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Meta Platforms: Lobbying, dark money, and the App Store Accountability Act

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Re: Meta Platforms: Lobbying, dark money, and the App Store Accountability Act

#321

Post by gzread »

kbelder wrote: post #263
gzread wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Re: Meta Platforms: Lobbying, dark money, and the App Store Accountability Act

#322

Post by lapcat »

bondarchuk wrote: post #291
qoez wrote: post #287

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

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...

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.

Re: Meta Platforms: Lobbying, dark money, and the App Store Accountability Act

#323

Post by mentalgear »

Fiveplus wrote: post #302

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…

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.

Re: Meta Platforms: Lobbying, dark money, and the App Store Accountability Act

#324

Post by fluffybucktsnek »

dyauspitr wrote: post #215
throw8fasdffdf wrote: post #198

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 + verificat…

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?

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".

Re: Meta Platforms: Lobbying, dark money, and the App Store Accountability Act

#325

Post by mentalgear »

bryan0 wrote: post #304

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, Appl…

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".

Re: Meta Platforms: Lobbying, dark money, and the App Store Accountability Act

#326

Post by pessimizer »

brewcejener wrote: post #258
mystraline wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

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.

Re: Meta Platforms: Lobbying, dark money, and the App Store Accountability Act

#327

Post by jayers »

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.

Re: Meta Platforms: Lobbying, dark money, and the App Store Accountability Act

#328

Post by triceratops »

gzread wrote: post #318
triceratops wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

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.

Re: Meta Platforms: Lobbying, dark money, and the App Store Accountability Act

#329

Post by jaggederest »

christoph wrote: post #320
qoez wrote: post #287

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

"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…

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.

Re: Meta Platforms: Lobbying, dark money, and the App Store Accountability Act

#330

Post by mlyle »

mentalgear wrote: post #323
Fiveplus wrote: post #302

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…

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.

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.

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