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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

#81

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

I don't understand why nobody in the comments is freaked out about this. This isn't just "oh Google knows my age", or "oh politicians being corrupt again!" This is "the government made a law that every computer in the world must track every person's identity and send it to the cloud".

No offline devices. Commercial vendors get your biometric data (and the equivalent of your driver's license / SSN). Every application on the OS can query your data.

If you think it stops with one bill, after they get all the infrastructure for this in place? You're fooling yourself. The whole point of this is to identify you, on every web page you visit, every app you open, on every device you own. Once bills are passed, it's very hard to get them revoked or nullified.

This is the most aggregious, authoritarian, Big Brother government surveillance system ever devised, and it's already law. I am fucking terrified.

(Yes, the EU has a less horrifying version of this. But Google, Apple, and Microsoft still control most of the devices in the world, and they are US companies.)

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

#82

Post by flowerthoughts »

When I moved from Sweden to Ireland and realized the Swedish central address registry makes moving fantastically easy, I started dreaming of a central registry where consumers and producers could meet. I can give my supplier access to exactly the information they need, and nothing else. I can revoke access when I feel like it. Like OAuth2 for personal data. They can subscribe to updates. It could be a federated protocol.

Not saying I think it's a good idea to provide the year of birth to all sites, but (session ID, year of birth) is the only information they would need. The problem is proving who's behind the keyboard at the time of asking, which would require challenge-response, and is why I think this should be an online platform, not a hardware PKI gadget with keys inevitably tied to individuals.

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

#83

Post by nobodyandproud »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #71
bix6 wrote: post #54

O great more big money warping our lives for the worse. I’d write my senator but they won’t do shit. Is there anything that can seriously be done?

That is the most serious thing you can do, and the most effective. Do you know how democracy works? There are these people called representatives. They are hired by you . They pass laws. They only get to continue having a job if people like you vote for them. When you tell them "I don't like the law you are passing", they are hearing "the people who hire me are angry with me". The more people that are angry at what t…

The hard part is writing in a way that these legislators and their help can instantly understand.

Ideas? Time to spin up a local LLM for some editing advice.

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

#84

Post by a022311 »

mrob wrote: post #24
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.

Zero-knowledge proofs are unworkable for age verification because they can't prevent use of somebody else's credentials.

The same argument could be said for other age verification methods. Nothing stops a kid from getting their older cousin to verify their identity for something and it will never be possible to prevent this.

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

#85

Post by someguyiguess »

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.

I probably don't have all the info on the various laws across the US and EU that are being pushed, but I'm confused why Linux distros don't just update their licensing and add a notice on the installation screen that it is illegal to run their OS in places where these laws exist?

Heck, Linus Torvalds should just add an amendment to the next release of the Linux Kernel that makes it illegal to use in any jurisdiction that requires age verification laws.

This would obviously cause such a massive disruption (especially in California) that the age laws would have to be rolled back immediately.

This seems like a no-brainer to me but I am admittedly ignorant on this situation. I'm sure there's a good reason why this isn't happening if anyone cares to explain.

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

#86

Post by totetsu »

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.

Seeming as this affect everyone .. Is there anything like and Open Collective .. grassroots consortium, to put together strong sensible zero-knowledge proof based policy examples that could be given to law-makers instead of this shadowy surveillance Trojan horse nonsense?

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

#87

Post by necovek »

simion314 wrote: post #51
idiotsecant wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a great solution to the stated problem. The issue is that nobody is actually trying to solve the stated problem. This is a terrible solution to the real 'problem' which is the lack of surveillance power and information control.

>This is a great solution to the stated problem. The issue is that nobody is actually trying to solve the stated problem. This is a terrible solution to the real 'problem' which is the lack of surveillance power and information control. So on the Sony consoles I created an account for my child and guess what they have implemented some stuff to block children from adult content on some stuff. So if Big Tech would actu…

When one clever teen figures it out, they will share it with 80% of their friend group, making that number 80% and not 1%.

Let's go back to parenting: yes, world is a scary place if you get into it unprepared.

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

#88

Post by mrob »

a022311 wrote: post #84
mrob wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zero-knowledge proofs are unworkable for age verification because they can't prevent use of somebody else's credentials.

The same argument could be said for other age verification methods. Nothing stops a kid from getting their older cousin to verify their identity for something and it will never be possible to prevent this.

The people proposing these laws presumably think imperfect enforcement is better than no enforcement at all. In the non-zero-knowledge case, it's possible to revoke falsely shared credentials.

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

#89

Post by DavidPiper »

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 maybe I don't understand the media structure over there but it feels like SOMEONE should have been all over this way before it's gotten to the point described in this post.

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

#90

Post by ivanjermakov »

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.

> should turn itself off

If this was somehow introduced without anyone noticing and deployed, imagine the damage it would cause.

If we're fantasizing here, I like to imagine two major OS makers trying to comply these laws, fail miserably, and let FOSS OSes and kernels more recognition in the desktop market.

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