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Age Verification Lobbying: Dark Money, Model Legislation, Institutional Capture

tboteproject.com

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Re: Age Verification Lobbying: Dark Money, Model Legislation, Institutional Capture

#11

Post by spondyl »

This is a "productionisation" of the same content discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47362528

I would caution readers to do their due dilligence as the presentation may be fancy but that should not immediately translate into a signal of quality in itself given the author has disclosed using Claude Code for a chunk of this work.

While I won't outright discount the findings (as there is "too much" to reasonably verify), there are a few oddities around the source repo such as errors where Claude has tried to access sources, been denied and then noted as much or where it has seemingly fetched incorrect files and tried to interpret them (https://github.com/upper-up/meta-lobbying-and-other-findings...)

I am not under the immediate impression that the author has done thorough due diligence rather than just offloading that to readers by saying "You can just check the sources yourself"

Re: Age Verification Lobbying: Dark Money, Model Legislation, Institutional Capture

#15

Post by Springtime »

spondyl wrote: post #11

This is a "productionisation" of the same content discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47362528 I would caution readers to do their due dilligence as the presentation may be fancy but that should not immediately translate into a signal of quality in itself given the author has disclosed using Claude Code for a chunk of this work. While I won't outright discount the findings (as there is "too much" to…

Also not really a fan of the 'what they're hiding from you' tone it takes (even if that's the subject), like saying that because a website was made less than 100 days before a bill was signed it was a '77-day pipeline' to the bill (which jumped out as a dramatized rephrasing and not present in the original Reddit post).

It also doesn't inline link sources, like the Bloomberg article it mentions (this[1]). A more impartial voice and linked citations to allow quick reference would raise fewer red flags, even if the goal is worthwhile.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-07-25/meta-clas...

Re: Age Verification Lobbying: Dark Money, Model Legislation, Institutional Capture

#16

Post by lyu07282 »

There is a global coordinated effort around digital id, banning end2end encryption, etc. the goal is ending anonymity online. As far as I can tell it's all coordinated through the World Economic Forum's "Global Coalition for Digital Safety" it started in 2021.

https://initiatives.weforum.org/global-coalition-for-digital...

It's not just the US, similar legislation in Australia, UK and the EU.

One thing we can look forward to is platform-side detection of 'illegal' material, so like you organize a protest in a private discord, discord recognizes the illegal act and automatically forwards it to the local police that give you a visit. This is where the road is headed.

Re: Age Verification Lobbying: Dark Money, Model Legislation, Institutional Capture

#17

Post by panny »

SilverElfin wrote: post #9
panny wrote: post #2

And none of it matters. Netchoice is shooting down legislation as fast as grandstanding legislators propose it. The bill of rights doesn't have an age limit. If a 10 year old can own an AR-15, that same 10 year old definitely has 1A rights too. Freedom of speech. Freedom of assembly. They can decide who they want to talk to online without a parent getting in the way of it.

A 10 year old can’t own an AR-15 in many states. But I agree that a 10 year old has 1A rights. The problem is that the Supreme Court shocked everyone when they recently ruled that age verification for porn is legal in a case against the state of Texas. That now has opened the flood gates for more states to violate civil rights. https://techcrunch.com/2025/06/27/scotus-porn-ruling-opens-d...

Porn is obsenity and not covered by free speech. If your kid wants to talk to an adult online, that's not obsenity. That's how kids learn things, from their elders.
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