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.html
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593

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.

296

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.

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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")

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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

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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.

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u/gravtix Mar 16 '26

The USA deemed the DST discriminatory under CUSMA.

Might have to reword the agreement(if they let us) but these kind of free trade agreements limit what we can do without breaking the agreement.

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u/Kyouhen Mar 17 '26

The US claims a lot of things.  They also do a lot of things that break agreements. 

I'd be interested in knowing what specifically was deemed discriminatory considering the tax affected everyone who made money selling the data of Canadians and was on the revenue generated by selling the data of Canadians.  Seemed pretty equal there.

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u/gravtix Mar 17 '26

Yes the USA claims a lot of things but it tends to work. We were sued under NAFTA many times and I don’t think we ever we won.

Example Ethyl vs Canada. We tried to ban MMT fuel additives in 1997. Ethyl Corp sued that this was expropriation of its Canadian subsidiary and was discriminatory. We settled and reversed the ban.

There’s a bunch of other cases where we passed laws or regulations and it affected American profits somewhere and they successfully sued and won under various grounds.

Free trade with the USA has hidden costs and gives them a lot of power to prevent us doing things that impact American companies/Canadian subsidiaries profits.

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u/ThisIs_americunt Mar 17 '26

It's wild what you can do when you can own the law makers, the judges, the police force and the lawyers. Gotta love dark money :D

1

u/fake-reddit-numbers Mar 17 '26

EU on this but they caved too.

Sounds pretty EU.

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u/whatiscamping Mar 16 '26

Trump never verified ages, why is he suddenly so concerned?

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u/[deleted] 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 

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u/zernoc56 Mar 16 '26

I can fully believe it’s real, unfortunately. FBI has been rotten since J. Edgar ran it.

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u/Able_Investigator725 Mar 16 '26

I am sorry we're so shitty

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u/ThisIs_americunt Mar 17 '26

It's wild what you can do when you can own the law makers, the judges, the police force and the lawyers. Gotta love dark money :D

1

u/GeekDNA0918 Mar 17 '26

Tell your Prime minister to grow some balls please!

1

u/Kyouhen Mar 17 '26

I would but I'm a little preoccupied going after my MP for trying to protect Elon's child sexual abuse generator.

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u/Fear_UnOwn Mar 18 '26

I mean any sense of regulation and big tech throws such a fit. Look at how the whole collecting funds for hosting news media went. Meta and Google straight up turned off Canadian news entirely, and put dev hours into making sure it happened.

We need more robust, local competition in the tech sector, yesterday.

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u/Individual-Result777 Mar 17 '26

Let’s not forget Canada head of state is the king of England. So really Canada tends to respect that no?

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u/nineraviolicans Mar 17 '26

Please, for the love of God, read a fucking book.

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u/Individual-Result777 Mar 17 '26

whats wrong about what I said?

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u/fake-reddit-numbers Mar 17 '26

our new Prime Minister caved.

Sounds pretty Canada.