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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

#431

Post by troyvit »

gzread wrote: post #254
troyvit wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As the article says, it's not about just checking a box: "Every OS provider must then: provide an interface at account setup collecting a birth date or age, and expose a real-time API that broadcasts the user's age bracket (under 13, 13 to 15, 16 to 17, 18+) to any application running on the system."

Fine, a drop-down menu, not a checkbox. They're throwing a hissy fit over a drop-down menu with 4 items.

You're missing the rest of it. It takes whatever you put in that dropdown menu and broadcasts it to the rest of the operating system including -- for instance -- your browser. The browser then uses that information to decide what to show you. The same would apply to any other app designed to receive it.

You can call what's happening in this thread a hissy fit, but how does that compare to $70 million in lobbying to get this added to operating systems? Isn't that a bit more of a fit? When you look at who is behind the bills, do you look at their history and wonder whose best interest they might have at heart?

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

#432

Post by matheusmoreira »

Fiveplus wrote: post #302

Anyone reading this purely as a child safety or campaign finance story might miss the broader architectural war happening here. If you zoom out a little, this is the inevitable, scorched-earth retaliation for Apple's ATT rollout from a few years back. Apple cost Meta billions by cutting off their data pipeline at the OS level, justifying it with a unilateral privacy moral high ground. Now, Meta is returning the favor…

Truly disgusting. Wish these corporations would find ways to screw each other over without also screwing over normal people.

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

#433

Post by gzread »

triceratops wrote: post #328
gzread wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems much more intrusive and bad for privacy than having the parent click a button that says the account is for a child under 18.

We already have that. On a spectrum of options, no verification is the least privacy intrusive. Baking it in at the OS level or forcing passport uploads are the most intrusive. My proposal is in the middle. A determined actor could maybe follow you to the store when you purchase your verification code, take a quick picture with a powerful camera (or bribe the store to do it sneakily) and unmask you online. But there'…

We don't have that. If we did, California wouldn't have to mandate it.

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

#434

Post by gzread »

troyvit wrote: post #431
gzread wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fine, a drop-down menu, not a checkbox. They're throwing a hissy fit over a drop-down menu with 4 items.

You're missing the rest of it. It takes whatever you put in that dropdown menu and broadcasts it to the rest of the operating system including -- for instance -- your browser. The browser then uses that information to decide what to show you. The same would apply to any other app designed to receive it. You can call what's happening in this thread a hissy fit, but how does that compare to $70 million in lobbying to g…

How many other things in the operating system are like that already? Every file in your home directory, for instance?

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

#435

Post by throwaway-blaze »

radicalbyte wrote: post #416
Fiveplus wrote: post #302

Anyone reading this purely as a child safety or campaign finance story might miss the broader architectural war happening here. If you zoom out a little, this is the inevitable, scorched-earth retaliation for Apple's ATT rollout from a few years back. Apple cost Meta billions by cutting off their data pipeline at the OS level, justifying it with a unilateral privacy moral high ground. Now, Meta is returning the favor…

It's the US, all you have to do is drive a truckload of cash into Mar-A-Lago and you'll get whatever you want.

Arabella Advisors is about the farthest thing from MAGA you can imagine.

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

#436

Post by DivingForGold »

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.

Or, refuse to participate or use any tech that implements OS age verification (start with communication app Discord).

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

#437

Post by heavyset_go »

eigencoder wrote: post #234
ExpertAdvisor01 wrote: post #131

I don't understand it . There are so many ways to child-proof a device . Google Family Link and the Apple equivalent . Use cloudflares Family dns (blocks porn websites etc ..) Instead of just creating a course that explains how to child-proof a device, we have to surveil everyone.

Do you have a child? Because I think the device makers haven't really done a good job, there are just too many workarounds.

Why are you buying your child devices made for adults and not devices purpose built for children?

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

#438

Post by spondyl »

jayers wrote: post #327

I'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 came here to say that this is pretty much my view having poked around a little bit as well.

This file does not exactly fill me with confidence: https://github.com/upper-up/meta-lobbying-and-other-findings...

In one part of the report, there seems to be this implicit assumption that Linux and Horizon OS (Meta's VR OS) are somehow comparable and that Meta will be better equipped than Linux if age verification is required.

It doesn't explicitly say "This will allow Horizon OS to become the defacto OS and Linux will die out" but that seems to be the impression I'm getting which uhh... would make zero sense.

More broadly, this entire report (and others like it) are extremely annoying in that I've seen some Reddit comments either taking "lots of text" as a signal of quality or asking "Does anyone have proof that these claims are inaccurate" which is

a) Of course entirely backwards as far as burden of proof

b) Not even the right rubick because it's not facts versus lies, it's manufactured intent/correlations versus real life intent/correlations (ie; bullshit versus not)

All of this could be factually true without Meta being smart enough to play 5D chess

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

#439

Post by rothific »

jayers wrote: post #327

I'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…

This is a fascinating report, not because of the content or even quality of the report, but because of the way it was generated. It is an AI generated report dumped into GitHub and has made it onto the front page of Hacker News with over 1,000 upvotes and many comments.

This type of GitHub-based open-source research project will become more common as more people use tools like Claude Code or Codex for research.

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

#440

Post by jgord »

Did Meta spend around 60Mn lobbying for age verification to be forcibly added to every OS install ?

If not, who has been paying to lobby for these age verification laws ?

That seems a question that we should have an answer to.

Forcing an age check upon linux install seems anti-competitive, and a violation of freedom of speech allowed by the Constitution.

Also impractical and ineffective, unless they plan on some sort of bio-metric confirmation of age.

Will they outlaw computation itself, or constrain a personal quota so that only corporations can access approved LLMs and certainly not run a local AGI ?

As with the insane "encryption is a weapon and cant be exported" policy of the 80s, this will surely force innovation to migrate outside the US.

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