Wrote to my state representative this morning.
"You implemented a law that enables vibe-coding pedophiles to deploy apps that find all the children. Please resign."
Meta Platforms: Lobbying, dark money, and the App Store Accountability Act
381–390 of 1001 posts
Re: Meta Platforms: Lobbying, dark money, and the App Store Accountability Act
#382Earlier quoted context omitted.
The UK gov has shown to be incredibly efficient at arresting and imprisoning citizens for social media comments.
Please share evidence.
Re: Meta Platforms: Lobbying, dark money, and the App Store Accountability Act
#383Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
The goons are. Almost no government can create goons that are submissive enough to comply with any kind of crazy order.
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Re: Meta Platforms: Lobbying, dark money, and the App Store Accountability Act
#384Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Granting kids access to our own minercraft servers: My god, I felt dirty about what the other parents had to go through to enable that. This is a hobby horse of mine to the point that coworkers probably wish I'd just stfu about Minecraft - but holy shit is it crazy how many different things you need to get right to get kids playing together. I genuinely have no idea how parents without years of "navigating technica…
I always wonder about this. I read most dialogs (as I do) but man, the sanity of most people must require that they just next next next this stuff right? Perhaps they even let their kids do it instead.
If you're using something like a fire tablet and you set them up as a kids account that's not how it works. If you next through everything your kid cannot play minecraft online, not even on your own little private server.
Getting an actual kids account to work online with minecraft involves setting the right permissions across 2-4 websites and 1-3 companies. I think it took me around 4 hours of trial and error to get it working.
Re: Meta Platforms: Lobbying, dark money, and the App Store Accountability Act
#385This is very lazy AI generated content, as admitted toward the end of the document.
Clicking through to the "findings" shows that they didn't even try to feed proper data into Claude when the AI bot was blocked or couldn't access the documents. Some examples:
> LIMITATION: Direct PDF downloads returned 403 errors. ProPublica Schedule I viewer loads data dynamically (JavaScript), preventing extraction via WebFetch. The 2024 public disclosure copy on sixteenthirtyfund.org was also blocked.
> Tech Transparency Project report: The article "Inside Meta's Spin Machine on Kids and Social Media" at techtransparencyproject.org likely contains detailed ConnectSafely/Meta funding analysis but was blocked (403)
So Claude then goes on to propose "Potential Role" that postulates connections might exist, but then caveats it by saying that no evidence was found:
> This negative finding is inconclusive due to inability to access Schedule I grant detail data in the actual 990 filings (PDF downloads returned 403 errors, and ProPublica's filing viewer loads data dynamically).
This is what happens when you try to lead an LLM toward a conclusion and it behaves as if your conclusion is true. Hacker News is usually quick to dismiss incomplete and lazy LLM content. I assume this is getting upvotes because it's easy to turn a blind eye to the obvious LLM problems when the output is agreeing with something you believe.
Re: Meta Platforms: Lobbying, dark money, and the App Store Accountability Act
#386Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are many ways to not have a state or national ID document in the USA. You might simply not have a driver license or passport. That's totally legal. You might be in the country temporarily for business or as a tourist. The constitution applies to all of these people.
>There are many ways to not have a state or national ID document in the USA. You might simply not have a driver license or passport. That's totally legal. Great, frame it as "poor people without IDs" or whatever, not "undocumented", which in the current political discourse is basically the left's version of the term "illegal immigrant". >You might be in the country temporarily for business or as a tourist. The consti…
Do you seriously think that access restrictions will be limited only to the under-18 use-case?
We _do not want_ the government to have the capability to enforce laws of this nature.
Re: Meta Platforms: Lobbying, dark money, and the App Store Accountability Act
#387Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Good list of more reasons! I focused on what I consider the two most important.
To expand on your #3, it also gives parents a way to have different policies on different devices for the same child. Perhaps absolutely no social media on their phone (which is always drawing them, and can be used in private when they're supposed to be doing something else), but allowing it on a desktop computer in an observable area (ie accountability).
The way the proposed legislation is made, once companies have cleared the hurdle of what the law requires, parents are then left up to the mercy of whatever the companies deem appropriate for their kids. Which isn't terribly surprising for regulatory capture legislation! But since it's branded with protecting kids and helping parents, we need to be shouting about all the ways it actually undermines those goals.
Re: Meta Platforms: Lobbying, dark money, and the App Store Accountability Act
#388Does 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
No, the way to stop it is to talk to your representatives.
You have the power. You just have to pick up a phone, and ask your friends, relatives, neighbors, to do the same. (They will, because it affects all of them.) Tell your reps to remove the legislation or you're voting them out. They don't want to lose their jobs. They will change if you tell them to. But only if you tell them. That is your power. Use it or lose it.
Re: Meta Platforms: Lobbying, dark money, and the App Store Accountability Act
#389I'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 h…
I agree. I tried reading some of the documents and they're full of this:
> LIMITATION: Direct PDF downloads returned 403 errors. ProPublica Schedule I viewer loads data dynamically (JavaScript), preventing extraction via WebFetch. The 2024 public disclosure copy on sixteenthirtyfund.org was also blocked.
> Tech Transparency Project report: The article "Inside Meta's Spin Machine on Kids and Social Media" at techtransparencyproject.org likely contains detailed ConnectSafely/Meta funding analysis but was blocked (403)
The least they could have done is read their own reports and then provided the documents to the LLM. Instead they just let it run and propose connections, asked it to generate some graphs, and then hit publish.