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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

#851
post #654

The question I keep coming back to regarding the recent debate around age verification is "Why now?" I'm 47, and I started using the internet in my early teens through BBS gateways. I've seen every age of the Internet, and there's always been widely available pornographic materials. Why all of a sudden is this a crisis? Perhaps I'm missing something?

An unfortunate side effect of Epstein mania is that people (particularly legislators) are more receptive than ever to the "think of the children!" strawman. This approach is highly effective right now, and it might never work again in Zuckerberg's lifetime.

America needs another Zappa.

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

#852

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t understand why this sentiment keeps coming up when it’s clear parents are expected to do more than ever now. Are you going to sit here and tell me your parents were aware of every time you touched a computer or turned on the TV? They vetted everything you consumed? It was a lot easier back then to do. I bet your parents couldn’t even figure out how to block a single channel on their tv, nor did they likely ev…

It helped that, at the time, most video was broadcast over the air and thus subject to FCC regulations relating to content, and that advertisers would pull funds from stations and networks that aired content that was too controversial. Other, non-regulated or less regulated (“adult”) content was for pay and the systems had child lockouts. It’s much easier to relinquish parental control of media exposure when the syst…

Not just social media but internet bandwidth altogether. If you have an internet connection someone somewhere is using it to push things to your kids.

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

#853

These discussions remind me so much of the US discussions about federal ID documents as verification. There's a vocal portion of people which opposes any solution because "privacy, government overreach, surveillance ...". So instead of a solution like e.g. zero-proof age verification, that tries to minimize intrusions on privacy, the result is the worst of all worlds, maximum surveillance (but I guess it's ok if it i…

When I hear this argument ("better the government do it than a private company") I recoil. The government is sovereign, only accepts lawsuits at its discretion, and can use violence to get its way. We also know for a fact that it abuses its powers and conducts surreptitious unlawful campaigns against its citizens. I'm not on board with any of it, but the last thing I want is the government to control it.

The government is also, at least theoretically, democratic and accountable to the population.

Meta on the other hand is a dictatorship run by Zuck that's only marginally accountable to stockholders (which are only a small subset of the population).

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

#854

If Citizens United is not challenged, we will end up being governed by corporate billionaires. Forcing age verification down our throats will be the least of our worries if this continues.

> we will end up being governed by corporate billionaires

I think it's a little late for that.

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

#855

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't just push responsibility for the kids to the parents, where is the world going? This is madness. The next thing you are going to claim kids from young age shouldn't have fully unlocked smart phones, shouldn't install any app and so on. Where is the end of this? Are you telling me parents should spend more time with kids, heck even be their role models although it is much harder compared to just giving up on…

Raising a kid takes a village. It is not like parents are the only influential figures in a kid's upbringing, they are not the only role models, they should not be the only ones paying attention and guiding kids to adulthood. Parental control options as they stand are severely lacking. If you add the actively predatory enshittification efforts conducted by seemingly all larges tech companies, you are left either forb…

I agree with you, it takes a small friendly village (or at least a largeish multigenerational close family nearby at the lowest minimum).

But we are in western 21st century, people leave their places of birth for myriad of reasons, some better than others but all equally good for them, given its almost never easy to lose one's roots and just move on one's own.

I am in this category, we have 2 small kids and any family is at least 1000km away, the actually helpful good one more like 1500km (and no its not just a hop on some local planes, rather full day ordeal at minimum). No nanny. We see how kids and grandparents enjoy each other, grandparents have more... mental capacity? to teach them after our long day at work and so on.

But there are reasons we moved, its complex mix of leaving poor corrupted place with higher criminality where kids would struggle to achieve a good life via moral legal work and just good efforts. Not everybody has the luxury to come from background where the only difference is amount of money earned. So you give kids a better start and environment, while giving them much smaller set of role models and people who have time for them outside school.

At the end its our choices and our responsibility to raise them. No phones for a loooong time, and even after that some dumb nokia. They can screw up their lives on their own once adults, we won't contribute there even if it would be tremendously easier lifestyle.

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

#856

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My research suggests that all U.S. states that require identification at the polls accept a driving license as a form of valid photo ID. Are you aware of any that don’t?

> My research suggests that all U.S. states that require identification at the polls accept a driving license as a form of valid photo ID. Not today. However, there is a bill in the Senate, that the President is demanding to be passed, that would eliminate this reality. https://www.usatoday.com/story/graphics/2026/03/17/save-amer...

>Records from a federal citizenship verification tool show that just 0.04% of voter verification cases were returned as noncitizens in August 2025.

Seems like this is just one of those "feel-good" laws. A waste of time and money.

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

#857

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Swiss eID is open source[1] and it's usage will be limited. Any type of age verification for online service would need go to a vote and would probably loose. "Eigenverantwortung", it is the parents job to look after the kids, not the state. [1] https://github.com/swiyu-admin-ch

You can't just push responsibility for the kids to the parents, where is the world going? This is madness. The next thing you are going to claim kids from young age shouldn't have fully unlocked smart phones, shouldn't install any app and so on. Where is the end of this? Are you telling me parents should spend more time with kids, heck even be their role models although it is much harder compared to just giving up on…

It really isn't as simple as "Just be a better parent". To use my nephews as an example, my sisters take good care to make sure there's no device usage at home. They've got dumb phones, my sisters don't use their smartphones around the kids either unless it's to take a call, TV/screen time is extremely limited (1h on Saturdays). The older one (12) has an iPhone with parental controls on and tuned to the max, no Youtube or anything like that, and I (the techie in the family) made sure to set it up so it's not easy to circumvent the blocks either.

Y'know what happens instead? Their friends have unfettered access to smartphones, so my nephews see all the idiotic brainrotting shit on youtube shorts anyways. If not at home, they'll see all the crap we're blocking at school from their friends anyways. Hell, they could just go to the library and access the free public computers there if they wanted to! So my sisters who are responsible and do everything correctly, still suffer, and like any reasonable parent don't want to go to the extreme of locking their children up in cages and not letting them outside of the house.

There's a reason we don't legislate alcohol and tobacco sales to the same tune of "Just police your kids 24/7 and keep them under lock and key", we instead realize that we can't (or, shouldn't) supervise kids 24/7 day in and day out, and have society-wide rules that forces everyone to not sell booze to anyone underage.

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

#858

I don’t know why this isn’t a very simple Internet standard. The browsers on devices that have a child lock turned on could send an http header. People who have websites that are adult-only could configure their web server to check for that header and do something appropriate. That requires cooperation, but since most adult websites don’t want children to be visiting them, cooperation shouldn’t be hard to get. Govern…

As a parent, none of these are useful to me. Age is not a useful indicator of what’s appropriate for my kid. At best, this can avoid a small portion of some stuff they probably wouldn’t see anyway. The bad actors who I’m worried about actively try to circumvent any automated systems that block them. These age verification systems don’t help even if they worked as intended… or at least as advertised.

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

#860
post #741

These discussions remind me so much of the US discussions about federal ID documents as verification. There's a vocal portion of people which opposes any solution because "privacy, government overreach, surveillance ...". So instead of a solution like e.g. zero-proof age verification, that tries to minimize intrusions on privacy, the result is the worst of all worlds, maximum surveillance (but I guess it's ok if it i…

For there to be a solution, there needs to be a problem. These bills are not addressing a problem. Assume the online platform has a video feed of my kid, or their SSN, or a zero-knowledge-proof of age, or whatever. Now, what will the platform do with it? Concretely? As in: Name one bad outcome a reasonable parent would care about that's prohibited under these bills. If the bad thing happens due to willful negligence,…

The Illinois bill prohibits financial transactions, and feeds engineered to be addictive.
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