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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

#641

Post by SkyBelow »

hliyan wrote: post #538

Why can't we handle this the same way we handle knives, guns and chainsaws: require adults to secure the device before letting minors near them? All the devices need is the ability to create limited access profiles. A human adult performs age verification by only providing the minor with creditals to a limited profile. Trying to perform that verification so far away from the minor, after they have got to the last gat…

For some of these, we fully disallow company to child transactions or interactions. Wouldn't applying the same logic require the adult to fetch any internet content and give it to the child on a case by case basis?

In this case, it is the data from the website, not the electronic device itself, that is seen as the item being transacted and regulated by age gates, no? The attempts to actually regulate it do feed back into changes on the electronic device, but the real cause of concern (per the protect the kids argument, if that is the real reason is debatable) is a company providing data directly to a child that parents find objectionable. That transaction doesn't have a parent directly involved currently.

Controlling the device itself and saying free game if a parent has allowed them access is a bit like saying that if a parent has allowed a kid to get to the store, there should be no further restrictions on what they can buy, including any of the above three items.

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

#642

Post by sjogress »

kakacik wrote: post #597
sschueller wrote: post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Swiss eID is open source[1] and it's usage will be limited. Any type of age verification for online service would need go to a vote and would probably loose. "Eigenverantwortung", it is the parents job to look after the kids, not the state. [1] https://github.com/swiyu-admin-ch

You can't just push responsibility for the kids to the parents, where is the world going? This is madness. The next thing you are going to claim kids from young age shouldn't have fully unlocked smart phones, shouldn't install any app and so on. Where is the end of this? Are you telling me parents should spend more time with kids, heck even be their role models although it is much harder compared to just giving up on…

Raising a kid takes a village.

It is not like parents are the only influential figures in a kid's upbringing, they are not the only role models, they should not be the only ones paying attention and guiding kids to adulthood.

Parental control options as they stand are severely lacking. If you add the actively predatory enshittification efforts conducted by seemingly all larges tech companies, you are left either forbidding your kid from accessing anything (this does not work if the kid's friends have access) or allowing far more than you are comfortable with.

Lets take YouTube as an example. As it stands you have the options of YouTube (with both the most wonderful content available on one hand, and toxicity and brain rot shorts on the other) or YouTube Kids - an app with controls that do not work. How about allowing parents to whitelist content and/or creators instead of letting the algorithms run the show?

Spotify is another example. How about letting parents control whether the kid's account is plastered with videos, podcasts and AI slop?

How about your run of the mill browser, letting parents review and allow websites on a case-by-case basis? Maybe my kid is ready for news sites but not Reddit? Maybe 4chan and 8kun are better reserved for the more adventorous adults as opposed to impressionable kids?

I agree that age verification is a bad solution, but what the hell are parents supposed to reach for? It's not like Silicon Valley are stepping up with any real solutions or even propositions to these problems, it is left for - at best clueless - politicians to navigate the problem space.

Raising a kid takes a village.

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

#643

Post by xbar »

Aurornis wrote: post #635

I tried to read the research when it was posted on Reddit a few days ago, but it’s all AI slop. The person who uploaded it admitted that they just had Claude go out and explore their hypotheses, but they didn’t even spend the time trying to get the real documents into Claude. Claude identified documents it wanted but couldn’t access them, so it just proposed hypothetical connections. The research has a lot of these:…

Meta spent $2B to buy anti-privacy laws.

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

#644

Post by Mashimo »

ben_w wrote: post #613
Mashimo wrote: post #583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But how do you go from real name to age verification?

I think it's more that proof of identity from the union of {payment information, KYC} also includes both of age verification and name, not that name leads to age.

Are the payment providers sending the age to the gamling site?

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

#645

Post by latexr »

dotandgtfo wrote: post #595
latexr wrote: post #585

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The clearest example of lobbying (chat control) has repeatedly been struck down. So far. But they’ll keep lobbying and we’ll need to keep fighting. > What examples of this do you have in recent years (post 2016)? Digital Omnibus is another. https://noyb.eu/en/gdpr-omnibus-eu-simplification-far-remove... https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/eu-digit...

> We regularly see legislation that is being rammed and rushed through in spite of vocal opposition. This implies that regulation is codified. The clear pattern of EU digital regulation doomerism is generally pointing at shitty proposals which aren't approved and codified in law. Digital omnibus is another proposal. If "rammed and rushed laws" is legitimately a widespread issue, you should be able to find a good exam…

You’re replying to the wrong person. The point you’re quoting was made further upstream.

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

#646

Post by snackbroken »

Mashimo wrote: post #576
snackbroken wrote: post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there's no information provided beyond proof-of-age, what's stopping my friend's 18 year old brother from lending his ID to every 14 year old at school? IRL that's negated by the liquor store clerk looking at the kid who is obviously underage and seeing that his face doesn't match the borrowed card he just nervously presented.

> what's stopping my friend's 18 year old brother from lending his ID to every 14 year old at school? MitID is 2fa. You log in with username, then you have to open the app, enter password or scan biometric, then scan the QR code of the screen* and you are logged in. He would need to be next to you every time you log in. I think that is too high friction to make it feasible on large scale. * Assuming you open the webs…

> He would need to be next to you every time you log in.

Or you can just text him a screenshot of the QR code. You could probably even automate this.

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

#647

Post by PeterStuer »

intrasight wrote: post #624
kakacik wrote: post #597

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't just push responsibility for the kids to the parents, where is the world going? This is madness. The next thing you are going to claim kids from young age shouldn't have fully unlocked smart phones, shouldn't install any app and so on. Where is the end of this? Are you telling me parents should spend more time with kids, heck even be their role models although it is much harder compared to just giving up on…

I totally agree with that sentiment but we can and should both have good parents and safe devices.

Where has a few decades of "safety" culture catering to the greater moron really brought us?

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

#648

Post by yard2010 »

cwmoore wrote: post #578
SiempreViernes wrote: post #568

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dude, do you not know who's president in the US right now? Getting paid is easily the biggest* reason he ran!

Are you sure it was to get paid, not to avoid prosecution? It could be both among other reasons.

It doesn't matter as in this scale power ~= money ~= time so it's interchangeable, this prick can get paid in all of these commodities

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

#649

Post by throwaway173738 »

Eldt wrote: post #631
wek wrote: post #599

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm concerned about these laws and their implications for privacy, but as a parent, I'm not sure what you mean to say parents should parent. How? What should the parent do? How would you recommend a parent protect a 13 year old who spends their time in their room and out with their friends on their phones?

Monitor computer activity, don't give them a smart phone at 13

They get them from their friends at school. I can’t be with my son every waking moment of every day and it’s a ridiculous stance to tel me to do so. I’m also not the only parent I’ve met who wants to be able to limit my child’s access to garbage like social media and Youtube online.

What you’re proposing is similar to a “Google Free Village.” What we need is something that lets parents have some control by proxy without violating the privacy of the child or anyone else. I believe it’s possible to do so.

The Internet that we grew up on has been totally subsumed by scumbag marketing to the point that it’s unavoidable. It’s an addictive substance now. Stop pretending like the ways of the 90’s and 2000’s are still accessible.

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

#650

Post by TacticalCoder »

XzAeRosho wrote: post #507

I know most of this affects only the US, but I'm wondering where this will go in the EU if the Age Verification Tech goes ahead in America. There's been lots of efforts to increase surveillance disguised as protection for kids in the EU and UK. The Swiss implementation of eID may be hint that governments may/will take the responsibility to implement and maintain the tech, but the multiple intrusions and lobbying by P…

> ... but I'm wondering where this will go in the EU

There's more money spent in lobbyism in the EU than anywhere else in the world. Lobbyism and downright corruption: like Qatari bribing EU MEPs [1] and police finding 1 million EUR in bills hidden at a MEP's apartment (in this case a bribe to explain publicly that Qatar is a country oh-so-respectful of human rights).

The EU is way more corrupt than the US and in many EU countries there's little private sector compared to the US. In France for example more than 60% of the GDP is public spending and all the big companies are state or partially state-owned or owned by people very close to the state.

And as to american companies bribing EU politicians: it's nothing new. IBM and Microsoft for example are two names everybody in the business knows have been splurging money to buy influence and illegal kickbacks have always been flying. It's just the way things have always been operating. Today you can very likely add Google and Palantir etc. to the list but it's nothing new.

EU politicians are whores. And cheap whores at that: investigative journalists have shown, in the past, the little amount of money that was needed to buy their votes. Most of them go into politics to extract as much taxpayers money as they can for their own benefit. They of course love to get bribes.

Also to try to not get caught, EU politicians voted themselves special powers and it's very difficult for the regular police to enter official EU buildings. I know an police inspector who went and arrested a MEP for possession of child porn: it required a very long procedure, way longer than usual, and the request of special authorization allowing them to enter the EU parliament (or EU commission, don't remember which but I think it was MEP at the EP).

American companies bribing EU politicians should scare you indeed: it's been ongoing since forever.

> The Swiss implementation of eID may be hint that governments may/will take the responsibility

Switzerland is in Europe but it's not in the EU: it's not representative of the insane corruption present in the EU institutions.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eva_Kaili

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