Meta funneled $2B through nonprofit shells to push age verification laws targeting Apple and Google while exempting its own platforms from surveillance requirements.
  • Arghblarg@lemmy.caEnglish
    116·
    vor 3 Tagen

    Confusing title: There was no other “who” behind it. It was Meta. They tried to hide their lobbying through other shell orgs.

  • Cherry@piefed.socialEnglish
    11·
    vor 3 Tagen

    Good read and some action points suggested for those in key states.

    Surprised there is not dupe posted here, I know fedi does not have such a large audience in terms of distribution but it’s a less corrupt place to have threads up and stable.

    • tyler@programming.devEnglish
      3·
      vor 2 Tagen

      There is, and as far as I read the user here did more investigation further than Reddit. I’m going to sleep so I’m not going to bother looking for it but it was just the other day.

  • devtoolkit_apiBannedEnglish
    2·
    vor 3 Tagen

    Age verification is always a trojan horse for identity verification. The technical reality is that you cannot verify age without collecting identity documents, and once that infrastructure exists, it gets expanded.

    Meta pushing for this makes perfect sense from their perspective — they already have the identity verification infrastructure, so compliance is cheap for them. Smaller competitors and open-source alternatives cannot implement ID checks affordably. It is regulatory capture disguised as child safety.

    The UK Online Safety Act is already showing how this plays out. VPN usage spiked, legitimate privacy tools got caught in the crossfire, and the actual harmful content barely decreased because it moved to encrypted channels.

    The solution to protecting kids online is not making the entire internet prove who they are. It is better parental tools, digital literacy education, and holding platforms accountable for their recommendation algorithms that actively push harmful content to minors.