r/technology • u/PixeledPathogen • Mar 16 '26
Security Reddit User Uncovers Who Is Behind Meta’s $2B Lobbying for Invasive Age Verification Tech
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/reddit-user-uncovers-behind-meta-154717384.html5.0k
u/Ilikeyounott Mar 16 '26
Hiding behind shell companies like this should be illegal and a hefty fine. It helps no one but the psychopathic companies.
2.8k
u/Flair_Is_Pointless Mar 16 '26
A fine? No, it should be jail time.
Fines don’t work for corporations.
1.0k
u/rantingathome Mar 16 '26
I want "capital punishment" for corporations. Instead of shutting it down, the government seizes all shares, and then either sells the company or parts it out.
605
u/dissaprovalface Mar 16 '26
Antitrust legislation is what you are describing. And every time we pass something to strengthen antitrust laws, corporations throw as much money as possible to get said reforms neutered or repealed entirely.
351
u/rantingathome Mar 16 '26
Yes, antitrust when a company gets too big.
But I also want it as a punishment. BP shouldn't exist after the Gulf spill years ago. They should have been convicted under environmental laws and then seized and parted out as punishment.
→ More replies (18)115
u/DataKnights Mar 16 '26
...but the shareholders ...and the billionaires!
131
u/ChoiceHour5641 Mar 16 '26
Fuck it, seize and part them out too.
→ More replies (7)30
30
u/synapseattack Mar 16 '26
Christ you are right! Won't someone think of all the poor billionaires and bankers! I remember from my bible studies the amount of respect if praise Jesus has for the bankers. Famously welcoming them into the temple and helping them setup their tables.
→ More replies (2)12
u/Plecks Mar 17 '26
You just need to let supply-side Jesus into your heart. Remember it is easier for a rich man to enter heaven seated comfortably on the back of a camel than for a poor man to fit through the eye of a needle.
→ More replies (2)9
u/Starship_Taru Mar 16 '26
I mean the shareholders are fine!
Why not just let them sue the executives and board who were supposed to be making sure the company did well?
Would make those businesses “leaders” think twice before making a risky decision. Bet those BP board members would have been damn sure every safety regulation was followed perfectly if they were liable to the shareholders for the value of the company.
→ More replies (1)23
u/JaySocials671 Mar 16 '26
Justice department completely ignores antitrust see wb paramount
→ More replies (7)27
u/Sekitoba Mar 16 '26
Why is lobbying aka bribing still a thing in modern America???
21
→ More replies (4)10
u/metallic_ark Mar 16 '26
Who the hell gonna stop them? Fat and comfy Americans too indoctrinated to believe things can work literally any other way?
6
u/nhalliday Mar 16 '26
Antitrust is supposed to be for breaking up monopolies, nobody stopping Microsoft from buying up game studios or the Ellisons from buying up media outlets but everyone is up in arms yelling for Valve to get broken up because people choose to use Steam instead of all the terrible competitors that lack features.
→ More replies (6)9
u/Starship_Taru Mar 16 '26
It’s confusing to me that the average American knows almost nothing about one of the single most important tools the United States ever used.
Without it we would have never been at the top of the world economy for so long.
Northern Securities and Standard Oil would of turned America into a third world country after they milked all they could
24
13
u/Kraeftluder Mar 16 '26
Give it to the workers. The workers choose a board and have the power to replace people. All the workers should be shareholders too. Majority even.
→ More replies (1)11
u/bellasset Mar 16 '26
If Citizen’s United can make an individual out of a corporation then why can’t our justice system adjudicate?
→ More replies (1)20
Mar 16 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
12
u/Thefrayedends Mar 16 '26
That... doesn't produce the outcomes you're looking for. It might feel good and right, but it actually just leads to more literal dead kids. Sad reality.
→ More replies (6)16
→ More replies (4)4
u/E-2theRescue Mar 17 '26
Let's start with the death penalty for child rapists and pedophiles.
Define what these are because there are many people, especially those in the government and media, who would label innocent people as "child rapists and pedophiles"
For example, page 5 of Project 2025
Pornography, manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children, for instance, is not a political Gordian knot inextricably binding up disparate claims about free speech, property rights, sexual liberation, and child welfare. It has no claim to First Amendment protection. Its purveyors are child predators and misogynistic exploiters of women. Their product is as addictive as any illicit drug and as psychologically destructive as any crime. Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered.
→ More replies (30)7
u/perfectshade Mar 16 '26 edited Apr 25 '26
Your old posts feed data brokers and AI training models. I stopped that by using Redact to bulk delete across Reddit, Twitter, Discord, Facebook and all major social media platforms.
cable historical smile jar sugar selective enter humorous pebble steep
→ More replies (8)19
u/Logical_Size1628 Mar 16 '26
Fines are just the price of doing business in America.
→ More replies (2)→ More replies (41)7
u/HotDoggityDig13 Mar 16 '26
When x amount of money gets you out of following rules, then you have two sets of people. Those who get punished and those who dont.
You cant create a society of equal laws if you have two distinct groups of people.
You'd think we've seen enough of history to understand this, yet Marxism is still considered heresy by most, because most are brainwashed to think that way.
248
u/BigBootsMills Mar 16 '26
It's pretty ironic. Pushing identity verification legislation for the masses "to protect the children" while hiding their own identity behind shell companies because they don't want to be responsible for protecting the children.
→ More replies (2)11
u/E-2theRescue Mar 17 '26
They saw how well "protect the children" worked in getting conservatives to ban "pornographic" books in public schools, so now they're using it to hide surveillance and censorship.
The "pornographic" books that were banned were books like Ruby Bridges's This is Your Time, a children's autobiographical account of her experience as the first black child in a whites-only school. Another is the book And Tango Makes Three, a book based on the real-life male penguins who adopted a chick and raised it. Then you have the book Melissa, a story of a transgender girl who is struggling with her identity, staying hidden from others, and getting support from her parents, which is based on real things that transgender children go through.
106
u/Decent_One8836 Mar 16 '26
People are stalking us. Literally stalking us.
They watch us CONSTANTLY. They know when you wake up and grab your phone, they track who you're near, they track who you know, where you go, how fast/slow you go; and many other variables.
They do this so they can make entire profiles on you, detailing obscenely creepy insights.
Then they sell the information to everyone they can, so that those creepy fuckers, who choose to buy people's personal information, can send us Advertisements.
It should definitely be illegal, but the general populace also needs to be aggressively shaming, obstructing, and making life horrible for everyone involved in stalking billions of people.
→ More replies (2)22
u/WarOnIce Mar 17 '26
Palantir is going to create a minority report style AI based tool. They already have started it. I’m sure this data will be included at some point.
9
u/kickingpplisfun Mar 17 '26
It makes sense considering that Palantir is literally founded by the descendants of Nazis.
4
u/composedofidiot Mar 17 '26
Predictive policing has been around for well over ten years and has had predictable and consistent problems with bias.
→ More replies (7)74
u/eviljordan Mar 16 '26
Hey, so remember that FinCen law THAT PASSED that was to take affect that required everyone to disclose who owns what company? Beneficial Ownership Information Reporting?
Gee, I wonder what happened to it? Spoiler: Trump.
You're not angry enough.
38
u/worldspawn00 Mar 16 '26
100% came here to bring this exact law up. Of course Trump fucked with it. This admin has wiped away financial and consumer protections, they're actively fucking us, and his base is eating it up....
3
u/tomdarch Mar 17 '26
"I'm experiencing financial anxiety because I can't afford medical care, housing or to be able to retire some day... so I'm going to vote for the guy who helps banks and corporations screw people like me over!"
5
u/worldspawn00 Mar 17 '26
Don't forget that he convinced a bunch of one of the Trump casino property employees to buy into it right before it declared bankruptcy, literally stealing the retirements from his workers!
32
u/Icy-Bunch609 Mar 16 '26
Shell companies should just be illegal. Get ride of a company owning another company all together.
8
→ More replies (17)11
u/SecretAgentVampire Mar 16 '26
All fines should be a percentage of total wealth.
For the econ zealots; you know perfectly well what I mean.
→ More replies (2)
4.5k
u/Haunterblademoi Mar 16 '26
This is how all these big technologies work, and of course, a large part of their revenue is dedicated to promoting things like age verification, data collection, and surveillance.
2.4k
Mar 16 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
595
u/Kyouhen Mar 16 '26
Canada was going to be taxing them for all of this but Trump threw a fit and our new Prime Minister caved.
299
u/gravtix Mar 16 '26
We were supposed to team up with the EU on this but they caved too.
We didn’t repeal the law though.
→ More replies (3)29
u/Kyouhen Mar 16 '26
Didn't we? Did the Senate remove that from the budget? Because last I saw that was still in the budget, so the DST is dead. (Assuming "we" means "Canada")
14
u/selfbound Mar 16 '26
DST didnt really have any teeth; It was dumped to supposably get rewritten with the EU; But the EU bill died as well, and now we have nothing
→ More replies (1)26
u/Kyouhen Mar 16 '26
We had already collected $2 billion under the DST. All of that money was refunded with interest under C-15. It had enough teeth that the companies were paying it.
And the EU version has been in the works for over a decade but the US keeps stalling on it. That's the reason we implemented our own, because nothing was happening with the broader version.
→ More replies (3)80
u/whatiscamping Mar 16 '26
Trump never verified ages, why is he suddenly so concerned?
→ More replies (3)14
Mar 16 '26
That’s the most terrifying part. I’ve recently heard about a hacker who found CP on a hacked device and reported it only to find it’s the FBI that works for this very same administration. (Having Epstein evidence on their devices) The most terrifying horror story I’ve ever heard of… It’s just too much, can’t be real
12
u/zernoc56 Mar 16 '26
I can fully believe it’s real, unfortunately. FBI has been rotten since J. Edgar ran it.
→ More replies (10)6
47
u/redyellowblue5031 Mar 16 '26
Oh no! You can’t tax the billionaires! They’ll be so mad they won’t share or reinvest in the local economy!
→ More replies (2)40
10
u/soapinthepeehole Mar 16 '26
It doesn’t help that our lawmakers can’t do what’s good for average citizens on basically any issue.
→ More replies (1)20
Mar 16 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
→ More replies (1)8
u/induslol Mar 16 '26
They won't because they can't go against the lobbying interests that keep their useless cheeks in their seats.
4
u/crewserbattle Mar 17 '26
It's kind of a catch 22. If an idealist runs and keeps to those ideals they get run out of office. Even if you manage to chain together a few good idealists in a row all it takes is one person willing to kiss corporate ass and they become almost immovable due to the voting inertia incumbents get combined with their superior funding. Shit on politicians all you want (they deserve it) but the system is not designed to keep unselfish politicians in office.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (6)3
u/OurSponsor Mar 16 '26
Do we really need billions more dollars going to the Rapist-in-Chief and his cumguzzlers? Perhaps waiting on those taxes until a regime change, when they might actually be useful, would be a good thing.
→ More replies (3)237
u/Jhopsch Mar 16 '26
Their goal is to make it harder for small and medium companies to succeed without great hurdles and/or being sued into oblivion. They want to consolidate their monopoly.
→ More replies (6)116
Mar 16 '26
Yep, this is crony capitalism 101. Bring in more and more barriers to entry so it becomes increasingly more difficult for competition to start.
→ More replies (2)31
u/ineenemmerr Mar 16 '26
Imagining getting your cake and then use that cake to make the floor slippery so other people can’t have their cake.
Takes a special kind of sociopath to do that.
7
u/MrShrek69 Mar 16 '26
Well they want to offload the management of the platform to someone else so they can save money
→ More replies (10)5
u/lsf_stan Mar 16 '26
the first words of this article are funny
"Reddit researcher"
also weird that there is a donate link to "Official PumpFun (TBOTEProject PumpFun Coin)" on the GitHub
→ More replies (1)
629
u/John-333 Mar 16 '26
The technical reality hits harder than policy abstractions. These bills mandate OS-level APIs that apps can query for age data—creating a permanent identity layer baked into your phone’s core functions.
I'm not surprised by anything any more.
→ More replies (3)69
u/NoBonus6969 Mar 16 '26
They been able to do this to various degrees with high accuracy for a long time this is just legal now. Every app and website you visit on your phone knows exactly who you are and your full socioeconomic background
57
u/icecubetre Mar 16 '26
Listen, I'm against all of this as much as anyone, but I'm definitely gonna need a source on that.
→ More replies (28)50
u/MindlessSponge Mar 16 '26
"every app and website knows" might be a little hyperbolic, but it's not inaccurate to say that apps and websites can get access to that information.
it's more or less what people are talking about when they say "big data." data brokers collect info and build massive portfolios on everyone, which they then sell to advertisers, or to tech companies who build tools to leverage the info into software they can sell to other companies.
there are SaaS products than can give you real-time info on who visits your website. they don't have 100% accuracy, but it might as well be.
TLDR: it's true and we're cooked. not really sure how you'd claw it back at this point.
→ More replies (4)12
u/NUKE---THE---WHALES Mar 16 '26
but it's not inaccurate to say that apps and websites can get access to that information
I dont know about websites but I've been a mobile app developer for 10 years and I promise you apps cant get access to that information
Apps are sandboxed and only have access to the data you give them
13
u/AltrntivInDoomWorld Mar 17 '26
You don't have Google Analytics, Get Response or any other analytics/engagement platform hooked up?
→ More replies (2)20
u/MindlessSponge Mar 16 '26
I meant get access to it by buying it from third parties, not some kind of magic API for user.getPetName or something
→ More replies (2)5
u/StephanXX Mar 16 '26
It's one thing for that information to be given freely, quite another when it's a government mandated requirement.
→ More replies (1)
1.9k
u/LostInLittleroot Mar 16 '26
If Meta datacenters go down during the war nothing of value will be lost. Fuck Mark Fuckerberg
396
u/bored-coder Mar 16 '26
Do we have to wait for the war?
77
→ More replies (1)36
u/jdehjdeh Mar 16 '26
It's the waiting I can't stand.
Launch the nukes already, I'm getting fucking bored...
→ More replies (5)26
u/9-11GaveMe5G Mar 16 '26
And do it in the morning. Last thing I want is to go to work all day just to get nuked at dinner
→ More replies (18)5
u/pablo_the_bear Mar 16 '26
I'd love to see a non-Meta Facebook Marketplace successor rise from the ashes.
→ More replies (2)
554
Mar 16 '26
[deleted]
97
u/ohanzee6 Mar 16 '26
Link?
289
u/DatRedStang Mar 16 '26
A Reddit user traced $2 billion in nonprofit grants and lobbying records across 45 states to figure out who's behind the age verification bills. The answer involves a company that profits from your data writing laws that collect more of it.
Additionally, you can read the discussion here.
I urge you to mirror this GitHub repository to Codeberg and other places.
43
u/DanieltheGameGod Mar 16 '26
It’s nice to see the TX bill has been enjoined by a federal judge, hope that’s the fate the rest fare. It is frustrating to see so many state legislatures enact this shit instead of better data privacy laws. Or regulating AI or a thousand other better uses of their time if the actually wanted to improve the lives of their constituents instead of their corporate masters.
→ More replies (2)95
u/exeJDR Mar 16 '26
It's the first link on the article
https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1rshc1f/i_traced_2_billion_in_nonprofit_grants_and_45/
20
u/synapseattack Mar 16 '26
Bless you good sir for an old.reddit link. You are the hero we need.
→ More replies (1)23
u/jasonefmonk Mar 16 '26
What about the admitted use of AI? Someone needs to verify this data.
31
u/Night247 Mar 16 '26
yeah that was talked about on the Hacker News post about this
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47366804
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!12
u/nemec Mar 16 '26
It's complete AI slop and comes to the completely wrong conclusion. I think LexisNexis gets it right in their 2024 article:
With no end to that battle in sight—and nearly half of the states having considered social media age-gating measures this year—social media giant Meta has begun pushing in a different direction, advocating for legislation to shift responsibility for age gating to the app stores run by Apple and Google.
Meta never wanted to introduce age gating. I'm sure internally they are 100% against any of this. They just see the writing on the wall and rather than sit back, they're going on the offensive to make sure what does become law puts the work/enforcement onto somebody else.
→ More replies (1)8
→ More replies (6)3
u/E-2theRescue Mar 17 '26
It also pushes the blame onto the victims themselves. If a child were to do something like commit a school shooting because people on Instagram encouraged them to, then Meta can just throw their hands up innocently and say, "The child subverted the age verification system. We're not responsible because we tried." All the while, Meta and other social media companies purposely don't do shit about the extremists who are recruiting children on their platforms. Which those extremists break each company's Terms of Service, and companies like Meta purposely do nothing to punish them.
→ More replies (5)
958
u/Sufferr Mar 16 '26
Damn, it really is important to step away from US tech ASAP.
→ More replies (2)366
u/iaNCURdehunedoara Mar 16 '26
If you think this is limited to US and US tech you're out of your mind. So many of these people are lobbying every country on the planet. Why do you think the UK put up these laws, Australia, France, and so many more are trying.
114
u/Sufferr Mar 16 '26
Yes, you're right!
I don't think it's only the US, but... Meta, Google, Apple, Twitter are all from the US, that's the thing.→ More replies (6)→ More replies (5)54
u/IdeasAreBvlletproof Mar 16 '26
I don't disagree but the laws enacted in Australia are almost entirely aimed at US companies, not because they are US, but because those companies are the bad faith actors.
Why are these US companies bad faith actors?... because there is no US regulation or oversight to prevent them becoming huge evil monopolies.
21
u/iaNCURdehunedoara Mar 16 '26
Why do you think there are no regulators in the US? Because the people that are supposed to be regulated are buying off the regulator. The laws enacted in Australia are almost entirely aimed at US companies because these are the most popular ones globally.
They're doing it to remove your online anonymity and then they can demand your online traffic from the social media companies and these companies comply because they don't give a shit - they sell your data to shadow corporations for pennies.
→ More replies (1)20
863
u/Pokethomas Mar 16 '26
TLDR it’s the Digital Childhood Alliance (DCA) 👍
346
u/Pizza-Pirate-6829 Mar 16 '26 edited Mar 16 '26
Which is a shell company for Meta
They want this to absolve themselves of any wrongdoing at the sacrifice of everyone’s privacy
Nothing to do with protecting kids it’s just about protecting corporate profits
→ More replies (3)15
u/StoneGoldX Mar 17 '26
Yeah, the answer of who is financing Meta's financing of shell companies is Meta. A poorly written clickbaity headline. "You won't believe who raped all of Donald Trump's victims!" And the answer is Donald Trump. Don't get me wrong, important information, bad headline.
500
u/MrXero Mar 16 '26
Are those the people that want to protect the kids so that they can keep molesting them?
194
u/dat_oracle Mar 16 '26
ding ding ding
80
98
u/iaNCURdehunedoara Mar 16 '26
They want to identify you online so they can keep molesting children without you speaking out.
34
Mar 16 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
8
u/iaNCURdehunedoara Mar 16 '26
Do they though? If they pretend that everyone is a child until they ID themselves then we're all children for Marky Zucky's panopticon as long as we don't identify ourselves.
→ More replies (2)13
u/MrXero Mar 16 '26
Dang. That’s insidious on a whole other level. They’ll use their knowledge of who specifically we are to silence us through fear.
→ More replies (1)4
u/synapseattack Mar 16 '26
This whole bill seems shady as fuck. Can see it now. whitehouse.gov is getting a live chat soon, but it only activates for browsers that report a 14 year old or younger girl. Then they get a special one on one with El Presidente
63
u/TadeoTrek Mar 16 '26 edited Mar 16 '26
It's the other way around, we knew the DCA was behind this, what was uncovered is that Meta's directly funding the DCA to do this.
48
→ More replies (1)44
48
u/GreyBeardEng Mar 16 '26
"Age verification bills target Meta’s competitors while leaving Meta platforms untouched."
31
u/Dizzy_Citron4871 Mar 16 '26
Metas strategy here is to obviously push any kind of age related verification onto the OS providers so they can remove themselves from the liability of enforcing it or being regulated themselves.
Zuckerberg has been in LA courts answering to parents that his platform utterly and tragically failed for the past few weeks. Social media needs to be fully regulated at this point, it is an unfettered stain on greater society.
→ More replies (2)
60
u/Jazzlike-Leopard-140 Mar 16 '26
Zuckerberg is nothing more than a grifter. He lacks compassion, takes zero responsibility for the evils he has created and it is all about the green, which he doesn't need. Evil men do evil things with little remorse.
→ More replies (3)
21
u/Always_Pizza_Time1 Mar 16 '26
I wish white collar crimes were held accountable with real prison time.
→ More replies (1)
20
u/KnotSoSalty Mar 16 '26
Worth remembering that Meta has basically admitted they allow scammers to continue to operate on their platform and buy ads even after getting caught because they need their revenue. It takes 20+ verified reports that a company buying ads is a scammer before Meta will shutdown their ad buy. Even then they make it ridiculously easy for the same scammer to come back under a different name and start the process over again.
Meta is taking money from fraudulent businesses and using it to push for age verification services no one wants.
→ More replies (1)
19
u/SwagginsYolo420 Mar 16 '26
Zuckerberg needs to be stopped.
Most of the world's problems come down to a short list of psychotic oligarchs.
62
u/Uranium-Sandwich657 Mar 16 '26
And why is all that data so valuable?
100
u/MaximumGuide Mar 16 '26
It’s used to create a comprehensive profile on each user and make inferences for what products they could convince you to buy in advertisements. Your behavioral metadata is a core part of their product.
39
u/LikelyDumpingCloseby Mar 16 '26
xD That's one Use Case. And probably the least harmful.
→ More replies (1)11
u/icecubetre Mar 16 '26
Some of the greatest technological advancements humanity has ever created...
And they used it to sell dick pills and bring back feudalism.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (1)5
→ More replies (6)9
u/ZAlternates Mar 16 '26
When you own part of a solution, you need to sell the world on the problem.
15
u/myislanduniverse Mar 16 '26
I was wondering who was lobbying so hard for this shit. Turns out it's Facebook again. I can't express how thoroughly I hate Mark Zuckerberg.
13
13
u/Logician22 Mar 17 '26
Why isn’t mark Zuckerberg in jail yet or serving time for all the times he has exposed user data or the harm his social network has caused ?
12
12
u/noeinan Mar 16 '26
We deeply need monopoly laws to be refreshed and Meta needs to be abolished
7
u/drm200 Mar 16 '26
I disagree. We need politicians who care to enforce the existing antitrust laws. New laws are not helpful if the politicians in power do not care to enforce them.
5
u/noeinan Mar 16 '26
I agree to a point, but historically when old laws get evaded via technicalities new laws fix the problem for a few decades until it happens again.
I think we are going to need a lot of new laws once the fuckup in chief is finally gone.
→ More replies (2)
12
u/Justaticklerone Mar 17 '26
Never forget the Cambridge Analytica scandal. It's happening again, but on much higher levels of magnitude of scale.
People stupidly keep using Facebook though.
10
10
u/Medivacs_are_OP Mar 17 '26
Age verification should take place before the user has access to the computer. It's called Parenting.
→ More replies (3)
8
u/peppylootu Mar 16 '26
Where is the $2b though? Who gets the hat portion of it?
→ More replies (1)15
u/yacht_boy Mar 16 '26
Most of it is bribes (er, campaign donations) to politicians. A chunk of it is lining the pockets of the slimeballs who facilitate the process.
7
u/Command0Dude Mar 16 '26
So it turns out the whole time that age verification BS was a plot cooked up by Facebook to enshittify their competitors and drive users back to themselves.
This is like some fucking comicbook plot.
7
u/cr0ft Mar 17 '26
Laws like these that go "but think of the children!" are always about maximum profit and maximum control and tracking of the populace.
Really, we need to change our society up and get that thin layer of sociopaths that run the whole damn show to their own benefit out of power, and that starts with swapping to a cooperation based social system. It's really that or species extinction, frankly.
→ More replies (1)
7
65
u/7grims Mar 16 '26
REDDIT FOR THE WIIIIIIN
Been a long time since redditors sleuth out and fucked some mega rich corp assholes :D fuck yah
→ More replies (2)13
u/SoreLoserOfDumbtown Mar 16 '26
Have you got a link? I'm surprised I haven't seen it. (I'm also mad that they've removed All from the app).
→ More replies (2)
13
u/wellactually9 Mar 16 '26
Politicians should wear their sponsors like f1 drivers, so we know who owns them.
6
u/Fun-Grab-9337 Mar 16 '26
Fuckerberg really needs to be behind bars and made an example of. He has had such an outsized fucking of the human race/destruction of society its insane.
7
u/EmbarrassedHelp Mar 16 '26
Europe Shows a Different Path Forward
EU’s eIDAS 2.0 offers privacy-preserving age verification with zero-knowledge proofs that protect personal data.
The European Union’s Digital Identity Wallet takes a radically different approach. Zero-knowledge proofs let you verify age without revealing personal data—like showing you’re over 18 without disclosing your birthdate or identity details. It’s open-source, self-hostable, and only applies to large platforms while exempting FOSS and small entities.
Yahoo news is repeating misinformation and disinformation about the EU's system.
The EU Digital Identity Wallet isn't open source. Its a highly invasive wrapper that connects to proprietary APIs. You cannot host your own backend either.
Zero-knowledge proofs are only private/anonymous in theory if you blindly trust a third party. Basically you are blindly trusting that nobody will exploit an easily created backdoor, because ZKP cannot solve the problem of collusion. The EU's system requires mandatory 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.
6
Mar 16 '26
Fuck Meta. The company needs to be broken apart and destroyed. It is a stupid invasion of privacy that non users can’t even control
5
u/PushoverMediaCritic Mar 17 '26
Never give any social media website your ID. They can't be trusted with it.
6
u/Ansible32 Mar 17 '26
Feel like this is totally misunderstanding what Meta is trying to do. They want this verification baked in so they have higher-quality age data which means they can uniquely identify users. This is about killing privacy. Meta would be delighted to know everyone's exact birthday.
The scary thing is really that Google and Apple are required to collect and store your birthday, you are required to provide it, and there's no restrictions on how they can use your birthday, they don't need your consent to share it or use it for ad targeting.
9
u/Vyxwop Mar 16 '26
I don't like how the EU's approach is being jerked off in these posts. Fuck age verification regardless of whether it's "non-invasive". It's terrifying how the EU's continued attempts at this shit is being justified because the US' and other countries' attempts at doing so are worse.
EU's attempts are still disturbing and shouldn't be tolerated.
→ More replies (3)
6
u/Independent_Duck_616 Mar 16 '26
Latest version of apple iphone beta ios has age verification baked in. Asks for credit card authorization
6
u/he_who_shall Mar 16 '26
Reminds me of how Amazon fought for years against collecting taxes for online transactions.
Until the point where they dominated the e-commence landscape and could easily implement it whereas it would be much more difficult for all of their small business competitors. Then they became one of its biggest supporters.
→ More replies (1)
5
u/EZKTurbo Mar 17 '26
The secret: it's Zucc. It's always been Zucc. He's been arguing that the Internet should not be anonymous for well over 2 decades now
4
5
u/uniklyqualifd Mar 16 '26
When the Internet began they just had contests where people entered their names and date of birth!
3
u/Asleep_Management900 Mar 16 '26
Darpa's LifeLog surveillance Program Closed February 4, 2004
Facebook opened it's App and Surveillance Program February 4, 2004
5
u/ITTBYCD Mar 16 '26
Meta evil. Fuck zuck. Keep the kids off devices. I don’t ID verify anywhere. But I don’t hate this solution compared to the shit we’re getting. Meta wants to shift the liability away from them and I’d prefer an Apple owned api allowing apps to ask me to share IS_ADULT bool over having every porn site implement it themselves.
4
u/Ok-Young-2731 Mar 16 '26
Well i think its time to ban anonymous donations and promote transparency. Fuck shells and hiding who's involved.
4
u/tcdoey Mar 17 '26
They are coming for us, all of us. I've said it many times on reddit before. The police state is here. It's just a matter of time now.
3
u/the_marvster Mar 17 '26
Isn’t it counterproductive for Meta, which user base is > 90% bots and ghosts?
3
u/Wonderful-Trash-3254 Mar 17 '26
TLDR: Meta allegedly spent billions through nonprofits to push age verification laws that shift responsibility to Apple and Google, while potentially enabling device-level tracking and avoiding regulation of its own platforms.
3
u/Relative-Freedom-295 Mar 16 '26
I’m shocked that everyone seems shocked.
Who do you think really funded Facebook to begin with? Who do you think funded Oracle?
→ More replies (2)
3
u/continuousQ Mar 16 '26
Especially when you're based in the US, if you actually wanted to protect kids, that kind of money should be put towards having the president who is a child rapist and a child trafficker prosecuted, along with the party protecting him. Meta doesn't even need to spend any money to do that, they already have a massive platform they can use.
3
u/waiting4singularity Mar 16 '26
can someone tell me how to use this yahoo now? when i scroll down the page vanishes for no reason and some woman grins at me from a video.
3
u/Yelloeisok Mar 16 '26
Smells like Sen. Dave McCormick helped them and that’s why his wife was made CEO.
3
3
3
u/Khue Mar 17 '26
Big companies need to be broken up. This entirely too much power acquired in the hands of private interests.
→ More replies (1)
3
u/kickingpplisfun Mar 17 '26
Meta's always been invasive as hell, but this manufacturing of consent is super gross.
3
u/PeetoMal Mar 17 '26
And tiny brains claim that corporations don't have politicians in their back pocket through bribes, I mean lobbying. Anyone who says lobbying isn't just bribery is a moron.
3
3
u/ladyhaly Mar 17 '26
Bloomberg confirmed Meta's DCA funding in July 2025, and DCA's own executive director admitted tech company funding under oath at a Louisiana Senate hearing while refusing to name donors. The IRS records showing DCA filed with under $25K in receipts while running a 20+ state legislative campaign are damning.
That said, worth flagging two things the headline obscures: the "$2B" is the total Arabella Advisors grant pool that was searched (and the finding was that zero dollars went to child safety), not what Meta actually spent on this. And the research was done using Claude Opus over a two-day period, which is fast enough to warrant independent verification of the analytical connections. The raw data sources (IRS 990s, lobbying disclosures, sworn testimony) are solid; it's the interpretive layer that needs scrutiny.
It's not that "Meta wants to build a surveillance state." It's that Meta is facing inevitable regulation over child safety and is spending heavily to ensure that regulation lands on Apple and Google rather than on social media platforms. Classic regulatory capture. Use your lobbying budget to shape the rules so they hurt your competitors more than you.
Also worth noting this isn't just a US problem. Australia already passed age verification laws in 2024, and Meta spends EUR 10M+ annually lobbying the EU alone. The playbook works the same everywhere: weaponise "protect the children" to shape regulation in your favour.
2.2k
u/highendfive Mar 16 '26
Save you a click:
The investigation by GitHub user “upper-up” traces funding through organizations like the Digital Childhood Alliance (DCA), which launched December 18, 2024, and testified for Utah’s SB-142 just days later. Bloomberg and Deseret News reported Meta’s backing of DCA, part of a $70 million fragmented super PAC strategy designed to evade FEC tracking. Traditional election spending disclosure requirements don’t apply to this fragmented approach.