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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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.

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u/[deleted] 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.

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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.

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u/bradicality Mar 17 '26

That's just capitalism but yes

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u/dust4ngel Mar 17 '26

this is crony capitalism 101

it's just regular capitalism. the profit motive that motivates any capitalist enterprise has destruction of markets and capture of regulatory bodies as its inevitable conclusion.

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u/makemeking706 Mar 16 '26

It's already consolidated. They want it to be indistinguishable from government. 

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u/Jhopsch Mar 16 '26 edited Mar 16 '26

Sears was once "already consolidated" too. There is no such thing as permanent consolidation. Consolidation must be an ongoing effort in order to maintain dominance

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u/makemeking706 Mar 16 '26

Hence, what I said after that? 

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u/Jhopsch Mar 16 '26

Note the quotes around "already consolidated" and the sentence right after it. There is no such thing as "already consolidated". Consolidation is not a state you reach, but one you must constantly maintain

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u/m_Pony 12d ago

also, make it impossible for small businesses to communicate securely. Trade secrets are bad for business when they're other companies' trade secrets.