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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

#141

Post by jmyeet »

jwr wrote: post #2

I am now waiting for Gruber (daringfireball.net) to post another rant about how terrible EU regulation is. Zero-knowledge proofs are the way to go for this type of thing, I find it mind-boggling that the US lets itself be bamboozled into complete lack of privacy.

Not sure what the Gruber thing is about. I guess I lack context. But on ZKP, I will agree but add this:

The only authority that can be trusted to do age verification is the government.

You know, those people who give you birth certificates, passports, SSNs, driver's licenses, etc.

The idea that parental supervision here is sufficient has been shown to be wholly inadequate. I'm sorry but that train has sailed. Age verification is coming. It's just a question of who does it and what form it takes.

Take Youtube, for example. I think it should work like this:

1. If you're not of sufficient age, you simply don't see comments. At all;

2. Minors shouldn't see ads. At all;

3. Videos deemed to have age-restricted content should be visible;

4. If you're not logged in, you're treated as an age-restricted user; and

5. Viewing via a VPN means you need age verification regardless of your country of origin.

It's not perfect. It doesn't have to be.

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

#142

Post by soulofmischief »

cosmos0072 wrote: post #5
jwr wrote: post #2

I am now waiting for Gruber (daringfireball.net) to post another rant about how terrible EU regulation is. Zero-knowledge proofs are the way to go for this type of thing, I find it mind-boggling that the US lets itself be bamboozled into complete lack of privacy.

I am from EU, and contrary to age verification laws in general. My stance is that if somebody is a minor, his/her/their parents/tutors/legal guardian are responsible for what they can/cannot do online, and that the mechanism to enforce that is parental control on devices. Having said that, open-source zero-knowledge proofs are infinitely less evil (I refuse to say "better") than commercial cloud-based age monitoring…

I'll go further. As a human being, I am responsible for myself. I grew up in an extremely abusive, impoverished, cult-like religious home where anything not approved by White Jesus was disallowed.

I owe everything about who I am today to learning how to circumvent firewalls and other forms of restriction. I would almost certainly be dead if I hadn't learned to socialize and program on the web despite it being strictly forbidden at home. Most of my interests, politics and personality were forged at 2am, as quiet as possible, browsing the web on live discs. I now support myself through those interests.

We're so quick to forget that kids are people, too. And today, they often know how to safely navigate the internet better than their aging caretakers who have allowed editorial "news" and social media to warp their minds.

Even for people who think they're really doing a good thing by supporting these kinds of insane laws that are designed to restrict our 1A rights: the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

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

#143

Post by inetknght »

ndriscoll wrote: post #98
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…

> App and website developers shouldn't be burdened with extra costly liability Why not? Physical businesses have liability if they provide age restricted items to children. As far as I know, strip clubs are liable for who enters. Selling alcohol to a child carries personal criminal liability for store clerks. Assuming society decides to restrict something from children, why should online businesses be exempt? On who…

> Physical businesses

Physical businesses nominally aren't selling their items to people across state or country borders.

Of course, we threw that out when we decided people could buy things online. How'd that tax loophole turn out?

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

#144

Post by dfxm12 »

DavidPiper wrote: post #89

The idea that it might cost "someone" $2 every time a user opens and app AND it sends a bunch of private data to a 3rd party is completely dystopian, let alone everything else. And a serious question: with deepest respect to the author for their extraordinarily impressive time and effort in this investigation... Why was this not already flagged by political reporters or investigative journalists? I'm not American so…

Mainstream media is largely captured by the same monied interests as discussed in the reddit post. Although the poster does mention an article from Bloomberg as evidence, most of their sources are local outlets or tech-focused. https://github.com/upper-up/meta-lobbying-and-other-findings...

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

#145

Post by ryanmcbride »

iamnothere wrote: post #138
dml2135 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But are you bypassing a security measure if you provide false information, when true information would also have let you pass?

Again, you’re welcome to be a test case. I do think there is a stronger case against the next under-18 Aaron Swartz, who will get hit with 200 felonies for setting his age wrong (one felony per app/service) after pissing off someone important.

I'm more than happy to be a test case. I'm pushing 40 but I will do every single thing in my power to give false information to the surveillance machine.

If I get arrested for lying about my age, when I'm of age, then they could probably get me on a whim already anyway. No point in trying to fall in line.

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

#147

Post by singron »

PeterisP wrote: post #115

What I'm confused about is how the proposed bills would apply to servers. Like, in general, a software change to add an "age class" attribute to user accounts and a syscall "what's this attribute for the current user account" would satisfy the California bill and that's a relatively minor change (the bad part is the NY bill that allegedly requires technical verification of whatever the user claimed). The weird issue…

In the CA bill, "User" means child. It's pretty clear that non-human users aren't covered and don't have to participate. E.g. the API can return N/A or any other value for non-humans. If there is a way to make the API applicable only to human children users, then it doesn't even need to be callable for other entities. E.g. on android, each app gets its own uid, so the unix user doesn't correspond to a child, so the API will instead (probably) be associated with another entity (e.g. their Google account, an android profile, or an android (non-unix) user)

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

#148

Post by andrepd »

heavyset_go wrote: post #44
cosmos0072 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am from EU, and contrary to age verification laws in general. My stance is that if somebody is a minor, his/her/their parents/tutors/legal guardian are responsible for what they can/cannot do online, and that the mechanism to enforce that is parental control on devices. Having said that, open-source zero-knowledge proofs are infinitely less evil (I refuse to say "better") than commercial cloud-based age monitoring…

> 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…

The concern is ubiquitous all-pervasive surveillance, control, and manipulation of algorithmical social media and its objective consequences for child development and well-being. Not "kids reading a bad word". Disagree all you want, but don't twist the premise.

Surely you can find a rationalwiki article for your fallacy too.

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

#149

Post by anymouse123456 »

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.

Obviously not a serious proposal, but I do like the alt mentioned below:

Update the terms to indicate that you can do what you want, but this OS is probably not compliant with states run by evil dipshits.

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

#150

Post by Ray20 »

ndriscoll wrote: post #98
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…

> App and website developers shouldn't be burdened with extra costly liability Why not? Physical businesses have liability if they provide age restricted items to children. As far as I know, strip clubs are liable for who enters. Selling alcohol to a child carries personal criminal liability for store clerks. Assuming society decides to restrict something from children, why should online businesses be exempt? On who…

> Why not?

This implies the creation of an infrastructure for the total surveillance of citizens, unlike age verification by physical businesses.

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