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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

#351

Post by Terr_ »

mindslight wrote: post #153
heavyset_go wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 a…

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…

> 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.

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

#353

Post by bee_rider »

pear01 wrote: post #348
bee_rider wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

The joke is that we’re already paying for representatives, they just don’t seem to be very loyal to their employers.

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

#354

Post by Aunche »

qoez wrote: post #287

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

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.

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

#355

Post by dormento »

Muromec wrote: post #226
inetknght wrote: post #163

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…

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

> It is also cheaper than ai rocket and more precise too

Never stopped people overengineering :P

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

#356

Post by pessimizer »

anymouse123456 wrote: post #25

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.

> 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.

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

#357

Post by pear01 »

edgyquant wrote: post #336
lapcat wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

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.

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

#358

Post by johnnyanmac »

pessimizer wrote: post #346
khat wrote: post #281

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…

> 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 t…

>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.

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

#359

Post by BeetleB »

PeterisP wrote: post #123
someguyiguess wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 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 bes…

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.

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

#360

Post by tomhow »

troyvit wrote: post #241

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

Ok thanks, we've repointed the URL to the GitHub page.
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