The same company intentionally driving minors towards this content (despite claiming to care about them) is also lobbying in secrecy for requiring all of us to scan our ID and face in order to use our phones and computers.
Their stated reason? Child safety.
Their actual reason? You can figure that out.
> is also lobbying in secrecy for requiring all of us to scan our ID and face in order to use our phones and computers.
You’re conflating different things. The OS-level age setting proposals are not the same as scanning IDs and faces.
I’m anti age check legislation, too, but the misinformation is getting so bad that it’s starting to weaken the counter-arguments.
> Their stated reason? Child safety.
> Their actual reason? You can figure that out.
We’re commenting under an article about one $375M lawsuit over child safety and many more on the way. They are obviously being pressured for child safety by over zealous prosecutors. This is why they reversed course and removed end-to-end encryption from Instagram because it was brought up as a threat to child safety.
Also your “you can figure that out” implication doesn’t even make sense. The proposal to move age verification to the OS level would give Meta less information about the user, because the OS, not Meta apps, would be responsible for gating age content. I’m not agreeing with the proposal, but it’s easy to see that it would be more privacy-preserving than having to submit your ID to Meta.
Meta is like one giant cancer that grew a few small tumors of benign[1] nature, like some of their efforts in open source and open research (React, Llama, etc.).
[1]: I could be wrong thinking those are benign.
>Meta is like one giant cancer
Cancer is a great metaphor because its a perversion of natural, healthy processes. So called social media is nearly that, but actually grotesquely unhealthy.
People are dramatically unwell when they are not social, but that unregulated process is also negative up to and including being lethal.
Facebook was the Eternal September of the Web. Netiquette died when it was made generally available, as did the culture that spawned it.
As a Millennial, I'm sad to say that it wasn't even older generations' fault, but our own (+Gen X). The tipping point was letting in normies who traded in photos and money instead of text and art.
Elitism and selectivity were actually features of the early Internet. High barriers to entry (tech savvy, literacy) ensured that there was a high signal to noise ratio, and thus you had, let's say, upper quartile participants concentrated in one (forum of) fora.
LLMs are now heralding the Eternal September of even software engineering, and now I am wondering where to hang up my Techpriest robes in search of more elite pastures.
I wonder if this is how the clergy felt once the vulgar were allowed to study scripture not in the original spiritual programming languages of Hebrew or Latin, but English.
I think Zstandard would be the most benign example.
Zstandard was created by one amazing person. Pretty sure he would have done it even if meta didn't exist.
A few weeks after they expanded access beyond .edu domains, I deleted my account. Haven't looked back since. Not an ounce of regret.
Exactly. Why should furrin students get a look in?
Everything consumer facing from meta is like a toxic waste hazard. It makes me sad seeing people stuck on those platforms.
[dead]
React benign? That’s the first time I’ve seen this suggestion on HN. Usually it’s held responsible for great crimes and wrongs.
Ha, I think the great crimes and wrongs title goes to Angular. I became a front-end guy specifically to avoid all the OOP verbosity. I'm just trying to call some APIs and render some data on a web page. I don't need layers of abstraction to do that.
Anyways, is there a "just use vue" effort like there is with postgres :)
I mean, their telemetry crap is on a lot of apps too. I remember someone DMing me something very niche on Discord, and by chance I opened up Facebook, it gave me ads for that very, very niche thing I have never even looked up on Google, or Facebook, it was like IMMEDIATE. I opened up Facebook by chance, and voila.
The other one was the time I was speaking to my brother in law, who had just paved his driveway, he said "I could have used airport grade tar, but thought it was too much" and we were in front of his Nest security cam is the only thing I can think of, but the very next morning, I'm scrolling through Facebook, and sure enough, someone local is advertising airport grade tar. Why? I didn't google this, I only heard it from them.
There's some serious shenanigans going on with ad companies, and we just seem to handwave it around.
Coincidentally, I remember both experiences very very vividly, because this was the last time I used either platform in any meaningful capacity.
Of course it's for the protection of the children!
Why else would they want to sneakily add facial recognition to smart glasses?! /s https://www.businessinsider.com/meta-ray-ban-smart-glasses-f...
My guess: to discriminate whether traffic is from a humam or bot to improve ad delivery metrics.
Most sites are not going to implement this themselves. I think they're in prime position to become a key broker of identity in the same way that a lot of people already log in with their meta or google account to unrelated websites. They become very entrenched and get a ton of data that way.
As more and more people essentially lock themselves in with these identitybrokers tho I imagine it has a very stifling effect on speech tho. Imagine getting banned from those.
Aren't they incentive to treat bot impressions as real?
Not if they can charge more for “certified” human impressions
Actually. Meta is spending millions to push the age verification requirement off to the app store providers, such as Google and Apple. It's an attempt to shield Meta from liability, transfer it to the app providers.
Having clear laws about what's allowed and what isn't is a lot cheaper than getting repeatedly sued for hundreds of millions for not doing things there was never a clear legal requirement to do.
>to push the age verification requirement off to the app store providers,
and makes more sense, Apple and Google have your credit card , or if you are a parent that bought soem phone for you child then at first boot up as a parent should be your job to setup a child account.
To be fair, they're just an evil corporation making lemonade out of lemons. I'm sure they'd be happier pushing porn and nazism to hundreds of millions of underage users, but if certain governments want them to write all that bunk code to verify everyone's ID, they might as well make money off the data.
They're a lot more likely to push socialism than nazism. Hence all the socialism and the lack of nazism.
> Their actual reason? You can figure that out.
This is unfalsifiable. Just say what you think it is explicitly.
Isn't this conversation, not publishing scientific hypotheses, theories and findings?
If so, it is customarily permissible to use rhetoric and sarcasm to more strongly emphasize a point. Or, to leave the conclusion as an exercise for the reader.
By intentionally hiding their position (and simultaneously acting as though it is completely obvious) the OP shuts down any useful conversation that might follow. Do they think Meta will sell the user's data? Do they think different people are in charge of different policies at Meta leading to actions that appear to be in conflict with each other? Do they think they will use this information to train AI models? Do they think they will use this information to serve Ads?
There are many interesting ways that the conversation could have been carried forward but there is no way to continue the conservation as the OP doesn't make it clear what they think.
The only thing I can say is: No I cannot figure it out, please tell me what you're trying to say here.
> The only thing I can say is: No I cannot figure it out
On the contrary, looks like you can:
> (…) sell the user's data (…) use this information to train AI models (…) use this information to serve Ads
What’s the point in providing a rebuttal to these points (e.g. that Meta doesn’t actually sell data to anyone) if the OP can simply say “that’s not what I meant”?
They are taking a position that cannot be argued against or even discussed because they don’t make that position clear.
I think they meant that Meta is offloading the cost (fines) of farming minor's data onto the operating systems. With an up-front cost of 2 billion dollars in lobbying, they can avoid paying 300m+ fees regularly.
Why defend Zuck??
Cause on a website fellating CEOs and capitalism, "CEO's Lives Matter".
Just remember that these capacities will never be used to exonerate - only crucify.
Easy: regulation always favors incumbents.
Only as long as corps are allowed to lobby or introduce financial incentives into policy making
So any day ending in y for the US Congress?
I can't figure it out so please enlighten me.
[dead]
Maybe I'm just getting old and cynical but, while I think current social media is bad for children, I'm very suspicious of the current international agreement that it's time to take action, especially with all the ID verification coming from multiple avenues
Two things can be true, and I am in the same boat. Should the next generation have their brains fried by ad-tech corporations and their algorithms? Absolutely not. Should the overdue off-ramp from this trend be the on-ramp to mass-surveillance and government overreach? Also a firm no.
I really wish this take was more prominent. I really don't buy that mass-surveillance should be required for age verification. There are plenty of very smart people who have created much more complicated things than a digital age verification that doesn't track every time you use it.
This also isn't helpful, but I think the sudden push of urgency isn't helping. The internet has existed without any kind of age verification or safety measures for about 30 years. We could have used that time to have a sensible conversation about policy trade offs, but instead we've waited till now to decide that everything has to be rushed through with minimal consideration.
> We could have used that time to have a sensible conversation about policy trade offs [of age verification]…
There is always a conversation, but it is often not the popular one and gets drown out by whatever everyone is excited about at the moment. You can find it if you seek it out.
Lawrence Lessig’s book “Code” (1999), for example, talks about how a completely unrelated internet is an anomaly, and that regulation will certainly be necessary, and advocates that it be done in a thoughtful manner.
>used that time to have a sensible conversation about policy trade offs,
On HN itself, no way. Too many people here make far too much money on ads to want that. It seems the other part that want freedom also want so much freedom it gives huge corporations the freedom to crush them.
>things than a digital age verification that doesn't track every time you use it.
The big companies that pay the politicians don't want that, therefore we won't get that.
They’re the oil barons of our day. They frack our data and output psychological/social pollution.
Absolutely: I said something similar recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46766649
That's because we should be regulating the social media industry rather than regulating social media users.
Unfortunately, social media users don't have billions of dollars to spend on lobbying and related activities around the world.
Governments always want censorship and speech control. That never changes. The only difference is that now the general populace has accumulated enough disgruntlement to social media to be used against themselves.
No the difference is that when governments are still constrained by the rule of law it’s cheap PR to fight the government on data access claims but once they are authoritarian fascist industrialists fall over themselves to feed everything into Palantir
given that it's happening simultaneously with the war on E2EE and general purpose computing, their goals are as transparent as it gets. the West is at this point only a decade behind China.
A lot of the ID verification stuff is coming FROM those companies
I’ve just been stung by iOS 26.4’s implementation of the age-gate. My only option has been to rollback with a 26.3.1 IPSW.
I unlurked and made a thread last night, but I think it might be hidden due to account age: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47511919
Yep, your post and this comment were hidden. I vouched for them so they're visible now. Good luck!
Meta is lobbying to push age verification to the OS level.
I have read the OSINT report from Reddit. The data it has is being interpreted as Meta orchestrating a global lobbying scheme.
However the data is equally if not more supportive of Meta simply taking advantage of global political sentiment to position itself better.
I’ve mentioned this elsewhere, but the HN zeitgeist seems to be resistant to the idea that tech is the “bad guy” today.
I work in trust and safety, and have near front row seats to all the insanity playing out today.
[dead]
Really? You still think you're the one looking at it all wrong? It's exactly what you think it is. Stop giving blatant malice the benefit of the doubt, especially the doubt they've directly instilled.
because it is a false dilemma
Tech bros deliberately made digital crack for kids and corporations refuse to moderate online content.
There is no conspiracy the general public is faced with a crisis and they are desperate for a solution.
The teen suicide statistics do not lie.
The general public is being told they are faced with a crisis. This has been a problem for at least a decade, yet suddenly it's at the forefront and conveniently ties into ID verification for everyone to use general purpose computing.
I'm sorry but if you don't think there's a conspiracy I have a bridge to sell you. It was already unveiled that Meta has lobbied billions towards promoting this legislative change
[dead]
Regulate and fine social media and adtech companies until its no longer economically feasible to generate the massive profits and stock valuations that is prompting this garbage.
That fine is missing a few zeros on the right side
0.6% of last year's profits.
It takes 7 clicks to turn off ads that promote eating disorders. Thats enough proof.
Drop in the bucket for them. Giving Zuck some jail time would be the more appropriate message - there's no doubt he knows and approves of the kind of evil activity the New Mexico law enforcement dug up.
That would be a dream, but cannot see it happening. But totally agree with your theory- platforms should face genuine legal exposure for algorithmic harm to minors (as tobacco companies did for health harm).
Unfortunately, as we found out recently, Meta's lobbyists are a powerful force to contend with and I do not trust our governments to stand up to them.
Why can’t penalties be tied to a percentage of Revenue?
You think if mom and pop shop did they same they’d be charged the same?
$375M isn't even a slap on the wrist for a company that raked in $60B last year.
That's peanuts.[a]
[a] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/peanu...
Do we have to wait for any appeals before the performative mail out settlement checks for $1 routine?
Or the settlements goes to the state and no one ever sees a dollar.
Cost of doing business...
"We went a little over the line to figure out where the line is, so, we can now guarantee you, dear shareholder, that we're extracting the absolute maximum possible value! Isn't that splendid!"
This. Meta made $60B in net income in 2025.
Has anyone in leadership at Meta faced even the prospect of jail time for what they've done over all these years?
they will get congressional medals of honor sooner than that
the leaders of these companies don'tlet their kids use it.
I doubt that Zuckerberg really uses either Facebook or Instagram all that much. Maybe as a curated PR channel sure, but he's not doom scrolling Instagram at bedtime.
If you know what the platform is capable of, if you seen how the sausage is made, you're probably not using it.
People are also a little naive in not seeing that these platforms aren't just bad for children, they are bad for adults as well. I'm not oppose to not "selling" them to children, but we also need to label correctly for adults and have rules like those for alcohol, tobakko and gambling, so no or limited advertising. Scrub the public spaces of Facebook logos.
I'm not sure if it's naiveté, it's probably more that we are all complacent. If all Facebook/Instagram users (and perhaps, even if only those with children), stopped using, that would be an actual stick, wouldn't it.. But we don't (I'm not excluding myself).
Calculated risk cost by them
Shareholders: Worth it!
Oh no those pesky Europeans extorting money from US tech companies. No, wait..
Who is getting paid the $375m?
The state of New Mexico presumably as they brought the suit.
Meta should be disbanded for the damage it caused to mankind. Age verification tainting Linux also is heavily attributable to Meta buying legislation; systemd already quickly went that path, in order to appease their corporate-gods. Private user data to be released to random actors willy-nilly style - and the constant appeasement "no, this is not what is happening". Until it suddenly is happening precisely as people predicted it to be happening. Everyone runs a meta-agenda nowadays, Meta more than most others.
Seems insufficient to keep Social Security solvent after 2040.
Are the kids alright?
Alternative headline: household spyware cash machine forced to pay $20 for being bad.
If you want to punish Meta then you have to punish the wonder boy who runs it. Not even share holders can fight off the guy spending 80B on the metaverse.
Age verification isn’t misleading is it?
Repeal section 230
“Pay them, in the scheme of things it’s a speeding ticket”
This particular verdict is a long time coming. How it drives meaningful change is the bigger question.
One of the challenges we need to resolve is the race to the bottom for online communities - engagement metrics will always result in a PH level that supports more acerbic behavior.
There’s multiple analyses that you can find, if not your own experience, to believe that we should be able to do better with our information commons.
Just today, I found a paper that studied a corpus of Twitter discussions and found that bad-faith interactions constituted 68.3% of all replies (Twitter data).
The engineer and analyst side of us will always question these types of analyses.
I’ve read enough papers at this point for the methods to matter more than the conclusion.
1) meta, and the other tech platforms need to open up their research and data. NDAs and business incentives prevent us from having the boring technical conversations.
2) tech needs someone else to be the bogeyman - the way we did for tobacco. The profit incentive ensures profitable predatory features pass review. Expecting firms to ignore quarterly shareholder reviews for warm fuzzies is … setting ourselves up for failure.
Regulators (with teeth) need to be propped up so that the right amount of predictable friction (liability) is introduced.
3) tech firms need an opportunity or forum to come clean. The sheer gap between the practical reality of something like content moderation vs the ignorance of users and regulators - results in surprise and outrage when people find out how the sausage is made.
4) algorithm defaults decide the median experience for participants in our shred market place of ideas. The defaults need to be set in a manner that works for humans and society (whatever that might be).
Economies are systems to align incentives to achieve subjective goals.
Now sue them for lobbying against GNU/Linux with CSA, their front lobby.
[dead]
[dead]
[flagged]
LLM slop
As much as everyone hates Meta for selling people's personal data, this is absolutely ridiculous. The hysteria regarding forcing companies do parents' job doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
Requiring ID to browse the internet is doing the parents jobs of managing what their kids are doing online.
Stopping misleading advertisments and mental health issues while claiming to be protecting children is not on the parents. The parents were given the false information to believe their kids would be safe.
Oh please! It’s not about parenting, it’s a cancer on society and now affecting the youngest and also the seniors.