that has plagued America in the last year.

The very last people you should trust when it comes to "protecting the children."

bluescrn 1d ago

To me it feels that the age verfication (adult de-anonymisation) push, at least in Europe, is coming more from the increasingly-authoritarian left as a reaction to the rise of the online right and Musk's Twitter.

(Maybe some unspoken element of concern over social media bots, too - as they evolve from spamming copy+pasted comments to being near-indistinguisable from actual human accounts?)

malfist 1d ago

If you look at the people pushing these bills it's the anti-trans and anti-porn activists. Not the left.

dringe 1d ago

In the UK we have many people on the left with these perspectives. It comes from the second-wave feminist tradition.

But generally speaking, online age verification is one of those issues where the left-right ideological divide doesn't map neatly. People support and oppose it for various different reasons. Much like the assisted suicide issue.

dingi 1d ago

This issue looks partisan from the outset, but both sides push the same thing. They just use partisan justifications.

mrtesthah 1d ago

Age verification efforts in the US have been privacy-attacking (demanding government ID) whereas the system being proposed in europe is privacy-preserving (zero-knowledge proof).

phendrenad2 1d ago

In Europe though? You have those?

dv_dt 1d ago

It would be interesting to see a similar lobbying breakdown for the EU and UK. I bet it's still Meta with other right wing actors. The left rarely has the money for this kind of lobbying scale

turbinemonkey 1d ago

Heritage has been laying waste to America my whole life. They basically planned all of Reagan's legislative agenda, too, just like Project 2025 is doing today. In very real ways, they and their vision are America (a system is what it does, not what it says it does).

naxtsass 1d ago

The OP’s point can be interpreted as describing the automation and mechanization of this kind of targeting, which would likely become necessary if the scope of prosecuting so-called “thought crimes” continues to expand.

DavidPiper 1d ago

The idea that it might cost "someone" $2 every time a user opens and app AND it sends a bunch of private data to a 3rd party is completely dystopian, let alone everything else.

And a serious question: with deepest respect to the author for their extraordinarily impressive time and effort in this investigation... Why was this not already flagged by political reporters or investigative journalists? I'm not American so maybe I don't understand the media structure over there but it feels like SOMEONE should have been all over this way before it's gotten to the point described in this post.

TheRealDunkirk 1d ago

When a megacorp funds a network of non-profits to lobby a bunch of politicians, draft legislation, and tell them to take it to committee, that can happen without much visibility, especially when it's been orchestrated at the state level, as this has. Where does any of this show up until there's a vote called on it? There's no open debate. No working "across the aisle" to address concerns. There's nothing left of the legislative process that started this country, or, indeed, any Western representative democracy. So someone has to be watching, see something on an agenda that raises the hairs on their necks, figure out what it is, and if there's a story there, and they're not going to get any help from anyone because everyone involved knows how the public is going to feel about it. And then, as the article indicates, even a place like Reddit is going to astroturf the effort to get the story out. (Which I've been trying to point out for YEARS, but which -- surprise, surprise! -- gets supressed.)

dfxm12 1d ago

Mainstream media is largely captured by the same monied interests as discussed in the reddit post. Although the poster does mention an article from Bloomberg as evidence, most of their sources are local outlets or tech-focused. https://github.com/upper-up/meta-lobbying-and-other-findings...

Cider9986 1d ago

Here is an Archive: https://arctic-shift.photon-reddit.com/search?fun=ids&ids=t3...

intended 15h ago

I want to appreciate the fact that the investigation exists, and that someone has made it.

However this is the kind of investigation that Reddit is famous for, which ends up causing more harm than good, like the Boston bombing investigation.

Age verification, for example, is coming no matter what - there’s a big enough chunk of voters tired of tech globally.

Governments are also tired of dealing with tech and want to bring them to heel.

These macro forces are far more significant than the amounts identified on lobbying in this investigation (~$63 mn iirc)

Given the title, the reading of the article implies Meta is driving age verification.

The content of the investigation, reads more as meta taking advantage of the push for age verification to move it to the OS layers.

matheusmoreira 1d ago

See? It was never about children. Never fails.

Corporations literally buy the laws they want and Silicon Valley is the newest lobbying monster. Genuinely terrifying.

zoobab 1d ago

That's what Washington and Brussels are about: lobbying capitals and buying influence over how laws are made.

sporadicallyjoe 1d ago

If politicians care so much about protecting children, then why aren't they going after the rich and powerful child abusers mentioned in the Epstein files?

kjkjadksj 1d ago

Best they can do is only arrest maxwell.

juris 1d ago

so as to not hold the liability bag, devs will publish the majority of their apps as 18+ (we're back to the 2000s with porn banner ads everywhere), and children will ask their parents to use their computer (orly owl).

Aurornis 1d ago

This is very lazy AI generated content, as admitted toward the end of the document.

Clicking through to the "findings" shows that they didn't even try to feed proper data into Claude when the AI bot was blocked or couldn't access the documents. Some examples:

So Claude then goes on to propose "Potential Role" that postulates connections might exist, but then caveats it by saying that no evidence was found:

> This negative finding is inconclusive due to inability to access Schedule I grant detail data in the actual 990 filings (PDF downloads returned 403 errors, and ProPublica's filing viewer loads data dynamically).

This is what happens when you try to lead an LLM toward a conclusion and it behaves as if your conclusion is true. Hacker News is usually quick to dismiss incomplete and lazy LLM content. I assume this is getting upvotes because it's easy to turn a blind eye to the obvious LLM problems when the output is agreeing with something you believe.

phba 1d ago

The primary goal of these efforts is to control communication and the flow of ideas. Information is a control mechanism, since we act on what we believe.

In history we had four media revolutions (printing press, radio, television, Internet), each greatly disrupting and reshaping society. This is the fifth (social media and maybe AI).

All these revolutions had the same theme: increased reach of information, increased speed of transmission, increased density (information amount per unit of time), and centralization of information sources. Now we seem to reach the limits of change. No more reach, since our information networks span the entire globe. No more speed, since transmission times are close to how fast we can perceive things. The only things left to change are even more centralization and tighter feedback loops (changing the information based on how the recipient reacts).

Given all that, this media revolution might be the last one, so there is a gold rush among the elites to come out on top.

d--b 1d ago

The guy posted a Ask HN there:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47361235

https://github.com/upper-up/meta-lobbying-and-other-findings...

throw8fasdffdf 1d ago

I'm surprised the "laboratory" of the globalist elite, India, hasn't implemented this yet.

Digital-ID (Aadhar) was heavily pushed by USAID and other US-deepstate associates; the same with digital-money and the "demonetization". Bill Gates's org actively tests out things on actual humans like guinea pigs, before globalizing the "solutions". These days all of this is kind of redundant since the phone-number + verification has become essentially a necessity to live in the city in any part of world today.

The prev. Govt. had considered doing this "login with your ID or no internet" scheme (to "protect" people no doubt) back in 2012s - there were explicit statements about disallowing people who would not authenticate with Aadhar, but it was shelved (likely because of their unpopularity).

If our current "Dear Leader" were to propose this, I think a significant population would opt-in simply because of a sense of belonging to a hero-worship-cult.

The state is determined to ensure that every human be their slave.

dyauspitr 1d ago

Your take in this entire ends up with you blaming Bill Gates like some MAGA tinhat? The GOP are literally the cabal of pedophilic, privacy ending, freedom crushing elites you’re looking for and this is somehow your perspective?

fluffybucktsnek 1d ago

I suspect you only read up to the 2nd paragraph of OP's comment if that's what you got. They certainly aren't pinning the blame on Bill Gates. I don't think "current "Dear Leader"" (quotes included) is common MAGA vocabulary. Also, given the bipartisan support of the bills, funding and presence in the Epstein files, it seems unfair to include only MAGA as the "cabal of pedophilic, privacy ending, freedom crushing elites".

RankingMember 1d ago

Removed! Anyone got a copy of the original text?

koshergweilo 1d ago

> This isn't age verification at the point of accessing restricted content. This is a persistent age-broadcasting service baked into the operating system itself, queryable by every installed application.

You're not missing anything. It's just an AI generated summary of the original GitHub link https://github.com/upper-up/meta-lobbying-and-other-findings

I found the original article much easier to read anyways

vaylian 1d ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20260313125244/https://old.reddi...

troyvit 1d ago

They linked to this GitHub project: https://github.com/upper-up/meta-lobbying-and-other-findings

nomilk 1d ago

Also curious why it would be removed.

poizan42 1d ago

See https://reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1rshc1f/i_traced_2_billi...

AutoModerator on /r/linux is set up to automatically remove posts after a set amount of reports.

alex1138 1d ago

Gee that can't be abused at all

Fuck Reddit

SilverElfin 1d ago

Mass reporting, likely coordinated. This person had a previous submission on this topic that was also attacked this way.

busterarm 1d ago

It (for the second time) was automatically removed via mass reporting by reddit accounts.

siliconunit 1d ago

How is this preventing anyone booting up an old pc and sharing a usb key data. This is utter nonsense made to control people and instigate fear and self censorship... this is 'the system' discovering the internet in slow motion and immediately pushing its boot over it. We live in an artificial moral panic that should have no place in the minds of smart people.

SilverElfin 1d ago

The post looks to be deleted. Anyone know a way to view the original content?

Arubis 1d ago

Just generally, a good piece of context to keep in mind whenever you see electronic surveillance, backdoor, or anonymity-piercing legislation or legal efforts, _particularly_ when they're framed as protecting minors, is that Jeffrey Epstein's primary mode of communication with his co-offenders was Gmail, frequently via a BlackBerry.

thiago_fm 1d ago

America will just get behind even more as years pass behind Europe in terms of proper regulation of the digital economy, which benefits citizens instead of companies and rich billionaries.

The reason is that europeans have nothing to win from those "winner-take-all" platforms the US has built in the past decades. Europe has built zero of them.

It contributes very little to Europe's GDP or the overall being of the european. And in some cases, it eats Europe's GDP, moving economic activity back to the US. This is different than for Americans which big tech is a net-positive contributor to society in my POV, mainly because how much economic activity $ it generates.

Big techs provide huge paychecks and made a lot of people rich in the US, and most of its GDP growth in the last decade. But it's a double-edged sword.

They will make laws in favor of them in detriment of the average American, while minting more billionaries than Europe could ever dream of.

Europe will take a long time to get the digital revolution the US already did, but it'll mostly come from regulations and government initiatives. And will be net-positive for humans living in Euope, not for owners of corporations.

gzread 1d ago

It is interesting isn't it? Most of Europe has better internet access than the US for similar reasons: sensible regulation led to high competition.

lII1lIlI11ll 1d ago

> Most of Europe has better internet access than the US for similar reasons: sensible regulation led to high competition.

Which "most of Europe" would that be? Switzerland and handful of northern countries? Because it is definitely not Germany or several "you can't access half of the internet during times when twenty men kicking a ball on a field" southern states.

marcosdumay 1d ago

Eh... That "[removed]" there means there was something to read and now it's gone?

At least the author posted a link to the dataset in a comment so it survived:

https://github.com/upper-up/meta-lobbying-and-other-findings

novok 15h ago

Man if the EU made GDPR a 45M+ user platform thing most of the issues with it would've gone away.

shevy-java 1d ago

What I find interesting is how this legislation suddenly leads to some open project give in and submit - see MidnightBSD wishing to spy on people via a daemon now. Linux will probably follow suit via systemd; an appropriate name would be systemd-sniffy, to sniff for user data and warn the authorities "WARNING - 15 YEARS OLD IS WATCHING SOME P..., SHUT DOWN THE HOUSE!!!". And the legislation calls this safety. And freedom.

It is like in the novel 1984. But stupid. Probably more like minority report - but also stupid. All aided by Meta bribing lobbyists to do their bidding.

kmbfjr 1d ago

I was already on my way to de-internetizing and de-digitalizing my life, this just makes it more of an imperitive.

Have at it Meta, you broke it you most certainly bought it!

fredgrott 1d ago

If we want really a set up where a child does not access it...

Psychology has a higher success rate...just tell them that their parents use it....

There are many systems where accuracy is loose and that is its core feature...for example postal addresses worldwide...I can a mistake in the address but the letter or package will still get there...

b112 1d ago

How much do you want to bet that Amutable, via its founder's control of the systemd codebase and ability to drive change, will be first-in-line to force a switch to its variant of systemd, along with a module for age verification?

I don't see it as coincidence that with all these laws passing, suddenly he announces a secure, "controlled", "locked down" version of systemd. Why, RedHat and Ubuntu can simply drop in this new variant, pay a small fee, and be done with compliance.

npn 1d ago

Now it is only age verification. Next they will try to impose digital ID.

That's when you know the new world has begun.

Aunche 1d ago

Am I the only person who recognized that this bill explicitly does not require any sort of id verification? The point is to make apps and websites more accountable.

NoImmatureAdHom 1d ago

Where do I donate to oppose this bullshit?

I want to open my wallet. It should be the top comment.

casey2 1d ago

Donate a phone call. You aren't gonna win the bribing war against people who own a machine that turns your worthless data into millions of dollars.

If everybody who cared to and lived in the affected districts called they would kill the bill just to clear their phone-lines.

close04 1d ago

This truly is the best democracy money can buy. As long as money and/or favors change hands in exchange for getting favorable laws passed, it's just legalized bribery and buying off your own "democracy".

And it snowballs, the more favorable laws someone buys, the more favorable their position, and the more they can buy in the future. The transition from "democratic facade" to "outright oligarchy" will be swift and seamless.

jwr 1d ago

I am now waiting for Gruber (daringfireball.net) to post another rant about how terrible EU regulation is.

Zero-knowledge proofs are the way to go for this type of thing, I find it mind-boggling that the US lets itself be bamboozled into complete lack of privacy.

cosmos0072 1d ago

I am from EU, and contrary to age verification laws in general.

My stance is that if somebody is a minor, his/her/their parents/tutors/legal guardian are responsible for what they can/cannot do online, and that the mechanism to enforce that is parental control on devices.

Having said that, open-source zero-knowledge proofs are infinitely less evil (I refuse to say "better") than commercial cloud-based age monitoring baked into every OS

heavyset_go 1d ago

> Having said that, open-source zero-knowledge proofs are infinitely less evil (I refuse to say "better") than commercial cloud-based age monitoring baked into every OS

To be honest, I worry that the framing of this legislation and ZKP generally presents a false dichotomy, where second-option bias[1] prevails because of the draconian first option.

There's always another option: don't implement age verification laws at all.

App and website developers shouldn't be burdened with extra costly liability to make sure someone's kids don't read a curse word, parents can use the plethora of parental controls on the market if they're that worried.

[1] https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Appeal_to_the_minority#Second-...

ndriscoll 1d ago

> App and website developers shouldn't be burdened with extra costly liability

Why not? Physical businesses have liability if they provide age restricted items to children. As far as I know, strip clubs are liable for who enters. Selling alcohol to a child carries personal criminal liability for store clerks. Assuming society decides to restrict something from children, why should online businesses be exempt?

On who should be responsible, parents or businesses, historically the answer has been both. Parents have decision making authority. Businesses must not undermine that by providing service to minors.

Ray20 1d ago

> Why not?

This implies the creation of an infrastructure for the total surveillance of citizens, unlike age verification by physical businesses.

ndriscoll 1d ago

Spell it out: how do ID checks for specific services (where the laws I've read all require no records be retained with generally steep penalties) create an infrastructure for total surveillance? Can't sites just not keep records like they do in person and like the law mandates? Can't in-person businesses keep records and share that with whomever you're worried about?

How do you reconcile porn sites as a line in the sand with things like banking or online real estate transactions or applying for an apartment already performing ID checks? The verification infrastructure is already in place. It's mundane. In fact the apartment one is probably more offensive because they'll likely make you do their online thing even if you could just walk in and show ID.

pixl97 1d ago

>create an infrastructure for total surveillance

I mean, we're talking about age verification in the OS itself in some of these laws, so tell me how it doesn't.

Quantity is a quality. We're not just seeing it for porn, it's moving to social media in general. Politicians are already talking about it for all sites that allow posts, that would include this site.

So you tell me.

ndriscoll 1d ago

App and website developers having liability is an alternative to OS controls. Mandatory OS controls are OS/device manufacturers having liability. I agree that's a poor idea, and actually said as much like a year ago pointing out that this California bill was the awful alternative when people were against bills like the one from Texas. It's targeting the wrong party and creates burdens on everyone even if you don't care about porn or social media.

heavyset_go 1d ago

No, in the CA law OS controls are part and parcel with app and website developer liability.

ndriscoll 1d ago

They're separate concepts. Clearly, obviously, mandating OS controls is creating liability for OS providers, not service operators. Other states do liability for providers without mandating some other party get involved.

California is also stupid for creating liability for service/app providers that don't even deal in age restricted apps, like calculators or maps. It's playing right into the "this affects the whole Internet/all of computing" narrative when in fact it's really a small set of businesses that are causing issues and should be subject to regulation.

gzread 1d ago

Knowing if the user's over 18 doesn't imply total surveillance, it only implies a user profile setting that says if they're over 18.

vaylian 1d ago

It implies that the user has access to the technical infrastructure that supports age verification. Sucks to be you, if you can't afford a recent Apple or Android device to run the AgeVerification app.

There is also the problem of mission creep. Once the infrastructure is in place, to control access to age-restricted content, other services might become out of reach. In particular, anonymous usage of online forums might no longer be possible.

gzread 1d ago

That technical infrastructure: a drop-down menu on the user's account settings

Magnusmaster 22h ago

The EU Digital Wallet requires hardware attestation so only it only works on locked-down government-approved OSes. That opens the door for government control of all electronic devices.

gzread 19h ago

What a shame. The California one is just an input box.

pc86 1d ago

Do you know what the word "infrastructure" means?

gzread 1d ago

Do you know what "total surveillance" means? It doesn't mean a checkbox for over 18

pc86 1d ago

I can't tell if this is a troll or not.

OS-level ability to verify the age of the person using it absolutely provides infrastructure for the OS to verify all sorts of other things. Citizenship, identity, you name it. When it's at the OS level there's no way to do anything privately on that machine ever again.

gzread 1d ago

I agree that a checkbox for if the user is over 18 opens the door to a checkbox for if the user is a citizen and even a textbox for the user's full name (which already exists on Linux so you better boycott Debian now!). I don't see how such input fields are "total surveillance".

MonkeyClub 1d ago

> Physical businesses have liability if they provide age restricted items to children.

Ok, suppose the strip club is the website, and the club's door is the OS.

Would you fine the door's manufacturer for teens getting into the strip club?

jerf 1d ago

Dueling physical analogies is never a productive way to resolve a conversation like this. It just diverts all useful energy into arguing about which analogy is more accurate but it doesn't matter because the people pushing this law don't care about any of them and aren't going to stop even if the entire internet manages to agree about an analogy. This needs to be fought directly.

johnnyanmac 1d ago

>This needs to be fought directly.

How do we fight? It seems like agree or disagree, this isn't going to stop. There's so much money behind it in a time where the have nots can barely survive as is.

ndriscoll 1d ago

The OS is not the club's door. The OS is unrelated. The strip club needs to hire someone to work their door and check ID, not point at an unrelated third party. They should have liability to do so as the service provider.

MSFT_Edging 1d ago

> Physical businesses have liability if they provide age restricted items to children.

These are often clear cut. They're physical controlled items. Tobacco, alcohol, guns, physical porn, and sometimes things like spray paint.

The internet is not. There are people who believe discussions about human sexuality (ie "how do I know if I'm gay?") should be age restricted. There are people who believe any discussion about the human form should be age restricted. What about discussions of other forms of government? Plenty would prefer their children not be able to learn about communism from anywhere other than the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.

The landscape of age restricting information is infinitely more complex than age restricting physical items. This complexity enables certain actors to censor wide swaths of information due to a provider's fear of liability.

This is closer to a law that says "if a store sells an item that is used to damage property whatsoever, they are liable", so now the store owner must fear the full can of soda could be used to break a window.

ndriscoll 1d ago

That's not a problem of age verification. That's a problem of what qualifies for liability and what is protected speech, and the same questions do exist in physical space (e.g. Barnes and Noble carrying books with adult themes/language).

So again, assuming we have decided to restrict something (and there are clear lines online too like commercial porn sites, or sites that sell alcohol (which already comes with an ID check!)), why isn't liability for online providers the obvious conclusion?

MSFT_Edging 1d ago

> That's a problem of what qualifies for liability and what is protected speech

The crux is we cannot decide what is protected speech, and even things that are protected speech are still considered adult content.

> why isn't liability for online providers the obvious conclusion?

We tried. The providers with power and money(Meta) are funding these bills. They want to avoid all liability while continuing to design platforms that degrade society.

This may be a little tin-foil hat of me, but I don't think these bills are about porn at all. They're about how the last few years people were able to see all the gory details of the conflict in Gaza.

The US stopped letting a majority of journalists embed with the military. In the last few decades it's been easier for journalists to embed with the Taliban than the US Military.

The US Gov learned from Vietnam that showing people what they're doing cuts the domestic support. I've seen people suggesting it's bad for Bellingcat to report on the US strike of the girls school because it would hurt morale at home.

The end goal is labeling content covering wars/conflicts as "adult content". Removing any teenagers from the material reality of international affairs, while also creating a barrier for adults to see this content. Those who pass the barrier will then be more accurately tracked via these measures.

gzread 1d ago

However there are also parts of the internet that are clear cut, like porn.

MSFT_Edging 1d ago

What about nude paintings/photography that aren't made with erotic intent?

Anatomical reference material for artists with real nude models?

What about Sexual education materials? Medical textbooks?

Women baring their breasts in NYC where it's legal?

Where is the clear cut line of Pornography? At what point do we say any depiction of a human body is pornographic?

gzread 19h ago

Some things being unclear doesn't mean all things are unclear.

NoMoreNicksLeft 1d ago

>Plenty would prefer their children not be able to learn about communism

Plenty of people would prefer that children not learn about scientology from pro-scientology cultists too. It's not that they can't know about scientology (they probably should, in fact, because knowledge can have an immunizing effect against cults)...

And it's not that they can't know about communism (they probably should, in fact, because knowledge can have an immunizing effect against cults)...

MSFT_Edging 1d ago

Would you also be against learning about Capitalism from the Heritage foundation?

This is a comment section about large corporations lobbying against our ability to freely use computers and you break out the 80's cold war propaganda edition of understanding a complicated economic system that intertwines with methodology for historical analysis with various levels of implementations from a governmental level.

You're either a mark or trying to find a mark.

inetknght 1d ago

> Physical businesses

Physical businesses nominally aren't selling their items to people across state or country borders.

Of course, we threw that out when we decided people could buy things online. How'd that tax loophole turn out?

ndriscoll 1d ago

But when they do, federal law requires age verification (at least with e.g. alcohol).

It turned out we pretty much closed the tax loophole. I don't remember an online purchase with no sales tax since the mid 00s.

scythe 1d ago

For one thing, it's fairly uncommon for children to purchase operating systems. As long as there is one major operating system with age verification, parents (or teachers) who want software restrictions on their children can simply provide that one. The existence of operating systems without age verification does not actually create a problem as long as the parents are at least somewhat aware of what is installed at device level on their child's computer, which is an awful lot easier than policing every single webpage the kid visits.

ndriscoll 1d ago

So I agree that operating systems and device developers should not be liable. That's putting a burden on an unrelated party and a bad solution that does possibly lead to locked down computing. I meant that liability should lie with service providers. e.g. porn distributors. The people actually dealing in the restricted item. As a role of thumb, we shouldn't make their externalities other people's problems (assuming we agree that their product being given to children is a problem externality).

gzread 1d ago

What if all the useful apps refuse to run on the childproof operating system?

scythe 1d ago

I think the market is pretty good at situations like that.

anthk 1d ago

Then ditch propietary software completely and join free as freedom OSes.

Bender 1d ago

App and website operators should add one static header. [1] That's it, nothing more. Site operators could do this in their sleep.

User-agents must look for said header [1] and activate parental controls if they were enabled on the device by a parent. That's it, nothing more. No signalling to a website, no leaking data, no tracking, no identifying. A junior developer could do this in their sleep.

None of this will happen of course as bribery (lobbying) is involved.

[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46152074

rectang 1d ago

Practically, instead of requiring that sites verify age, require that they serve adult content with standardized headers. Devices can then be marketed as "child-safe" which refuse to display content with such headers.

mindslight 1d ago

ZKP methods are just as draconian as they rely on locking down end user devices with remote attestation, which is why they're being pushed by Google ("Safety" net, WEI, etc).

The real answer to the problem is for websites/appstores to publish tags that are legally binding assertions of age appropriateness, and then browsers/systems can be configured to use those tags to only show appropriate content to their intended user.

This also gives parents the ability to additionally decide other types of websites are not suitable for their children, rather than trusting websites themselves to make that decision within the context of their regulatory capture. For example imagine a Facebook4Kidz website that vets posts as being age appropriate, but does nothing to alleviate the dopamine drip mechanics.

There has been a market failure here, so it wouldn't be unreasonable for legislation to dictate that large websites must implement these tags (over a certain number of users), and that popular mobile operating systems / browsers implement the parental controls functionality. But there would be no need to cover all websites and operating systems - untagged websites fail as unavailable in the kid-appropriate browsers, and parents would only give devices with parental controls enabled to their kids.

Terr_ 1d ago

> The real answer to the problem is for websites/appstores to publish tags that are legally binding assertions of age appropriateness, and then browsers/systems can be configured to use those tags to only show appropriate content to their intended user.

Agreed, recycling a comment: on reasons for it to be that way:

___________

1. Most of the dollar costs of making it all happen will be paid by the people who actually need/use the feature.

2. No toxic Orwellian panopticon.

3. Key enforcement falls into a realm non-technical parents can actually observe and act upon: What device is little Timmy holding?

4. Every site in the world will not need a monthly update to handle Elbonia's rite of manhood on the 17th lunar year to make it permitted to see bare ankles. Instead, parents of that region/religion can download their own damn plugin.

mindslight 1d ago

Good list of more reasons! I focused on what I consider the two most important.

To expand on your #3, it also gives parents a way to have different policies on different devices for the same child. Perhaps absolutely no social media on their phone (which is always drawing them, and can be used in private when they're supposed to be doing something else), but allowing it on a desktop computer in an observable area (ie accountability).

The way the proposed legislation is made, once companies have cleared the hurdle of what the law requires, parents are then left up to the mercy of whatever the companies deem appropriate for their kids. Which isn't terribly surprising for regulatory capture legislation! But since it's branded with protecting kids and helping parents, we need to be shouting about all the ways it actually undermines those goals.

verisimi 1d ago

> There's always another option: don't implement age verification laws at all.

Where do you go to vote for this option?

andrepd 1d ago

The concern is ubiquitous all-pervasive surveillance, control, and manipulation of algorithmical social media and its objective consequences for child development and well-being. Not "kids reading a bad word". Disagree all you want, but don't twist the premise.

Surely you can find a rationalwiki article for your fallacy too.

ori_b 1d ago

If you want to avoid all pervasive surveillance, it might be wise to not mandate all pervasive surveillance in the OS by law.

In fact, I suspect adults, and not just children, would also appreciate it if the pervasive surveillance was simply banned, instead of trying to age gate it. Why should bad actors be allowed to prey on adults?

gzread 1d ago

Luckily some of these laws, which we're rallying against, make it illegal to pervasively surveil.

ori_b 1d ago

I must have missed that. Which of them prevent pervasive data collection on all ages?

gzread 20h ago

The California age input law says that the OS shall not give more data than necessary.

ori_b 19h ago

And what are the consequences for application vendors that collect more information, including after the age is collected?

johnnyanmac 1d ago

>Disagree all you want, but don't twist the premise.

The 2 billion dollars are the one twisting it.

heavyset_go 1d ago

You mean the same social media companies that want this legislation and wrote it themselves? The same legislation that introduces more surveillance and tracking for everyone, including kids?

Also, I heard the same thing about video games, TV shows, D&D, texting and even youth novels. It's yet another moral panic.

From the Guardian[1]:

> Social media time does not increase teenagers’ mental health problems – study

> Research finds no evidence heavier social media use or more gaming increases symptoms of anxiety or depression

> Screen time spent gaming or on social media does not cause mental health problems in teenagers, according to a large-scale study.

> With ministers in the UK considering whether to follow Australia’s example by banning social media use for under-16s, the findings challenge concerns that long periods spent gaming or scrolling TikTok or Instagram are driving an increase in teenagers’ depression, anxiety and other mental health conditions.

> Researchers at the University of Manchester followed 25,000 11- to 14-year-olds over three school years, tracking their self-reported social media habits, gaming frequency and emotional difficulties to find out whether technology use genuinely predicted later mental health difficulties.

From Nature[2]:

> Time spent on social media among the least influential factors in adolescent mental health

From the Atlantic[3] with citations in the article:

> The Panic Over Smartphones Doesn’t Help Teens, It may only make things worse.

> I am a developmental psychologist[4], and for the past 20 years, I have worked to identify how children develop mental illnesses. Since 2008, I have studied 10-to-15-year-olds using their mobile phones, with the goal of testing how a wide range of their daily experiences, including their digital-technology use, influences their mental health. My colleagues and I have repeatedly failed to find[5] compelling support for the claim that digital-technology use is a major contributor to adolescent depression and other mental-health symptoms.

> Many other researchers have found the same[6]. In fact, a recent[6] study and a review of research[7] on social media and depression concluded that social media is one of the least influential factors in predicting adolescents’ mental health. The most influential factors include a family history of mental disorder; early exposure to adversity, such as violence and discrimination; and school- and family-related stressors, among others. At the end of last year, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine released a report[8] concluding, “Available research that links social media to health shows small effects and weak associations, which may be influenced by a combination of good and bad experiences. Contrary to the current cultural narrative that social media is universally harmful to adolescents, the reality is more complicated.”

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2026/jan/14/social-media-t...

[2] https://www.nature.com/articles/s44220-023-00063-7

[3] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/05/candi...

[4] https://adaptlab.org/

[5] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31929951/

[6] https://www.nature.com/articles/s44220-023-00063-7#:~:text=G...

[7] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32734903/

[8] https://nap.nationalacademies.org/resource/27396/Highlights_...

himata4113 1d ago

Yes! This is the way, give parents the ABILITY to advertise the users age to browsers, apps and everything in between. Only target cooperations, do not target open source projects. Fine websites for not using this API (ex: porn sites). Assume an adult if not present.

fn-mote 1d ago

> Fine websites for not using this API (ex: porn sites).

Recent posters here are clear that porn sites are setting every available signal that they are serving adult-only content.

According to them, you are targeting the wrong audience.

Facebook/Instagram studying how to get young users addicted should be of greater concern. I have my doubts about the effectiveness of age-based blocking there, though.

troyvit 1d ago

> Facebook/Instagram studying how to get young users addicted should be of greater concern. I have my doubts about the effectiveness of age-based blocking there, though.

Yeah quite the opposite. Once they have that formalized attestation they will move in like sharks.

edgyquant 1d ago

Both are problems, porn sites have also targeted children and any non-enforced age “verification” on these sites is simply plausible deniability that isn’t plausible at all

XorNot 1d ago

In what way have porn sites targeted children? They have no disposable income to target and the product is literally self age gated in appeal.

fivetomidnight 1d ago

No. This is not the way.

> give parents the ABILITY to advertise the users age to browsers, apps and everything in between.

Accounts and Applications to services that provide countent are set to a country-specific age rating restrictions (PG, 12+, 18+, whatever). That's it.

None of the things you mentioned have any point to concern themself with the age or age-bracket of the user in front of the device. This can and will be abused. This is very obvious. Think about it.

ryandrake 1d ago

Why should the applications get to decide if they are appropriate for a particular age? Shouldn't that be up to the parent? I shouldn't need to tell my kid: "Well, to use this compiler software, you need to set your age to 18 temporarily, because some product manager 3,000 miles away decided to rate it 18+. But, set it back to age 13 afterwards because you shouldn't be on adult sites." It's stupid.

himata4113 1d ago

That is what I meant by age(-rating), you are correct. However, drop country specifics - too complicated. Age brackets are enough: child, preteen, teen, adult. At around 16-17 these should be dropped anyway since at that point people are smart enough to get around these measures anyway and usually have non-parent controlled devices.

idiotsecant 1d ago

This is a great solution to the stated problem. The issue is that nobody is actually trying to solve the stated problem. This is a terrible solution to the real 'problem' which is the lack of surveillance power and information control.

simion314 1d ago

>This is a great solution to the stated problem. The issue is that nobody is actually trying to solve the stated problem. This is a terrible solution to the real 'problem' which is the lack of surveillance power and information control.

So on the Sony consoles I created an account for my child and guess what they have implemented some stuff to block children from adult content on some stuff.

So if Big Tech would actually want to prevent laws to be created could make it easy for a parent to setup the account for a child (most children this days have mobile stuff and consoles so they could start with those), we just need the browsers to read the age flag from the OS and put it in a header, then the websites owners can respect that flag.

I know that someone would say that some clever teen would crack their locked down windows/linux to change the flag but this is a super rare case, we should start with the 99% cases, mobile phones and consoles are already locked down so an OS API that tells the browser if this is an child account and a browser header would solve the issue, most porn websites or similar adult sites would have no reason not to respect this header , it would make their job easier then say Steam having to always popup a birth date thing when a game is mature.

necovek 1d ago

When one clever teen figures it out, they will share it with 80% of their friend group, making that number 80% and not 1%.

Let's go back to parenting: yes, world is a scary place if you get into it unprepared.

gzread 1d ago

When one teen figures out how to get alcohol without ID, 80% of them will.

necovek 16h ago

From https://www.edgarsnyder.com/resources/underage-drinking-stat...:

  > Nearly 75% of 12th grade students...have consumed alcohol in their lifetimes.

and

  > 85 percent of 12th graders ... say it would be “fairly easy” or “very easy” for them to get alcohol.

So, yes?

fsflover 1d ago

100% law enforcement is harmful: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47352848

himata4113 1d ago

That's why I suggested kernel enforced security (simple syscall) that applications could implement and are incredibly hard to spoof / create tools and workarounds for, but I got downvoted to hell.

Permission restricted registry entry (already exists) and a syscall that reads it (already exists) for windows and a file that requires sudo to edit (already exists) and a syscall to read it (already exists). Works on every distro automatically as well including android phones since they run the linux kernel anyway. Apple can figure it out and they already have appleid.

simion314 1d ago

For linux we have the users and groups concept, the distro can add an adult group and when you give your child a linux a device and create the account you would just chose adulr or minor , or enter a birthdate. No freedom lost for the geeks that install Ubuntu or Arch for themselves and we do not need some extra hardware for the rare cases where a child has access to soem computer and he also can wipe it and install Linux on it. Distro makes can make the live usb default user to be set as not adult. Good enough solutions are easy but I do not understand why Big Tech (Google and Apple) did not work on a standard for this. (maybe both Apple and Google profits would suffer if they did)

himata4113 1d ago

Definitely the latter, exploiting kids (roblox) is very very profitable.

gzread 1d ago

Three states now implement this solution that you just called a great solution, and most of HN still hates it. Are they seeing something that you're not? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47357294

idiotsecant 1d ago

Psst I was talking about zero knowledge proofs. Read twice before talking.

gzread 1d ago

Can't see where you said that. You definitely commented about parental controls.

mijoharas 1d ago

This is what I think. I saw someone else on HN suggested provide an `X-User-Age` header to these sites, and provide parents with a password protected page to set that in the browser/OS.

Responsibility should be on the website to not provide the content if the header is sent with an inappropriate age, and for the parent to set it up on the device, or to not provide a child a device without child-safe restrictions.

It seems very obviously simple to me, and I don't see why any of these other systems have gained steam everywhere all of a sudden (apart from a desire to enhance tracking).

qup 1d ago

Seems simple until you try to figure out what's allowed for what age, which surely will differ by country at a minimum.

mijoharas 5h ago

To me that's a geo-ip lookup on the online service, which they kinda need to do anyways so seems fine?

(if there are further restrictions then it gets messy, but I feel like that's the current state of things anyways? at least for online services which I'm mostly speaking about here.)

Mostly my point is I don't think attestation is required. I think that responsibility should fall upon parents, and I don't want to have to give my ID to any online sites, because I don't remotely trust them to keep that safe. I'm less worried about them storing a number I send them about how old I am.

qup 3h ago

There's ~195 countries with 195 sets of laws.

And 50 US states.

mijoharas 2h ago

Yeah, and frankly if you have a porn site (for example) you already need to deal with the different country restrictions.

Having no restrictions would be great, but since a bunch of countries are passing these laws I'd appreciate having a minimally invasive version instead.

module1973 1d ago

that is correct the parents are meant to pass on morals and parent the child. If the parents fall through, there is the community such as church, neighbors, schools etc. The absolute last resort is government or law enforcement intervention, and this should be considered an extreme situation. But as John Adams noted, "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people" -- in other words, all these laws start to rip at the seams when the fabric of society, the people who make up the society no longer have morals. But I appreciate this article in general, we need to fight against mass surveilance at all costs.

pixl97 1d ago

>all these laws start to rip at the seams when the fabric of society, the people who make up the society no longer have morals

Morals like owning slaves, right?

A moral system that requires everyone to be white Christian males isn't a moral system, it's a theocracy.

teekert 1d ago

"mechanism to enforce that is parental control on devices."

Meh, I use it, but it's super annoying and I think that with my Daughter I'll take a different approach (but it will be some years before that is relevant).

On Android: The kid can easily go on Snapchat (after approval of install of course, and then you can just see their "friends") before Pokemon Go (just a pain to get working, it keeps presenting some borked version which led to a lot of confusion at first). I just lied about his age in a bunch of places at some point. Snapchat is horrible and sick from our experiences in the first week.

On Windows: It's a curated set of websites (and no FireFox) or access to everything. It's not even workable for just school. Granting kids access to our own minercraft servers: My god, I felt dirty about what the other parents had to go through to enable that.

epiccoleman 1d ago

> Granting kids access to our own minercraft servers: My god, I felt dirty about what the other parents had to go through to enable that.

This is a hobby horse of mine to the point that coworkers probably wish I'd just stfu about Minecraft - but holy shit is it crazy how many different things you need to get right to get kids playing together.

I genuinely have no idea how parents without years of "navigating technical bullshit" experience ever manage to make it happen. Juggling Microsoft accounts, Nintendo accounts, menu-diving through one of 37 different account details pages , Xbox accounts, GamePass subscriptions - it's just fucking crazy!

teekert 1d ago

I always wonder about this. I read most dialogs (as I do) but man, the sanity of most people must require that they just next next next this stuff right? Perhaps they even let their kids do it instead.

bcrosby95 1d ago

If you're using something like a fire tablet and you set them up as a kids account that's not how it works. If you next through everything your kid cannot play minecraft online, not even on your own little private server.

Getting an actual kids account to work online with minecraft involves setting the right permissions across 2-4 websites and 1-3 companies. I think it took me around 4 hours of trial and error to get it working.

epiccoleman 1d ago

I might be wrong about this, but at least in my experience you just can't "next next next." There's too much complexity!

I'm essentially the maintainer of a series of accounts for each kid, these days. Woe unto anyone without a password manager!

tasuki 1d ago

> My stance is that if somebody is a minor, his/her/their parents/tutors/legal guardian are responsible for what they can/cannot do online

As a parent, sure, that is my stance as well. What... what other stances are there even? How would they work?

pjc50 1d ago

The steelman argument is that parents are not necessarily up to date on the technology, and cannot reasonably be expected to supervise teenagers 24/7 up to the age of 18. Compare movie ratings or alcohol laws, for example: there's a non-parental obligation on third parties not to provide alcohol to children or let them in to R18 showings.

But the implementation matters, and almost all of these bills internationally are being done in bad faith by coordinated big-money groups against technologically illiterate and reactionary populist governments.

(if we really want to get into an argument, there's what the UK calls "Gillick competence": the ability of children to seek medical treatment without the knowledge and against the will of their parents)

graemep 1d ago

In the UK parents can give children alcohol below the age of 18. parents get to make the final decision at home so I do not think its really comparable.

I would personally favour allowing parents to buy drinks for children below the current limits (18 without a meal, 16 for wine, beer and cider with a meal).

The alternative to this is empowering parents by regulating SIM cards (child safe cards already exist) and allowing parents to control internet connectivity either through the ISP or at the router - far better than regulating general purpose devices. The devices come with sensible defaults that parents can change.

Mchat22 1d ago

Suggesting that regulating ISPs or SIM cards or even public WiFi is an alternative to the OSA or age and identity verification is ignoring the reality that mandatory filtering of internet connections has been a legal requirement for a very long time now, and it has been 'voluntary' (by the ISPs themselves, opt-out by customers, pushed on by Cameron) for even longer.

It is not a new or novel concept. There are legal adults taking part in these conversations that are simply too young to have ever experienced internet connections that weren't restricted and filtered mandated by legislation, and they would have been teenagers that were old enough to have a say in the conversation when the Conservatives were debating the OSA in parliament.

Mobile internet connections have been filtered since 2004 even, so it's entirely likely that this would also be true for some people that are pushing 30 today. The debate on whether it's appropriate for internet filters to block access to Childline, the NSPCC, the Police, the BBC, Parliament, etc, is 15 years old at this point. Fifteen.

The false dichotomy that exists between the entirely authoritarian measures of the OSA and the still fairly authoritarian measures of mandatory filtering serves only the interests of borderline monopolistic American tech companies who are in a position to weather such regulations as they stifle and snuff out any possibility of a less harmful web ecosystem, and people will cheer it on as they believe the social media platforms they blame for causing harm will themselves be harmed by the very laws they are writing.

The real alternative is not having mandatory filtering but instead voluntary filtering by the parents themselves, which is what everybody seems to think they are arguing for, and that conversation is long since dead. It is entirely beside the point, but contrast it with alcohol laws. The UK is one of the few countries in Europe that has consumption laws both in private(+) and in public, whereas half of Europe only has consumption laws in public while the other half has no consumption laws in either private or public. America on the other hand has many states that prohibit under-21s from drinking alcohol even in private. A better comparison may be content ratings, which are largely entirely voluntary and not a legal requirement.

(+) It's 5+ so there may as well be no laws on private consumption.

_heimdall 1d ago

That steelman still stands on a core assumption that its both the state's responsibility and right to step in and parent on everyone's behalf.

Maybe a majority of people today agree with that, but I know I don't and I never hear that assumption debated directly.

gzread 1d ago

The point of having a state at all is to create a framework where people are set up to succeed.

_heimdall 1d ago

Where exactly are you getting that goal of a state from? Maybe that's one of the goals today, historically I don't think it was anywhere on the list.

heavyset_go 1d ago

Everyone shouldn't have to lose their privacy just because you're too lazy to use parental controls or give your kids devices that are made for children.

gzread 1d ago

Entering your child's age when you create their user account is a loss of privacy?

PeterisP 1d ago

The current bills (e.g. NY one at https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2025/S8102/amendm... ) require age assurance that goes beyond mere assertions, so when creating your (adult) user account it would be required to give away your privacy to prove your age - if you can't implement a way for anonymous/pseudonymous people to verify that they indeed are adults (and not kids claiming to be so), these bills prohibit you to manufacture internet-connected systems that can be used by anonymous/pseudonymous users.

gzread 1d ago

We are also talking about the Illinois one, which doesn't do that

edgyquant 1d ago

Then frankly you haven’t seen many debates around age verification as it’s the main thing discussed every time it’s brought up

_heimdall 1d ago

You are correct, I didn't pay close attention to any EU debates that may have happened, I haven't lived there in years. In the US I haven't seen much debate at all, regardless of the bill really we don't seem to have leaders openly and honestly debate anything.

antonvs 1d ago

> I never hear that assumption debated directly.

The idea of the "nanny state" has been debated a lot, and this seems like a very literal example of that. But once some status quo is firmly entrenched, debate about it tends to die down because the majority of people no longer care enough about it.

edgyquant 1d ago

The other stance is that most parents are not capable of winning a battle against tech giants for the mind of their children, just as parents were not capable of winning this fight with tobacco and alcohol companies.

heavyset_go 1d ago

The tech giants want this. They drafted the bill. They paid tens of millions of dollars to promote it. Think about that for a minute.

hackinthebochs 1d ago

They want it because it absolves them of responsibility for what their app does to kids. They can then just point to the existence of an already working mechanism for parents to intervene. The alternative would be for each app to implement stringent age verification or redesign itself to avoid addictive patterns. Neither option is good for their earnings.

duskdozer 1d ago

If this had anything to do with reigning in tech giants, it would be done for adults as well, without restricting anyone's rights (well, aside from the people-corporations' of course). The issues are the manipulative algorithmic datafeeds, advertising, and datamining. Age verification does nothing for any of this and only provides the tech giants and governments the means to secure even more control over people.

Markoff 1d ago

ignore parent, outsource parenting to gov verification authority

TBH many parents done exactly that by giving phones/tablet already to kids in strollers

graemep 1d ago

The latter is true, but we cannot regulate the vast majority of parents on the basis of the worst.

croes 1d ago

You could make the same case for parental control as evil.

"You‘re reading about evolution! Not in my house"

cosmos0072 1d ago

Parents already have a lot of control on children' education.

Examples: most children believe in the same religion as their parents, and can visit friends and places only if/when allowed by their parents.

This is simply extending the same level of control to the internet.

Government-mandated restrictions are completely another level.

edgyquant 1d ago

I have personally worked with parents trying to prevent their children from using social media and it’s nearly impossible. Kids are almost always more tech savvy than their parents and unlike smoking it’s nearly impossible to tell a child is doing so without watching them 100% of the time.

croes 1d ago

Who controls your age if you try to buy alcohol.

Who controls your age if you want to see an R-rated movie?

This is simply extending the same level of control to the internet.

More control for parents is a completely different level.

heavyset_go 1d ago

There are no laws preventing children from seeing R-rated movies with or without their parents, theaters implement that policy by choice.

jfengel 1d ago

Sort of by choice. Often, the municipality won't let you build a movie theater unless you pinky-promise to abide by the rating system.

They rarely enforce it, but if it gets out of hand, the city will start getting on your case about it.

croes 1d ago

Welcome to the world where many countries aren’t the US

heavyset_go 1d ago

The OP is about legislation and companies in the US

croes 1d ago

And parent is from the EU and talks about age control in general.

Does the US have a zero-knowledge proof system that is mentioned in the discussion?

applfanboysbgon 1d ago

Disingenuous, but I'm sure you know that and were being intentionally so. The government is not using alcohol age laws as a justification to place a camera in your bedroom to make sure you aren't sneaking booze, but it is using internet age laws as a justification to surveil your entire life in a world which is becoming increasingly digital-mandatory to participate in government services or the economy. Nobody had a problem with internet age laws when "are you over 13? yes/no" was legally sufficient.

gzread 1d ago

Is California doing this?

applfanboysbgon 20h ago

To my understanding no, but California is breaching the rubicon in compelling open-source / non-commercial software developers to include something in their offline software, which is something that I believe has never been done before by any jurisdiction, and opening that floodgate is a clear slippery slope in this environment because the week after that is implemented Texas will be mandating that all operating systems come installed with JesusTracker. Apparently New York is already working on sliding down that slope, in fact, and for good measure wants to mandate anti-circumvention measures too.

croes 1d ago

You‘re missing the point

> Having said that, open-source zero-knowledge proofs are infinitely less evil (I refuse to say "better") than commercial cloud-based age monitoring baked into every OS

Parent prefers more control by parents over zero-knowledge proof

applfanboysbgon 1d ago

If that was your point, I don't think your previous comment did a very good job of making it at all.

I do think parental controls can be and are abused for evil, but they're still better than the alternative. Zero-knowledge proof is not an alternative, and to suggest that it is is misunderstanding the situation. These laws are proposed and funded by people who want complete surveillance of the population. Zero-knowledge proof is, therefore, explicitly contrary to the goal and will never be implemented under any circumstances. Suggesting that it can be muddies the issue and tricks people into supporting legislation that exists only to be used against them.

In a benevolent dictatorship, sure, go for a zero-knowledge proof verification as your solution. In the reality of democracy, where politicians are corporate puppets who cloak surveillance laws in "think of the children" to rally support from the masses, we need to convince people to see through the lie and reject the proposals outright while reassuring them that they can protect the children themselves via parental controls. You will never be able to sufficiently inform 50.1% of the population of any country of what zero-knowledge proof even means, let alone convince them to support age verification laws but strictly conditional on ZKP requirements. That level of nuance is far too much to ask of millions of people who are not technically-informed, and idealism needs to give way to pragmatism if we wish to avoid the worst-case scenario.

Pxtl 1d ago

> My stance is that if somebody is a minor, his/her/their parents/tutors/legal guardian are responsible for what they can/cannot do online, and that the mechanism to enforce that is parental control on devices.

Imho there is a place for regulation in that, actually. Devices that parents are managing as child devices could include an OS API and browser HTTP header for "hey is this a child?" These devices are functionally adminned by the parent so the owner of the device is still in control, just not the user.

Just like the cookie thing - these things should all be HTTP headers.

"This site is requesting your something, do you want to send it?

Y/N [X] remember my choice."

Do that for GPS, browser fingerprint, off-domain tracking cookies (not the stupid cookie banner), adulthood information, etc.

It would be perfectly reasonable for the EU to legislate that. "OS and browsers are required to offer an API to expose age verification status of the client, and the device is required to let an administrative user set it, and provide instructions to parents on how to lock down a device such that their child user's device will be marked as a child without the ability for the child to change it".

Either way, though, I'm far more worried about children being radicalized online by political extremists than I am about them occasionally seeing a penis. And a lot of radicalizing content is not considered "adult".

lynx97 1d ago

Same here, EU citizen who thinks parents should do some parenting, after all. However, try to confront "modern" parents with your position. Many of them will fight you immediately, because they think the state is supposed to do their work... Its a very concerning development.

soulofmischief 1d ago

I'll go further. As a human being, I am responsible for myself. I grew up in an extremely abusive, impoverished, cult-like religious home where anything not approved by White Jesus was disallowed.

I owe everything about who I am today to learning how to circumvent firewalls and other forms of restriction. I would almost certainly be dead if I hadn't learned to socialize and program on the web despite it being strictly forbidden at home. Most of my interests, politics and personality were forged at 2am, as quiet as possible, browsing the web on live discs. I now support myself through those interests.

We're so quick to forget that kids are people, too. And today, they often know how to safely navigate the internet better than their aging caretakers who have allowed editorial "news" and social media to warp their minds.

Even for people who think they're really doing a good thing by supporting these kinds of insane laws that are designed to restrict our 1A rights: the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

duskdozer 1d ago

This is obviously where it's going to go, at least in the US. Things that are non-religious, non-Christian especially, pro-LGBT, and similar will be disproportionately pulled under "adult content" to ensure that children are not able to be exposed to unapproved ideas during formative years.

tokai 1d ago

That has already been going on for decades, with satanic panic and banning of library books.

soulofmischief 1d ago

The scary thing about legislation and software is that they can negatively reinforce each other if not properly designed and implemented. We run the risk of codification of morality-of-the-week becoming embedded deeply embedded into the compute stack, which will not self-correct until there is a great political movement for liberation of compute.

soulofmischief 1d ago

Exactly. Having lived through it already, I know what it did to me and I would never wish that upon another child. The internet saved me from being a religious, colonial, racist piece of shit like the rest of my family.

rustystump 1d ago

[flagged]

soulofmischief 1d ago

Did you have an actual point to make or did you just choose two random words and hurl an insult with zero context? Were you looking for an actual discussion or is this all you had to offer?

choo-t 1d ago

Even with ZKP this is still highly problematic, it create difficulty for undocumented people to access the web, create ton of phishing opportunity, reinforce censorship on most site (as they will now all need to be minor compliant or need age verification), reinforce the chilling effect and make the web even less crawlable/archivable (or you need to give a valid citizen ID to your crawler/archiver).

With no proof it will protect anyone from proven harm.

gruez 1d ago

>it create difficulty for undocumented people to access the web

Why is this such a sticking point in US politics? If the "undocumented" people aren't supposed to be in the country in the first place, why should rest of society cater to them? Even if you're against age verification for other reasons, dragging in the immigration angle is just going to alienate the other half of the population who don't share your view on undocumented people, and is a great way to turn a non-partisan issue into a partisan one. It's kind of like campaigning for medicare for all, and then listing "free abortions and gender affirming surgery" as one of the arguments for it.

ryandrake 1d ago

There are many ways to not have a state or national ID document in the USA. You might simply not have a driver license or passport. That's totally legal. You might be in the country temporarily for business or as a tourist. The constitution applies to all of these people.

gruez 1d ago

>There are many ways to not have a state or national ID document in the USA. You might simply not have a driver license or passport. That's totally legal.

Great, frame it as "poor people without IDs" or whatever, not "undocumented", which in the current political discourse is basically the left's version of the term "illegal immigrant".

>You might be in the country temporarily for business or as a tourist. The constitution applies to all of these people.

The constitutional right to... watch 18+ videos on youtube while in the US?

DangitBobby 1d ago

Do you seriously think that access restrictions will be limited only to the under-18 use-case?

We _do not want_ the government to have the capability to enforce laws of this nature.

vaylian 1d ago

> why should rest of society cater to them?

Because these undocumented people are still humans. They deserve access to information services. It's as simple as that.

miyoji 1d ago

I don't think it's "catering to them" to avoid passing laws that impose undue burden. For example, if you passed a law requiring a US passport to buy food in the US, and made it so all restaurants and grocery stores are required to check passports before selling food to anyone, I would be opposed to that law, and part of the reason is that I don't think it should be hard for anyone to get food, whether they have a US passport or not.

"Undocumented" doesn't mean "residing illegally" anyway, it just means "lacking documents", which is a state that many perfectly legitimate US citizens find themselves in. But we should want people who are here illegally and everyone else to be able to use the world wide web and computers regardless of their legal status, just like everyone should be allowed to eat and buy food regardless of their legal status, because that's just basic humanity.

gruez 1d ago

>I don't think it's "catering to them" to avoid passing laws that impose undue burden. For example, if you passed a law requiring a US passport to buy food in the US, and made it so all restaurants and grocery stores are required to check passports before selling food to anyone, I would be opposed to that law, and part of the reason is that I don't think it should be hard for anyone to get food, whether they have a US passport or not.

Which is kind of my point. Don't say it's a bad idea because "undocumented people" won't be able to get food, say it's bad because it'll be a pain for everyone.

>"Undocumented" doesn't mean "residing illegally" anyway, it just means "lacking documents", which is a state that many perfectly legitimate US citizens find themselves in. But we should want people who are here illegally and everyone else to be able to use the world wide web and computers regardless of their legal status, just like everyone should be allowed to eat and buy food regardless of their legal status, because that's just basic humanity.

But if you're undocumented, it's already a massive pain to participate in society. You can't get a bank account or any other sort of financial product, can't get a job (Form I-9, or want to do background checks), can't buy real estate (who are you going to register it to?), or even drive (yes, I know some states issue drivers licenses to "undocumented" migrants, but that makes them documented and irrelevant to this discussion). Therefore you're going to have a hard time garnering sympathy from voters. An analogy to this would be all the government forms that require a telephone number or an address. Is it illegal to not have a telephone number or an address? No. Do many people not have a phone number or address? Also yes. Is "let's abolish phone numbers and addresses on government forms" a good issue to run on? No.

miyoji 1d ago

> Is "let's abolish phone numbers and addresses on government forms" a good issue to run on? No.

Good thing I'm not running for office, and instead am merely having a conversation on the internet. I would vote for someone running on that issue, though!

> But if you're undocumented, it's already a massive pain to participate in society.

So I should be fine with any changes that embiggens that pain? I am not.

gruez 1d ago

>So I should be fine with any changes that embiggens that pain? I am not.

I'm not "fine" with it, but when there are trade-offs to be made, I'm definitely going to weigh that side less. Some people browse the web with javascript disabled. It's already a huge pain to browse the web with javascript disabled. With those two factors in mind, if I'm deciding whether to add javascript fallbacks (eg. SSR) on for my next project, I'm going to weigh the interests of the "javascript disabled" people very low. I don't have any animus against them, but at the same time I'm not going out of my way to cater to them either.

gzread 1d ago

What if they are supposed to be in the country, but they are undocumented?

This means "not having documents". It's not a synonym for "illegal immigrant".

axegon_ 1d ago

Though the EU is at large keeping it's composure with this. My only criticism towards the EU as an EU citizen is how slow and bureaucratic the EU is and that decisions that should be made on the fly are dragged on forever.

That said, government agencies have been doing a terrible job at keeping the private information of citizens safe. But it is nowhere nearly as bad as the US. My best childhood friend died in very questionable circumstances in 2009 in the US in very questionable circumstances. He had a US citizenship and we never really found out what had happened(to the point where we never really got any definitive proof that he had died). But that didn't stop me from trying and I was blown away by the fact that I could log into a US government website, register with a burner mail, pay 2 bucks with an anonymous gift credit/debit card and get a scanned copy of his death certificate in my email. And I didn't even have to provide his passport/id/anything. Just his name.

Point is, the US has been terrible at privacy for as long as I can remember. It is probably worse now with Facebook and Ellison holding TikTok.

pjc50 1d ago

The critical thing is not so much "Americans" as "big money". Big Russian money is also a threat. Big Chinese money .. well, there's a bit of that about, but it doesn't seem to have shown up at the legislation influencing layer.

tinfoilhatter 1d ago

You fail to mention big Israel money, when 98% of US congress members are taking donations from AIPAC. Strange omission on your part.

whimsicalism 1d ago

100% of AIPAC money is from Americans.

gzread 1d ago

What does that mean, though? In a sense, 100% of USD transactions take place in the US. But sometimes it's on behalf of someone else.

whimsicalism 1d ago

it means that it is Americans voluntarily choosing to donate this money. it seems perfectly plausible to me that there are enough very pro-Israel Americans to fund an organization like AIPAC.

The key question is whether AIPAC is taking actions at "the direction or control” of Israel, but the money is pretty clearly not being sourced from Israel.

johnnyanmac 1d ago

Sure. Maybe in 2040 we'll know the real truth.

axegon_ 1d ago

Oh, that's a different topic: as someone from and living in eastern Europe, there's not a single doubt in my mind that the biggest threat to any civilization is russia by a long shot. The alarming part is that the current US administration hasn't got a single clue of history, suffers from chronic incompetence and the whole superiority complex and fanboying russia as a consequence - those pose a threat. In the context of the conversation, the incompetence is arguably the biggest facepalm moment.

officeplant 1d ago

>biggest threat to any civilization is russia by a long shot

I don't mean to be the average gloating US citizen, but I'm pretty sure we're the largest threat to the Earth.

bojan 1d ago

Only because of Russian money and influence that helped this administration to power.

The root of the problem is Russia, always has been.

Ray20 1d ago

That sounds dubious. The government's actual approval rating in Russia is, what, 5 percent? I remember watching a report about how people in Russia were literally jailed for giving the "wrong" answer to a street poll.

So, I suppose if they could somehow use money and influence to determine election results, they would use it in Russia, no?

So, I think the civilizational threat from Russia is about the same as from North Korea: nearly zero.

johnnyanmac 1d ago

Russia's infinitration is long done. The brakes are cut and the cars moving down a steep hill. Putin can just sit back and watch the chaos ensue if he wants.

lionkor 1d ago

> the biggest threat to any civilization is russia

Surely you meant this as hyperbole, right? If not, I would love your reasoning as to why its a bigger threat than literally anything and anyone else.

axegon_ 1d ago

> someone from and living in eastern Europe

Reasoning: experience.

edgyquant 1d ago

Most civilization is not in Eastern Europe though, Russia is not a threat outside of its immediate proximity and its relative strength has only lessened over the decades

lionkor 1d ago

At this point the US is arguably a much larger threat to random small countries. "We will make so much money if we find a reason to attack <your country>" is the real threat, if any. Of course, far behind other existential threats.

bojan 1d ago

Russia is not a _physical_ threat outside of its immediate proximity.

But they invest large amounts of money to propaganda channels everywhere, have direct military influence in large parts of Africa, are known to poison people in the UK and elsewhere, etc.

> its relative strength has only lessened over the decades Russia is not a _physical_ threat outside of its immediate proximity.

But they invest large amounts of money to propaganda channels everywhere, have direct military influence in large parts of Africa, are known to poison people in the UK and elsewhere, etc.

axegon_ 1d ago

Explain this[1] then. If you think they aren't doing this outside eastern Europe, do I have some news for you. Comments are pretty telling too. And If the scenario described in the video rings some bells surrounding all elections in the democratic world over the last decade, congrats.

[1](https://www.instagram.com/reel/C5TnWyEtwgN/)

NickC25 1d ago

A country with hypersonic missiles and the largest stockpile of nuclear weapons on the planet is only a threat inside its immediate proximity?

lionkor 1d ago

Experience is no good reason to make a blanket statement about a country and all its people, especially not when it's made with such an assertive voice.

axegon_ 1d ago

Is it not? Have you heard about a TV program called the news? They have caused more death to eastern Europe than Hitler did in WW2 and is continuing to do so, has infiltrated countries and governments for generations, actively threatens everyone on daily basis and the entirety of their social media (domestically and expats/immigrants/spies) is nothing but endless wishes for death of anyone that is not russian. Westerners see that through the prism of "out of sight, out of mind" + language barrier, but the threat is neither out of sight, nor out of mind. Spend a few hours on bellingcat and you'll quickly change your mind.

lionkor 1d ago

> Experience is no good reason to make a blanket statement about a country and all its people

> Is it not?

No, and no part of your comment really seems to argue otherwise? I know about current world events. Your argument was that "experience" is a good enough reason to make a blanket statement about a country and all its people, and you doubled down on it, so it's not even like I'm constructing a strawman here or anything.

It's just wild to me how far this kind of blind hate goes. If "experience" is enough to say that a country is a bigger threat to civilization(!) than, lets say, pandemics, natural disasters, global nuclear war, etc., then there really remains no basis for any kind of healthy discussion. At that point it's just blind hatred.

axegon_ 1d ago

I've never been subtle about how I feel about russians: Private properties confiscated. Several instances of terminal diseases in my family as a direct consequence of their actions. Several instances of people spending their entire lives in concentration camps, several instances of people being thrown out of hospitals and let to die in the streets. To the point where I barely have any living relatives. And in recent years, death of a number of close friends. And I am supposed to have a different feelings? Come back to me when you go through the same.

lionkor 1d ago

I'm sorry, I don't mean to invalidate your own experiences. I understand the need for hyperbole, and I also cannot even begin to understand the pain and suffering that you must have experienced. I'm not talking about that.

I'm trying to steer the conversation to stay factual, because I usually appreciate HN for its clear communication style. Sorry for offending you and I'm sorry if I've caused you further suffering. Let's not continue this conversation.

pjc50 1d ago

I think this is entirely reasonable given the history of Russia vs Eastern Europe, but especially the invasion of Ukraine. Russia is currently being held at the Dnipro river, but Putin has stated his intention to "recapture" most of the former USSR.

lionkor 1d ago

> Putin has stated his intention to "recapture" most of the former USSR.

I keep hearing this but I struggle to find any sources, beyond articles like [1] which are... not particularly good sources, even a reddit comment would be a better primary source than that.

I'm not trying to be combative, I just genuinely struggle to find primary sources, probably because I'm using the wrong keywords or something.

I understand the reasoning, but I would love to actually see/read/hear/whatever where Putin "states" this desire explicitly!

[1] https://gppreview.com/2015/02/12/putins-dream-reborn-ussr-un...

heavyset_go 1d ago

See here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics#In_...

lionkor 1d ago

That's a book by Aleksandr Dugin, not Putin. I was asking specifically if there are ANY sources for the recurring statement that Putin wants to conquer back former USSR states. I see why its concerning, and how Dugin's close ties to the government are interesting, but I do not see a quote, or any other source, where Putin explicitly STATES this intent. I don't see it.

Surely I'm missing something here. Putin's 2023 "The Concept of the Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation" also does not state conquering back former USSR states. Where is it? If he states it so clearly that people keep quoting it, surely there must be a source for it? Sorry if I'm a PITA.

To be clear, I'm interested in this because this would be a fantastic argument to bring to discussions, but without having seen a source, I don't think I could.

AnimalMuppet 1d ago

Imagine that someone writes a post saying something outrageous. And imagine that Trump retweets it. He didn't say it... but he kind of did.

I think Dugin's book is like that. Sure, Dugin said it, not Putin. But IIRC Putin did some things to make Dugin's book more influential. I forget the specifics - making it required reading in the Russian military academies, maybe?

There have been other statements by Russian politicians who are widely regarded as Putin's mouthpieces. Medvedev, certain key figures in the Russian parliament. I know I've seen that, though I don't recall the specifics.

So Putin maybe didn't say it. And yet, his endorsed mouthpieces (more than one) do say it.

You said "without having seen a source". Well, I didn't give you one. But if you want to look, I have given some places to start.

lionkor 1d ago

I fully get that! I understand how people get to that conclusion. What I don't understand is why I repeatedly see people online, also on HN (as you can see), who claim that Putin "stated" that he wants to rebuild the USSR, when I can't find any source that he did.

> making it required reading in the Russian military academies, maybe

Yeah, I think he did.

> So Putin maybe didn't say it.

That's my concern. When people make the statement that he did, when he didn't, they essentially preempt any reasonably discussion and start it off on the entirely wrong foot.

If I want to have a discussion with my neighbor about him not cleaning up his own trash, surely I would not start the discussion with "you LOVE living in trash, don't you", even if I can reasonably deduce that he does. It just turns the entire discussion hostile to make claims that aren't supported, and it weakens all subsequent arguments!

AnimalMuppet 1d ago

But does it start the discussion off on the entirely wrong foot? If Putin endorses Dugin's book, requiring the military academies to read it, don't we have fairly high confidence that it is at least close to Putin's position?

So I don't think it's the entirely wrong foot. It's a shortcut and an imprecision, but the point (that Putin actually thinks this) seems to be valid. (Though one should have less than 100% certainty that it represents his position - but with Putin, that should apply to a direct quote as well.)

lionkor 1d ago

The statement should be "he endorses XZY who/which argues for reforming the USSR by force" or something. I think factual accuracy is the one thing we need to hold ourselves to, to the best of our abilities, also to ensure that we don't create an echo chamber and can keep our biases in check a bit more.

AnimalMuppet 1d ago

Fair enough. He endorses, he didn't say. I can buy that.

tokai 1d ago

Here[0] you have it directly from Putin; Ukraine is not a real country and Ukrainian is a fake ethnicity and they are actually Russian.

You have to remember how political communication works in Russia. They rarely state goals outright, and always juggle several narratives at the same time. To make it hard to pin them down to any position and achieve exactly what is happening here.

[0] https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/On_the_Historical_Unity_of_Ru...

Aurornis 1d ago

> I was blown away by the fact that I could log into a US government website, register with a burner mail, pay 2 bucks with an anonymous gift credit/debit card and get a scanned copy of his death certificate in my email. And I didn't even have to provide his passport/id/anything. Just his name.

Death certificates become public record after a period of time, depending on the state. In some states it’s 25 years after death, some more, some less.

https://www.usa.gov/death-certificate#:~:text=Can%20anyone%2...

As far as I can tell this is the same as in the EU: Death certificates can be publicly accessed for a fee after a period of time defined by member states.

I found some comments saying death certificates in the UK could be accessed as early as 6 months in some locations.

So I don’t see this as the US being uniquely terrible on privacy. This is how most of the western world does it. You just had experience with the US and assumed EU was different.

> we never really found out what had happened(to the point where we never really got any definitive proof that he had died).

I’m sorry for your loss, but doesn’t this imply that the US did do a good job of protecting his privacy? It wasn’t until the time limit had passed that you were able to find the death certificate.

DharmaPolice 1d ago

Death certificates are public records (at least in the UK) so why shouldn't you be able to get one? I think the alternative, where people's deaths could be kept secret by the state is a far greater risk than the privacy rights of the dead (GDPR type laws generally apply to the living).

I don't know about elsewhere but in the UK anyone can apply for any death certificate going back to 1837.

axegon_ 1d ago

Applying is one thing. Giving unrestricted access to anyone, which contains a ton of private information, be it of a deceased person, is not OK. Going back to my original statement: fake name, fake email, untraceable payment.

gzread 1d ago

No, the way to go is the California way. The device owner (root user) can enter the age of the user. Restrictions are applied based on that. Nothing is verified.

EmbarrassedHelp 16h ago

That way should be paired with "adult by default". So that No age data means adult.

mrob 1d ago

Zero-knowledge proofs are unworkable for age verification because they can't prevent use of somebody else's credentials.

a022311 1d ago

The same argument could be said for other age verification methods. Nothing stops a kid from getting their older cousin to verify their identity for something and it will never be possible to prevent this.

Aurornis 1d ago

The older cousin case doesn’t scale. True ZKP could be fully automated to dispense verification tokens from a website to every visitor. If the proofs are truly zero knowledge there is no way to discover who is giving millions of kids their ID.

When we hear about “zero knowledge” ID checks in real proposals they’re not actually zero knowledge altogether. They have built in limits or authorities to prevent these obvious attacks, like requiring them to interact with government servers and then pinky promising that those government servers won’t log your requests.

mrob 1d ago

The people proposing these laws presumably think imperfect enforcement is better than no enforcement at all. In the non-zero-knowledge case, it's possible to revoke falsely shared credentials.

Aurornis 1d ago

> In the non-zero-knowledge case, it's possible to revoke falsely shared credentials.

In a true zero-knowledge system sharing falsely shared credentials becomes easy because it’s untraceable. If the proof has no knowledge attached, you can’t conclude who used their credentials on a website that generates proof-of-age tokens on demand for visitors.

mrob 1d ago

Yes, that's exactly why it can't work.

gzread 1d ago

The one where the root user can enable parental controls requires the kid to know their parent's password or save up to buy their own device.

iamnothere 1d ago

Oh no, a $20 Walmart phone, how will they ever afford it.

(Note, this is why they won’t stop at the CA bill.)

johnnyanmac 1d ago

That's why this whole thing is stupid. The smokescreen of "protect the children", and meanwhile a child will just use find another device. Maybe an older one.

Its billions of lobbying for state surveillance under a smokescreen you bypass with basic human interaction.

EmbarrassedHelp 1d ago

Zero-knowledge proofs are only anonymous in theory if you ignore the issue of requiring a third party, and the issue of implementations.

And according to the EU Identity Wallet's documentation, the EU's planned system requires highly invasive age verification to obtain 30 single use, easily trackable tokens that expire after 3 months. It also bans jailbreaking/rooting your device, and requires GooglePlay Services/IOS equivalent be installed to "prevent tampering". You have to blindly trust that the tokens will not be tracked, which is a total no-go for privacy.

These massive privacy issues have all been raised on their Github, and the team behind the wallet have been ignoring them.

alecco 1d ago

You are missing the point. The real purpose is to control the Internet and free speech. They've been trying this for ages. Now the excuse is protecting children. Soon terrorism will be back. And don't forget aոtisеmіtism, too.

Not exactly a good moment for this particular caste of politicians/elites to pretend they care about children's well-being!

everdrive 1d ago

The internet we grew up with is nearly gone. For my part I've downloaded most of what I want and am trying to move more towards physical books. I think in the future, the internet could be a lot like cable TV. The value it brings is not worth the costs it imposes.

ori_b 1d ago

The way to go for this kind of thing is to not go for this kind of thing at all.

totetsu 1d ago

Seeming as this affect everyone .. Is there anything like and Open Collective .. grassroots consortium, to put together strong sensible zero-knowledge proof based policy examples that could be given to law-makers instead of this shadowy surveillance Trojan horse nonsense?

EmbarrassedHelp 16h ago

The real answer is that there is no solution to the problem other than what basically amounts to better parental controls.

keybored 1d ago

Two billion in lobbying. And the conclusion is that regulation is the problem?

Aurornis 1d ago

> Zero-knowledge proofs are the way to go for this type of thing,

The benefit of zero-knowledge proofs is that the hide information about the ID and who it belongs to.

That’s also a limitation for how useful they are as an ID check mechanism. At the extreme, it reduces to “this user has access to an ID of someone 18+”. If there is truly a zero-knowledge construction using cryptographic primitives then the obvious next step is for someone to create an ad-supported web site where you click a button and they generate a zero-knowledge token from their ID for you to use. Zero knowledge means it can’t be traced back to them. The entire system is defeated.

This always attracts the rebuttal of “there will always be abuse, so what?” but when abuse becomes 1-click and accessible to every child who can Google, it’s not a little bit of abuse. It’s just security theater.

So the real cryptographic ID implementations make compromises to try to prevent this abuse. You might be limited to 3 tokens at a time and you have to request them from a central government mechanism which can log requests for rate limiting purposes. That’s better but the zero-knowledge part is starting to be weakened and now your interactions with private services require an interaction with a government server.

It’s just not a simple problem that can be solved with cryptographic primitives while also achieving the actual ID goals of these laws.

attila-lendvai 1d ago

it's not about protecting children. that's only the PR.

once you get this you stop asking why the tech details are the way they are.

edgyquant 1d ago

Counterpoint: yes it is

officeplant 1d ago

Countercounterpoint: It's privacy destruction creep and it always has been.

gzread 1d ago

Countercountercounterpoint: did you actually read the California age "verification" law?

officeplant 1d ago

Countercountercountercounterpoint: Yes and like every other age verification scheme in the US the underlying idea is privacy erosion. With a side serving of censorship given most dev's can't be bothered to implement these age verification schemes into their software so users might just end up gated out of applications if their OS goes through with this nonsense.

Other states are even worse, creating another way to have your buddy buddy lobbyist folks fire up a new business opportunity to make money as a verification service.

gzread 1d ago

Type in the number 30 to disable gating

zoobab 1d ago

"how terrible EU regulation is"

Judges in other countries (Texas) found out this kind of law was a violation of the Free Speech.

Since when Free Speech do not apply to -16y old?

Made laws are made, then killed by courts later one.

jmyeet 1d ago

Not sure what the Gruber thing is about. I guess I lack context. But on ZKP, I will agree but add this:

The only authority that can be trusted to do age verification is the government.

You know, those people who give you birth certificates, passports, SSNs, driver's licenses, etc.

The idea that parental supervision here is sufficient has been shown to be wholly inadequate. I'm sorry but that train has sailed. Age verification is coming. It's just a question of who does it and what form it takes.

Take Youtube, for example. I think it should work like this:

1. If you're not of sufficient age, you simply don't see comments. At all;

2. Minors shouldn't see ads. At all;

3. Videos deemed to have age-restricted content should be visible;

4. If you're not logged in, you're treated as an age-restricted user; and

5. Viewing via a VPN means you need age verification regardless of your country of origin.

It's not perfect. It doesn't have to be.

troyvit 1d ago

The original post was removed from reddit but it links to this GitHub repo that has most of the same information, but in a different format:

https://github.com/upper-up/meta-lobbying-and-other-findings

alpaca128 1d ago

Luckily it was archived: https://web.archive.org/web/20260313125244/https://old.reddi...

narrator 1d ago

Also on the wayback machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20260313090844/https://www.reddi...

tomhow 1d ago

Ok thanks, we've repointed the URL to the GitHub page.

simonebrunozzi 1d ago

Not surprisingly, Meta is possibly the worst "offender" behind funding of these campaigns.

heavyset_go 1d ago

AI companies are also donating tens of millions to these PACs and others that are promoting age verification laws, it lets them sell AI content rating systems using their models.

tencentshill 1d ago

Which is strange, because it is widely known a large amount of their advertising revenue comes from fake accounts.

cryptoegorophy 1d ago

This doesn’t make sense, how do these fake accounts bring revenue ? I thought the end goal is to improve conversion rate by removing the “bots” and this would therefore lead to higher ad spend and more money to Facebook direct

Ritewut 1d ago

I work in marketing and not nearly as much effort as you think goes into removing bots. They go after the lowest hanging fruit, the most obvious bots like scrapers and crawlers but most bots impersonating real people easily make it through. Traffic is traffic.

snovv_crash 1d ago

The advertisers still pay, they just don't get conversions.

pessimizer 23h ago

They're a government contractor specializing in identity and a monopoly who loves not being regulated. They're really a straw donor - this is the government donating money to lobby itself. All of this is money leaving the government proper and being put through barely two degrees of indirection to be sent both to politicians whose job is to direct the government, and to the media to misdirect the public.

This (an end to general purpose computing) isn't anything that people can prevent through civil channels. It will happen with or without public approval. You will have as much control over it as you had over the decision to go to war with Iran. It will never be on any ballot. People who help will get rich, people who don't, won't. Eventually, people who help will barely be middle class, and people who don't, won't. Their kids will own your kids.

lotsofpulp 1d ago

I’m curious why Meta would benefit. Meta seems wholly unnecessary, the verification can be done at the OS level, completely in the hands of Apple/Alphabet and maybe Microsoft.

If anything, Meta’s utility would seem to shrink if the OS handles proof of being a real person.

c0balt 1d ago

Regulatory capture through a higher barrier to entry. Any social media platform that wants to compete with Meta's portfolio will now also need to have an age-verification system in place (which is guaranteed to introduce higher costs). Meta can likely afford to eat the costs here as a tradeoff for the higher impact on smaller players.

It also gives them more information on users as a bonus. Further, verification with a real ID is also a quite effective barrier against excessive bots.

lotsofpulp 1d ago

I would think the barrier to entry gets lower because Apple/Alphabet handle age verification, and they let apps/websites use that verification.

heavyset_go 1d ago

Look beyond the CA law, states have already passed laws that put the liability on app and website developers to ensure users aren't kids, there's no passing the buck to Apple or Google.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/12/congresss-crusade-age-...

willis936 1d ago

Meta's entire business model lives on ad deals that are not on the frontend. They are in the data business and this campaign is to get access to more data without an option to opt out. Who takes the data doesn't really matter.

pjc50 1d ago

Meta get to impose verified ID on everyone and link it to their advertisers, AND kill competing networks.

negroesrnegro 1d ago

because upstart competitors cant afford the verification process / lobbying efforts next instagram wont be bought out, it cant even begin to exist

wil421 1d ago

Liability and they probably want whatever blob of bits they use to identify you from the OS.

xbar 1d ago

1. It deflects any obligation that would have landed on Meta itself to do age verification (which is what the regulators have long asked for). 2. It gives Instagram/Facebook/Messenger the ability to deliver the right ads to the right audience. It's free targeting data.

BLACKCRAB 1d ago

[dead]

glass1122 1d ago

[dead]

aesoh 1d ago

[flagged]

Calvin02 1d ago

Wasn't it Apple that was trying to get Meta to implement age verification in the first place? So, Meta is trying to get them to do it, which seems right.

Why does Apple always get a free pass?

Cococloco 14h ago

Doesn't apple already check your age when you make an Apple account? using credit card information (before you use any app) It already feels enough to me.