[HN Gopher] Meta Platforms: Lobbying, dark money, and the App St...
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Meta Platforms: Lobbying, dark money, and the App Store
Accountability Act
Author : shaicoleman
Score : 1126 points
Date : 2026-03-13 10:15 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| jwr wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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
| croes wrote:
| You could make the same case for parental control as evil.
|
| "You're reading about evolution! Not in my house"
| cosmos0072 wrote:
| 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.
| croes wrote:
| 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.
| applfanboysbgon wrote:
| 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.
| croes wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| gzread wrote:
| Is California doing this?
| applfanboysbgon wrote:
| 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.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| There are no laws preventing children from seeing R-rated
| movies with or without their parents, theaters implement
| that policy by choice.
| croes wrote:
| Welcome to the world where many countries aren't the US
| heavyset_go wrote:
| The OP is about legislation and companies in the US
| croes wrote:
| 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?
| jfengel wrote:
| 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.
| edgyquant wrote:
| 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.
| tasuki wrote:
| > 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?
| Markoff wrote:
| ignore parent, outsource parenting to gov verification
| authority
|
| TBH many parents done exactly that by giving phones/tablet
| already to kids in strollers
| graemep wrote:
| The latter is true, but we cannot regulate the vast
| majority of parents on the basis of the worst.
| pjc50 wrote:
| 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)
| _heimdall wrote:
| 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.
| edgyquant wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| gzread wrote:
| The point of having a state at all is to create a
| framework where people are set up to succeed.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Entering your child's age when you create their user
| account is a loss of privacy?
| PeterisP wrote:
| The current bills (e.g. NY one at https://www.nysenate.go
| v/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 wrote:
| We are also talking about the Illinois one, which doesn't
| do that
| _heimdall wrote:
| 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.
| antonvs wrote:
| > 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.
| graemep wrote:
| 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.
| edgyquant wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| himata4113 wrote:
| 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.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| >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.
| himata4113 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Definitely the latter, exploiting kids (roblox) is very
| very profitable.
| necovek wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| When one teen figures out how to get alcohol without ID,
| 80% of them will.
| fsflover wrote:
| 100% law enforcement is harmful:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47352848
| gzread wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Psst I was talking about zero knowledge proofs. Read
| twice before talking.
| gzread wrote:
| Can't see where you said that. You definitely commented
| about parental controls.
| fn-mote wrote:
| > 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.
| edgyquant wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| troyvit wrote:
| > 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.
| fivetomidnight wrote:
| 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.
| himata4113 wrote:
| 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.
| ryandrake wrote:
| 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.
| mijoharas wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Seems simple until you try to figure out what's allowed
| for what age, which surely will differ by country at a
| minimum.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _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#Seco
| nd-...
| verisimi wrote:
| > There's always another option: don't implement age
| verification laws at all.
|
| Where do you go to vote for this option?
| ndriscoll wrote:
| > 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.
| MSFT_Edging wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| >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 wrote:
| 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.
| gzread wrote:
| However there are also parts of the internet that are
| clear cut, like porn.
| MSFT_Edging wrote:
| 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?
| inetknght wrote:
| > _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 wrote:
| 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.
| Ray20 wrote:
| > Why not?
|
| This implies the creation of an infrastructure for the
| total surveillance of citizens, unlike age verification
| by physical businesses.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| >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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| No, in the CA law OS controls are part and parcel with
| app and website developer liability.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| pc86 wrote:
| Do you know what the word "infrastructure" means?
| gzread wrote:
| Do you know what "total surveillance" means? It doesn't
| mean a checkbox for over 18
| pc86 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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".
| vaylian wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| That technical infrastructure: a drop-down menu on the
| user's account settings
| Magnusmaster wrote:
| 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.
| scythe wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| What if all the useful apps refuse to run on the
| childproof operating system?
| anthk wrote:
| Then ditch propietary software completely and join free
| as freedom OSes.
| scythe wrote:
| I think the market is pretty good at situations like
| that.
| MonkeyClub wrote:
| > 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?
| ndriscoll wrote:
| 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.
| jerf wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| >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.
| Bender wrote:
| _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._
|
| 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
| andrepd wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Luckily some of these laws, which we're rallying against,
| make it illegal to pervasively surveil.
| ori_b wrote:
| I must have missed that. Which of them prevent pervasive
| data collection on all ages?
| heavyset_go wrote:
| 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/2024/0
| 5/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/High
| lights_...
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >Disagree all you want, but don't twist the premise.
|
| The 2 billion dollars are the one twisting it.
| mindslight wrote:
| 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_ wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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.
| rectang wrote:
| 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.
| teekert wrote:
| "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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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!
| lynx97 wrote:
| 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.
| Pxtl wrote:
| > 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".
| soulofmischief wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| 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.
| tokai wrote:
| That has already been going on for decades, with satanic
| panic and banning of library books.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| 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.
| module1973 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| >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.
| axegon_ wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| axegon_ wrote:
| 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.
| lionkor wrote:
| > 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_ wrote:
| > someone from and living in eastern Europe
|
| Reasoning: experience.
| lionkor wrote:
| 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_ wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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_ wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| edgyquant wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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_ wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| A country with hypersonic missiles and the largest
| stockpile of nuclear weapons on the planet is only a
| threat inside its immediate proximity?
| pjc50 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| See here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Ge
| opolitics#In_...
| lionkor wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Fair enough. He _endorses_ , he didn't _say_. I can buy
| that.
| tokai wrote:
| 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_Unit
| y_of_Ru...
| officeplant wrote:
| >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 wrote:
| Only because of Russian money and influence that helped
| this administration to power.
|
| The root of the problem is Russia, always has been.
| Ray20 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| tinfoilhatter wrote:
| You fail to mention big Israel money, when 98% of US
| congress members are taking donations from AIPAC. Strange
| omission on your part.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| 100% of AIPAC money is from Americans.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Sure. Maybe in 2040 we'll know the real truth.
| gzread wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| DharmaPolice wrote:
| 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_ wrote:
| 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.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > 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.
| mrob wrote:
| Zero-knowledge proofs are unworkable for age verification
| because they can't prevent use of somebody else's credentials.
| a022311 wrote:
| 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.
| mrob wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| Yes, that's exactly why it can't work.
| gzread wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Oh no, a $20 Walmart phone, how will they ever afford it.
|
| (Note, this is why they won't stop at the CA bill.)
| Aurornis wrote:
| 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.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| 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.
| choo-t wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| >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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| >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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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.
| gzread wrote:
| 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".
| miyoji wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| >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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| >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.
| attila-lendvai wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Counterpoint: yes it is
| officeplant wrote:
| Countercounterpoint: It's privacy destruction creep and it
| always has been.
| gzread wrote:
| Countercountercounterpoint: did you actually read the
| California age "verification" law?
| officeplant wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Type in the number 30 to disable gating
| keybored wrote:
| Two billion in lobbying. And the conclusion is that regulation
| is the problem?
| gzread wrote:
| 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.
| totetsu wrote:
| 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?
| jmyeet wrote:
| 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.
| ori_b wrote:
| The way to go for this kind of thing is to not go for this kind
| of thing at all.
| zoobab wrote:
| "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.
| alecco wrote:
| 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 aotisemitism, too.
|
| Not exactly a good moment for this particular caste of
| politicians/elites to pretend they care about children's well-
| being!
| everdrive wrote:
| 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.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > 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.
| EmbarrassedHelp wrote:
| 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.
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| Not surprisingly, Meta is possibly the worst "offender" behind
| funding of these campaigns.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| 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.
| wil421 wrote:
| Liability and they probably want whatever blob of bits they
| use to identify you from the OS.
| negroesrnegro wrote:
| because upstart competitors cant afford the verification
| process / lobbying efforts next instagram wont be bought out,
| it cant even begin to exist
| pjc50 wrote:
| Meta get to impose verified ID on everyone and link it to
| their advertisers, AND kill competing networks.
| c0balt wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| xbar wrote:
| 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.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Which is strange, because it is widely known a large amount of
| their advertising revenue comes from fake accounts.
| cryptoegorophy wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| The advertisers still pay, they just don't get conversions.
| pessimizer wrote:
| 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.
| Terr_ wrote:
| 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."
| turbinemonkey wrote:
| 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).
| bluescrn wrote:
| 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?)
| dv_dt wrote:
| 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
| malfist wrote:
| If you look at the people pushing these bills it's the anti-
| trans and anti-porn activists. Not the left.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| In Europe though? You have those?
| dingi wrote:
| This issue looks partisan from the outset, but both sides
| push the same thing. They just use partisan justifications.
| mrtesthah wrote:
| 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).
| dringe wrote:
| 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.
| turbinemonkey wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| When the government decides not to issue certificates to
| websites they don't like.
| turbinemonkey wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| It's not the government that is issuing the website
| certificates.
| deaux wrote:
| > 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.
| Magnusmaster wrote:
| 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.
| Chance-Device wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| ...Honestly this seems something very likely, more than the
| other suggestions.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I want age verification but not at the OS level.
| gzread wrote:
| What would a world with your preferred age verification
| system look like?
| triceratops wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| gosub100 wrote:
| 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.
| hackinthebochs wrote:
| 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.
| inetknght wrote:
| > _I want age verification_
|
| Why?
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Because it's absurd to allow children to simply click "I am
| 18." Nowhere else works like this.
| inetknght wrote:
| > _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 wrote:
| 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.
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| 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.
| mrtesthah wrote:
| 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.
| trymas wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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"
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| 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.
| close04 wrote:
| 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.
| anymouse123456 wrote:
| 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.
| user_7832 wrote:
| 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
| voidUpdate wrote:
| "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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| Most hospitals I know of, at least in the UK, still use
| windows, its why WannaCry was such a big deal here
| edgyquant wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| officeplant wrote:
| It still blows my mind that anyone trusts npm after this
| whole incident.
| user_7832 wrote:
| 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.
| edgyquant wrote:
| Someone would just submit a patch overriding this
| someguyiguess wrote:
| 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.
| mvdwoord wrote:
| Would be funny indeed... And also curious why nobody does
| that.
| shagie wrote:
| 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.
| gzread wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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."
| gzread wrote:
| Fine, a drop-down menu, not a checkbox. They're throwing
| a hissy fit over a drop-down menu with 4 items.
| troyvit wrote:
| 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?
| Aunche wrote:
| 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.
| kbelder wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| PeterisP wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| The FSF stopped requiring copyright assignment in 2021.
| bregma wrote:
| 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.
| ivanjermakov wrote:
| > 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.
| anymouse123456 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Microsoft would love that.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > 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.
| b112 wrote:
| 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.
| d--b wrote:
| The guy posted a Ask HN there:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47361235
|
| https://github.com/upper-up/meta-lobbying-and-other-findings...
| thiago_fm wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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.
| bix6 wrote:
| 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?
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| 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.
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| 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.
| bix6 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| The problem is hat there are too many citizens per
| Representative. They barely know your community.
| busterarm wrote:
| Every election boils down to Kang vs Kodos.
| bogwog wrote:
| Do your homework, vote, and help inform other people so they
| vote too.
| bix6 wrote:
| O yeah that worked so well in this last election.
| iamnothere wrote:
| 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.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| That's what Washington and Brussels are about: lobbying
| capitals and buying influence over how laws are made.
| iamnothere wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| I believe CFAA talks about exceeding authorization, not just
| typing in things that are not true.
| iamnothere wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| But are you bypassing a security measure if you provide
| false information, when true information would also have
| let you pass?
| iamnothere wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Did that link just get taken down?
| esseph wrote:
| No? I just hit it.
| iamnothere wrote:
| I can still access it, is it blocked for you?
| khimaros wrote:
| no
| CarVac wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| SawStop
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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.
| flowerthoughts wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| Your idea has been implemented as datapods:
| https://www.capitalnumbers.com/blog/data-pod-decentralized-d...
|
| It seems dead though...
| DavidPiper wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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...
| neya wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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."
| NoImmatureAdHom wrote:
| Where do I donate to oppose this bullshit?
|
| I want to open my wallet. It should be the top comment.
| casey2 wrote:
| 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.
| PeterisP wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| ExpertAdvisor01 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Because they're not really trying to protect kids.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Do you have a child? Because I think the device makers haven't
| really done a good job, there are just too many workarounds.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Tell me how a whitelist isn't going to work for you
| john_strinlai wrote:
| 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.
| julkali wrote:
| i felt that.
| zoobab wrote:
| 27 years against software patents in the EU, feeling the same
| unfortunately.
|
| But sometimes very few people can make a difference.
| npn wrote:
| Now it is only age verification. Next they will try to impose
| digital ID.
|
| That's when you know the new world has begun.
| inetknght wrote:
| 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.
| gruez wrote:
| >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.
| inetknght wrote:
| > _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 wrote:
| >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?
| a456463 wrote:
| I bet you are the same clown that also says that we don't
| need QA because there are no incidents in production
| vachina wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| >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 wrote:
| 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?
| sylos wrote:
| 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"
| Muromec wrote:
| 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
| nesky wrote:
| Cost kind of stops the government from sending goons right
| now, sure some governments do it but, it's costly at scale.
| justsid wrote:
| 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
| collingreen wrote:
| Drones aren't though. Plenty of ways to use the data
| above for evil deeds.
| c22 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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...
| brewcejener wrote:
| Reaper drones will be the more cost effective way to
| eradicate amalek.
| motbus3 wrote:
| There are cheap drones with guns now thought
| jpadkins wrote:
| The UK gov has shown to be incredibly efficient at
| arresting and imprisoning citizens for social media
| comments.
| dontwannahearit wrote:
| Please share evidence.
| QuantumFunnel wrote:
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/steveforbes/2025/09/09/peopl
| e-a...
| dboreham wrote:
| This is widely promoted but not true.
| vikingerik wrote:
| 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.
| Arubis wrote:
| Goons don't scale well. Wide-scale intimidation does.
| mystraline wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| A very bold claim I have heard repeatedly, backed up with
| zero evidence. Care to share any proof you have found?
| nurettin wrote:
| It is called swatting.
| pstuart wrote:
| https://archive.is/nwxkh
|
| That was from a quick search, no doubt there's more. Now
| it gets down to trust issues on reporting.
| pessimizer wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| GOPs and Democrats are the same on environmental,
| science, and public health policy completely, huh? You
| sure you wanna both sides it that hard?
| mystraline wrote:
| 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.
| gzread wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Goons are bad publicity. Doing your dirty stuff as hidden
| from view as possible is best option
| marcosdumay wrote:
| The goons are. Almost no government can create goons that are
| submissive enough to comply with any kind of crazy order.
| XajniN wrote:
| Are you living under a rock?
| marcosdumay wrote:
| I dunno? Are you referring to the USA? Did your military
| take over the Democrat-run states when Trump sent them
| there last year?
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| The government already does that. The only challenge is
| scale.
| motbus3 wrote:
| Stop justifying more horrible stuff with "there is already
| some horrible stuff"
| rapind wrote:
| Wasn't ICE pretty much doing exactly that with no oversight
| or accountability?
| pessimizer wrote:
| 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._
| rdn wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > It is also cheaper than ai rocket and more precise too
|
| Never stopped people overengineering :P
| QuantumFunnel wrote:
| Who needs rockets when you have autonomous mini drones
| Muromec wrote:
| But you don't have autonomous mini drones, only the leader
| of the free world does.
| gzread wrote:
| The application has access to your entire home folder, isn't
| that enough information?
| randusername wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| prox wrote:
| "This isn't freedom, this is fear"
|
| Cpt America in the Winter Soldier
| shevy-java wrote:
| Indeed. They hate us for our freedoms.
| sporadicallyjoe wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Best they can do is only arrest maxwell.
| retrocog wrote:
| 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)
| throw8fasdffdf wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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".
| SilverElfin wrote:
| The post looks to be deleted. Anyone know a way to view the
| original content?
| fredgrott wrote:
| 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...
| RankingMember wrote:
| Removed! Anyone got a copy of the original text?
| nomilk wrote:
| Also curious why it would be removed.
| busterarm wrote:
| It (for the second time) was automatically removed via mass
| reporting by reddit accounts.
| poizan42 wrote:
| See https://reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1rshc1f/i_traced_2_bi
| lli...
|
| AutoModerator on /r/linux is set up to automatically remove
| posts after a set amount of reports.
| alex1138 wrote:
| Gee that can't be abused at all
|
| Fuck Reddit
| SilverElfin wrote:
| Mass reporting, likely coordinated. This person had a
| previous submission on this topic that was also attacked this
| way.
| troyvit wrote:
| They linked to this GitHub project: https://github.com/upper-
| up/meta-lobbying-and-other-findings
| vaylian wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20260313125244/https://old.reddi...
| koshergweilo wrote:
| > 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
| troyvit wrote:
| 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
| narrator wrote:
| Also on the wayback machine:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20260313090844/https://www.reddi...
| alpaca128 wrote:
| Luckily it was archived:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20260313125244/https://old.reddi...
| tomhow wrote:
| Ok thanks, we've repointed the URL to the GitHub page.
| istillcantcode wrote:
| 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.
| triceratops wrote:
| 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?
| jpadkins wrote:
| that goes against the goals of the professional media
| organizations.
| triceratops wrote:
| 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.
| narrator wrote:
| The wayback machine got it:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20260313090844/https://www.reddi...
| slacka wrote:
| It was removed. Here is the archived version:
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20260313125244/https://old.reddi...
| bboozzoo wrote:
| I wonder what made them do it. The conspiracy theorists are
| really going to enjoy this.
| Aunche wrote:
| 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.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| 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
| khat wrote:
| 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"
| pessimizer wrote:
| > 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.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| >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 wrote:
| >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.
| jancsika wrote:
| Give your interlocutor an explicit alternative to consumer
| activism!
|
| Just because you're a pessimist doesn't mean you have to be
| coy. :)
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| > 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.
| nico wrote:
| > 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
| TiredOfLife wrote:
| > The president and half the country called him a traitor.
|
| Turns out they were right
| qoez wrote:
| Only 26 million is way way lower than I expected, especially
| given how much these companies make in profit
| bondarchuk wrote:
| 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...
| yunohn wrote:
| 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.
| lapcat wrote:
| 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.
| edgyquant wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| bee_rider wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| The joke is that we're already paying for
| representatives, they just don't seem to be very loyal to
| their employers.
| pear01 wrote:
| 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.
| christoph wrote:
| "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 wrote:
| 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.
| Aunche wrote:
| 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.
| Fiveplus wrote:
| 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.
| john_strinlai wrote:
| > _Gotta give it to Zuck._
|
| if "it" is the middle finger, for sure. "terrifying" is a great
| choice of word for it.
| bigyabai wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Why would they resist surveillance? They're making massive
| profits from it.
| dfedbeef wrote:
| Idk the low road is generally the easier one.
| mentalgear wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| This isn't about the average voter-- this is about an
| entrenched industry creating structural barriers to entry
| to protect growing monopoly power.
| radicalbyte wrote:
| 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.
| d--b wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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.
| bryan0 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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".
| kevincloudsec wrote:
| the post getting mass-reported off reddit twice is the best
| evidence that the research is accurate lol
| Calvin02 wrote:
| 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?
| jayers wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| tim-tday wrote:
| 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.
| Cider9986 wrote:
| Here is an Archive: https://arctic-shift.photon-
| reddit.com/search?fun=ids&ids=t3...
| kmbfjr wrote:
| 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!
| Arubis wrote:
| 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.
| naxtsass wrote:
| 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.
| xbar wrote:
| 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."
| Aurornis wrote:
| 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:
|
| > 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)
|
| 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.
| 827a wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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.
| shevy-java wrote:
| 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.
| phba wrote:
| 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.
| siliconunit wrote:
| 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.
| herf wrote:
| 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.
| juris wrote:
| 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).
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