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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

#961

Post by mrguyorama »

rapind wrote: post #312
Muromec wrote: post #226

Earlier 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

Wasn’t ICE pretty much doing exactly that with no oversight or accountability?

The other day an ICE lawyer told our state's court that when a bunch of ICE agents rolled up to a private citizen's house and harassed and threatened them, they "were not acting according to policy"

So, yeah.

But none of that stops Meta wanting to help Trump be more efficient at harassing discontent.

It can always get worse. Always.

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

#962

Post by Xelbair »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #928
NegativeLatency wrote: post #909

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s the classic American route of attempting a technical solution to a societal problem.

Technology is what solutions are made of. The "nontechnical solutions to societal problems" are the things like "wishful thinking", "pretending the problem doesn't exist", "wishing it away", etc. (Which is fine when the problem is bullshit and there is nothing to solve, which actually may be the case here.)

ever heard of things like laws? like culture? like changing procedures instead of means?

unless you want to argue semantics and go 'actually they're all part of technology', but that makes your argument even less meaningful.

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

#963

Post by [deleted] »

mothballed wrote: post #796
bix6 wrote: post #770

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My drivers license is a real id and has been for like 5 years? This is a non issue if you went to the DMV instead of waiting until now.

DHS's own testimony that they've successfully gotten warrants issued on the basis of, is that real id is not realiable.

[deleted]

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

#964

Post by bix6 »

jasonlotito wrote: post #891
bix6 wrote: post #770

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My drivers license is a real id and has been for like 5 years? This is a non issue if you went to the DMV instead of waiting until now.

> This is a non issue if you went to the DMV instead of waiting until now. This is incorrect. RealID is optional on DLs. Assuming modern DLs are all RealIDs is wrong.

Well it’d be pretty time wastey to not get a real ID when they’ve been screaming about it for what a decade now?

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

#965

Post by drtgh »

crimsoneer wrote: post #705
XzAeRosho wrote: post #507

I know most of this affects only the US, but I'm wondering where this will go in the EU if the Age Verification Tech goes ahead in America. There's been lots of efforts to increase surveillance disguised as protection for kids in the EU and UK. The Swiss implementation of eID may be hint that governments may/will take the responsibility to implement and maintain the tech, but the multiple intrusions and lobbying by P…

Is there any evidence Palantir is doing any of this? Doesn't really seem like their wheelhouse?

https://www.lobbyfacts.eu/datacard/palantir-technologies-inc...

https://www.lobbyfacts.eu/datacard/palantir-technologies-inc...

Lobbyists having Palantir as a client:

FTI Consulting Belgium,

https://www.lobbyfacts.eu/datacard/fti-consulting-belgium?ri...

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

#966

Post by TeMPOraL »

Xelbair wrote: post #962
TeMPOraL wrote: post #928

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technology is what solutions are made of. The "nontechnical solutions to societal problems" are the things like "wishful thinking", "pretending the problem doesn't exist", "wishing it away", etc. (Which is fine when the problem is bullshit and there is nothing to solve, which actually may be the case here.)

ever heard of things like laws? like culture? like changing procedures instead of means? unless you want to argue semantics and go 'actually they're all part of technology', but that makes your argument even less meaningful.

Right, I would argue they are part of technology, because bureaucracy clearly is, laws move in scope of what's possible and economically feasible, and culture is entirely downstream of that.

Or, put another way, you cannot "just change culture", not any more than you can make a river flow uphill by pushing water with your hands. You can splash some water around and make a little puddle, but it'll quickly flow back to rejoin the river and continue on its way.

Culture is always seeking a dynamic equilibrium, in a landscape defined by economics and technology constraints. The only way to achieve lasting change is to change the landscape.

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

#967

Post by intrasight »

Quarrelsome wrote: post #736
intrasight wrote: post #624

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally agree with that sentiment but we can and should both have good parents and safe devices.

> we can and should both have good parents but we always will have bad parents. So any legistlation needs to account for that. Otherwise those children with the worst parents have the greater digital abilities/opportunities/misfortunes.

I am rephrasing my statement then:

"we should have good parents and can and should safe devices"

"Can have good parents" is implying we control something that we don't. Kids with the worst parents will always be at a disadvantage.

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

#968

Post by Tyrannosaur »

Mindwipe wrote: post #551
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think age verification laws are good in principle - there's a lot of stuff on the internet that people should be protected from. But it's the manner of age verification that is the issue. The EU has zero knowledge proof age verification systems, e.g. through your bank, which are secure and don't involve sending a copy of your ID and / or face scan to a dodgy US based 3rd party.

> The EU has zero knowledge proof age verification systems No, they don't. And they can't.

Why can't they?

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

#969

Post by dang »

codethief wrote: post #601
armchairhacker wrote: post #547

Apparently most of the “original” report was done by Claude ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47366804 ). And now paraphrased on various ad-space (and in this case affiliate link) sellers, probably also by Claude. Claude is the only real journalist here. Personally I’d rather not see reposts of posts this recent, especially LLM posts.

Agreed. IMO your comment should be at the top. (Would it make sense to post it at the top level, so that it can be voted up independently?)

I've moved it to the top level and into the merged thread.

(This subthread was originally a child of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47411314.)

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

#970

Post by systima »

saltcured wrote: post #786
systima wrote: post #589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"But there is an obvious solution: mandate the operating systems (iOS and Android) to share device users' ages when they download apps from the app stores – data the operating systems get as part of the hardware acquisition already. This would be a simple one-step way for parents to control all the different apps that their kids use (in the US, the average teen uses forty different apps per month) and would remedy th…

Everything else aside, this naive belief system is right up there with "10 Myths every programmer should know about X" where X is email addresses, legal names, postal addresses, dates, timestamps, etc. Or perhaps they are envisioning a "hardware acquisition" process where the purchaser is forced to take some oath and sign an attestation about all future users of the device...

I don’t think it’s that.

I think it’s more about setting a norm and precedent that “Age verification is not our responsibility; the App Store layer does that and it’s an established truth now”.

Which itself conveniently helps as a defence in lawsuits when a teenager kills themselves over harmful content etc.

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