I traced $2B in grants and 45 states' lobbying behind age‑verification bills

https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1rshc1f/i_traced_2_billion_in_nonprofit_grants_and_45/

236•shaicoleman•2h ago

Comments

jwr•1h ago

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.

cosmos0072•1h ago

I am from EU, and contrary to age verification laws in general.

My stance is that if somebody is a minor, his/her/their parents/tutors/legal guardian are responsible for what they can/cannot do online, and that the mechanism to enforce that is parental control on devices.

Having said that, open-source zero-knowledge proofs are infinitely less evil (I refuse to say "better") than commercial cloud-based age monitoring baked into every OS

croes•1h ago

You could make the same case for parental control as evil.

"You‘re reading about evolution! Not in my house"

cosmos0072•1h ago

Parents already have a lot of control on children' education.

Examples: most children believe in the same religion as their parents, and can visit friends and places only if/when allowed by their parents.

This is simply extending the same level of control to the internet.

Government-mandated restrictions are completely another level.

croes•36m ago

Who controls your age if you try to buy alcohol.

Who controls your age if you want to see an R-rated movie?

This is simply extending the same level of control to the internet.

More control for parents is a completely different level.

applfanboysbgon•28m ago

Disingenuous, but I'm sure you know that and were being intentionally so. The government is not using alcohol age laws as a justification to place a camera in your bedroom to make sure you aren't sneaking booze, but it is using internet age laws as a justification to surveil your entire life in a world which is becoming increasingly digital-mandatory to participate in government services or the economy. Nobody had a problem with internet age laws when "are you over 13? yes/no" was legally sufficient.

croes•23m ago

You‘re missing the point

> Having said that, open-source zero-knowledge proofs are infinitely less evil (I refuse to say "better") than commercial cloud-based age monitoring baked into every OS

Parent prefers more control by parents over zero-knowledge proof

applfanboysbgon•5m ago

If that was your point, I don't think your previous comment did a very good job of making it at all.

I do think parental controls can be and are abused for evil, but they're still better than the alternative. Zero-knowledge proof is not an alternative, and to suggest that it is is misunderstanding the situation. These laws are proposed and funded by people who want complete surveillance of the population. Zero-knowledge proof is, therefore, explicitly contrary to the goal and will never be implemented under any circumstances. Suggesting that it can be muddies the issue and tricks people into supporting legislation that exists only to be used against them.

In a benevolent dictatorship, sure, go for a zero-knowledge proof verification as your solution. In the reality of democracy, where politicians are corporate puppets who cloak surveillance laws in "think of the children" to rally support from the masses, we need to convince people to see through the lie and reject the proposals outright while reassuring them that they can protect the children themselves. You will never be able to sufficiently inform 50.1% of the population of any country of what zero-knowledge proof even means, let alone convince them to support age verification laws but only if it is mandated.

heavyset_go•19m ago

There are no laws preventing children from seeing R-rated movies with or without their parents, theaters implement that policy by choice.

tasuki•1h ago

> My stance is that if somebody is a minor, his/her/their parents/tutors/legal guardian are responsible for what they can/cannot do online

As a parent, sure, that is my stance as well. What... what other stances are there even? How would they work?

Markoff•43m ago

ignore parent, outsource parenting to gov verification authority

TBH many parents done exactly that by giving phones/tablet already to kids in strollers

pjc50•35m ago

The steelman argument is that parents are not necessarily up to date on the technology, and cannot reasonably be expected to supervise teenagers 24/7 up to the age of 18. Compare movie ratings or alcohol laws, for example: there's a non-parental obligation on third parties not to provide alcohol to children or let them in to R18 showings.

But the implementation matters, and almost all of these bills internationally are being done in bad faith by coordinated big-money groups against technologically illiterate and reactionary populist governments.

(if we really want to get into an argument, there's what the UK calls "Gillick competence": the ability of children to seek medical treatment without the knowledge and against the will of their parents)

_heimdall•29m ago

That steelman still stands on a core assumption that its both the state's responsibility and right to step in and parent on everyone's behalf.

Maybe a majority of people today agree with that, but I know I don't and I never hear that assumption debated directly.

himata4113•51m ago

Yes! This is the way, give parents the ABILITY to advertise the users age to browsers, apps and everything in between. Only target cooperations, do not target open source projects. Fine websites for not using this API (ex: porn sites). Assume an adult if not present.

idiotsecant•37m ago

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.

simion314•13m ago

>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 actually want to prevent laws to be created could make it easy for a parent to setup the account for a child (most children this days have mobile stuff and consoles so they could start with those), we just need the browsers to read the age flag from the OS and put it in a header, then the websites owners can respect that flag.

I know that someone would say that some clever teen would crack their locked down windows/linux to change the flag but this is a super rare case, we should start with the 99% cases, mobile phones and consoles are already locked down so an OS API that tells the browser if this is an child account and a browser header would solve the issue, most porn websites or similar adult sites would have no reason not to respect this header , it would make their job easier then say Steam having to always popup a birth date thing when a game is mature.

himata4113•6m ago

That's why I suggested kernel enforced security (simple syscall) that applications could implement and are incredibly hard to spoof / create tools and workarounds for, but I got downvoted to hell.

Permission restricted registry entry (already exists) and a syscall that reads it (already exists) for windows and a file that requires sudo to edit (already exists) and a syscall to read it (already exists). Works on every distro automatically as well including android phones since they run the linux kernel anyway. Apple can figure it out and they already have appleid.

fn-mote•27m ago

> Fine websites for not using this API (ex: porn sites).

Recent posters here are clear that porn sites are setting every available signal that they are serving adult-only content.

According to them, you are targeting the wrong audience.

Facebook/Instagram studying how to get young users addicted should be of greater concern. I have my doubts about the effectiveness of age-based blocking there, though.

edgyquant•5m ago

Both are problems, porn sites have also targeted children and any non-enforced age “verification” on these sites is simply plausible deniability that isn’t plausible at all

heavyset_go•23m ago

> Having said that, open-source zero-knowledge proofs are infinitely less evil (I refuse to say "better") than commercial cloud-based age monitoring baked into every OS

To be honest, I worry that the framing of this legislation and ZKP generally presents a false dichotomy, where second-option bias[1] prevails because of the draconian first option.

There's always another option: don't implement age verification laws at all.

App and website developers shouldn't be burdened with extra costly liability to make sure someone's kids don't read a curse word, parents can use the plethora of parental controls on the market if they're that worried.

[1] https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Appeal_to_the_minority#Second-...

teekert•16m ago

"mechanism to enforce that is parental control on devices."

Meh, I use it, but it's super annoying and I think that with my Daughter I'll take a different approach (but it will be some years before that is relevant).

On Android: The kid can easily go on Snapchat (after approval of install of course, and then you can just see their "friends") before Pokemon Go (just a pain to get working, it keeps presenting some borked version which led to a lot of confusion at first). I just lied about his age in a bunch of places at some point. Snapchat is horrible and sick from our experiences in the first week.

On Windows: It's a curated set of websites (and no FireFox) or access to everything. It's not even workable for just school. Granting kids access to our own minercraft servers: My god, I felt dirty about what the other parents had to go through to enable that.

lynx97•15m ago

Same here, EU citizen who thinks parents should do some parenting, after all. However, try to confront "modern" parents with your position. Many of them will fight you immediately, because they think the state is supposed to do their work... Its a very concerning development.

axegon_•1h ago

Though the EU is at large keeping it's composure with this. My only criticism towards the EU as an EU citizen is how slow and bureaucratic the EU is and that decisions that should be made on the fly are dragged on forever.

That said, government agencies have been doing a terrible job at keeping the private information of citizens safe. But it is nowhere nearly as bad as the US. My best childhood friend died in very questionable circumstances in 2009 in the US in very questionable circumstances. He had a US citizenship and we never really found out what had happened(to the point where we never really got any definitive proof that he had died). But that didn't stop me from trying and I was blown away by the fact that I could log into a US government website, register with a burner mail, pay 2 bucks with an anonymous gift credit/debit card and get a scanned copy of his death certificate in my email. And I didn't even have to provide his passport/id/anything. Just his name.

Point is, the US has been terrible at privacy for as long as I can remember. It is probably worse now with Facebook and Ellison holding TikTok.

pjc50•51m ago

The critical thing is not so much "Americans" as "big money". Big Russian money is also a threat. Big Chinese money .. well, there's a bit of that about, but it doesn't seem to have shown up at the legislation influencing layer.

axegon_•41m ago

Oh, that's a different topic: as someone from and living in eastern Europe, there's not a single doubt in my mind that the biggest threat to any civilization is russia by a long shot. The alarming part is that the current US administration hasn't got a single clue of history, suffers from chronic incompetence and the whole superiority complex and fanboying russia as a consequence - those pose a threat. In the context of the conversation, the incompetence is arguably the biggest facepalm moment.

lionkor•37m ago

> the biggest threat to any civilization is russia

Surely you meant this as hyperbole, right? If not, I would love your reasoning as to why its a bigger threat than literally anything and anyone else.

axegon_•10m ago

> someone from and living in eastern Europe

Reasoning: experience.

mrob•45m ago

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

choo-t•42m ago

Even with ZKP this is still highly problematic, it create difficulty for undocumented people to access the web, create ton of phishing opportunity, reinforce censorship on most site (as they will now all need to be minor compliant or need age verification), reinforce the chilling effect and make the web even less crawlable/archivable (or you need to give a valid citizen ID to your crawler/archiver).

With no proof it will protect anyone from proven harm.

attila-lendvai•29m ago

it's not about protecting children. that's only the PR.

once you get this you stop asking why the tech details are the way they are.

simonebrunozzi•1h ago

Not surprisingly, Meta is possibly the worst "offender" behind funding of these campaigns.

lotsofpulp•1h ago

I’m curious why Meta would benefit. Meta seems wholly unnecessary, the verification can be done at the OS level, completely in the hands of Apple/Alphabet and maybe Microsoft.

If anything, Meta’s utility would seem to shrink if the OS handles proof of being a real person.

wil421•56m ago

Liability and they probably want whatever blob of bits they use to identify you from the OS.

negroesrnegro•56m ago

because upstart competitors cant afford the verification process / lobbying efforts next instagram wont be bought out, it cant even begin to exist

pjc50•53m ago

Meta get to impose verified ID on everyone and link it to their advertisers, AND kill competing networks.

c0balt•51m ago

Regulatory capture through a higher barrier to entry. Any social media platform that wants to compete with Meta's portfolio will now also need to have an age-verification system in place (which is guaranteed to introduce higher costs). Meta can likely afford to eat the costs here as a tradeoff for the higher impact on smaller players.

It also gives them more information on users as a bonus. Further, verification with a real ID is also a quite effective barrier against excessive bots.

lotsofpulp•45m ago

I would think the barrier to entry gets lower because Apple/Alphabet handle age verification, and they let apps/websites use that verification.

heavyset_go•9m ago

Look beyond the CA law, states have already passed laws that put the liability on app and website developers to ensure users aren't kids, there's no passing the buck to Apple or Google.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/12/congresss-crusade-age-...

willis936•24m ago

Meta's entire business model lives on ad deals that are not on the frontend. They are in the data business and this campaign is to get access to more data without an option to opt out. Who takes the data doesn't really matter.

heavyset_go•11m ago

AI companies are also donating tens of millions to these PACs and others that are promoting age verification laws, it lets them sell AI content rating systems using their models.

Terr_•1h ago

Oh look, the Heritage Foundation, the ones who wrote up the "Project 2025" agenda for most of the corruption and authoritarianism that has plagued America in the last year.

The very last people you should trust when it comes to "protecting the children."

turbinemonkey•1h ago

Heritage has been laying waste to America my whole life. They basically planned all of Reagan's legislative agenda, too, just like Project 2025 is doing today. In very real ways, they and their vision are America (a system is what it does, not what it says it does).

bluescrn•41m ago

To me it feels that the age verfication (adult de-anonymisation) push, at least in Europe, is coming more from the increasingly-authoritarian left as a reaction to the rise of the online right and Musk's Twitter.

(Maybe some unspoken element of concern over social media bots, too - as they evolve from spamming copy+pasted comments to being near-indistinguisable from actual human accounts?)

turbinemonkey•1h ago

    Compare this to what the EU built. The EU Digital Identity Wallet under eIDAS 2.0 is open-source, self-hostable, and uses zero-knowledge proofs. You can prove you're over 18 without revealing your birth date, your name, or anything else. No per-check fees, no proprietary SDKs, no data going to a vendor's cloud. The EU's Digital Services Act puts age verification obligations on Very Large Online Platforms (45M+ monthly users), not on operating systems. FOSS projects that don't act as intermediary services are explicitly outside scope. Micro and small enterprises get additional exemptions.

    The US bills assume every operating system is built by a corporation with the infrastructure and revenue to absorb these costs. The EU started from the opposite assumption and built accordingly.

Just another reminder of how we need to protect what we have in the EU (not a guarantee, but at least a chance of fair dealing and a sustained commitment to civic values). Now that the mask has fully fallen, we have to take every step possible to root out American influence.

sidewndr46•44m ago

Isn't eIDAS the same technology stack that would put the government in total control of what websites you can view & what ones you can't?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualified_website_authenticati...

turbinemonkey•33m ago

QWACs exist to provide a more stringent and user-accessible way to assert a website's identity, mostly to foil phishing and other exploits that regular certificate systems don't address well. Where does this cross into censorship at all?

sidewndr46•29m ago

When the government decides not to issue certificates to websites they don't like.

turbinemonkey•18m ago

Oh, stop. Tinfoil-hatting like this is how privacy and internet freedom activism gets a bad rap.

QWAC certs are only for "high value" sites: banks, government services, etc. They can only be issued by "Qualified Trust Service Providers" (e.g. digisign, D-TRUST, etc -- not governments), and cost many hundreds of euros. Your blog and mastodon instance and 98% of businesses just aren't affected.

People operating in "high risk" sectors that need access to payment infra (porn, drugs, etc) are, as always, going to have a hard time. That's a worthy conversation, but nothing about QWAC or eIDAS is about "the government not issuing certs to people they don't like".

Chance-Device•1h ago

TLDR: Meta want to push all the age verification requirements onto the OS makers (Apple, Google, everyone else gets caught in the crossfire) so that they don’t have to do anything AND they want it done in such a way that they can use it to profile people to push them targeted ads.

Its like they want to keep being seen as the bad guys.

chongli•1h ago

I think this is also a way of getting ahead of any “ban social media for teens and preteens” bills that might pop up in the US. They do not want repeats of Australia! By adding age verification into the operating system they can deflect responsibility but also respond to legislators with a scalpel rather than getting sledge-hammered.

user_7832•7m ago

…Honestly this seems something very likely, more than the other suggestions.

2OEH8eoCRo0•27m ago

I want age verification but not at the OS level.

nobodyandproud•56m ago

Jesus. As an American I can do my part, but it’s not much.

$70 million is chump change for Meta, yet is far more money than I’ll ever have and does so much to influence state legislation.

close04•52m ago

This truly is the best democracy money can buy. As long as money and/or favors change hands in exchange for getting favorable laws passed, it's just legalized bribery and buying off your own "democracy".

And it snowballs, the more favorable laws someone buys, the more favorable their position, and the more they can buy in the future. The transition from "democratic facade" to "outright oligarchy" will be swift and seamless.

anymouse123456•44m ago

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.

user_7832•8m ago

Honestly, like the Left-pad incident [1], getting things to go suddenly dark is extremely effective at getting people to drop everything else to fix an issue.

Ideally, getting these servers to auto turn off the day this goes into effect ("In compliance with this new law, Linux is now temporarily unusable. Please <call to action>.") would be glorious for getting the bill staved off, or killed.

It would hurt some productivity, but that is a risk these lawmakers taking donations are probably willing to make.

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Npm_left-pad_incident

b112•38m ago

How much do you want to bet that Amutable, via its founder's control of the systemd codebase and ability to drive change, will be first-in-line to force a switch to its variant of systemd, along with a module for age verification?

I don't see it as coincidence that with all these laws passing, suddenly he announces a secure, "controlled", "locked down" version of systemd. Why, RedHat and Ubuntu can simply drop in this new variant, pay a small fee, and be done with compliance.

d--b•19m ago

The guy posted a Ask HN there:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47361235

https://github.com/upper-up/meta-lobbying-and-other-findings...

thiago_fm•11m ago

America will just get behind even more as years pass behind Europe in terms of proper regulation of the digital economy, which benefits citizens instead of companies and rich billionaries.

The reason is that europeans have nothing to win from those "winner-take-all" platforms the US has built in the past decades. Europe has built zero of them.

It contributes very little to Europe's GDP or the overall being of the european. And in some cases, it eats Europe's GDP, moving economic activity back to the US. This is different than for Americans which big tech is a net-positive contributor to society in my POV, mainly because how much economic activity $ it generates.

Big techs provide huge paychecks and made a lot of people rich in the US, and most of its GDP growth in the last decade. But it's a double-edged sword.

They will make laws in favor of them in detriment of the average American, while minting more billionaries than Europe could ever dream of.

Europe will take a long time to get the digital revolution the US already did, but it'll mostly come from regulations and government initiatives. And will be net-positive for humans living in Euope, not for owners of corporations.

bix6•10m ago

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?

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Prompt-caching – auto-injects Anthropic cache breakpoints (90% token savings)

Willingness to look stupid

Source code of Swedish e-government services has been leaked

TUI Studio – visual terminal UI design tool

Executing programs inside transformers with exponentially faster inference

Malus – Clean Room as a Service

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Prefix sums at gigabytes per second with ARM NEON

Enhancing gut-brain communication reversed cognitive decline in aging mice

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An old photo of a large BBS (2022)

What we learned from a 22-Day storage bug (and how we fixed it)

Understanding the Go Runtime: The Scheduler

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