Well this is truly bad.
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@cwebber It may just be old fashioned authoritarianism too, I guess. Very convenient for politicians if all online speech can be tied back to individuals through official ID.
@duncan_bayne @cwebber but the politicians are rarely tech savvy enough to come up with the wording. It is often given to them.
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@duncan_bayne @cwebber but the politicians are rarely tech savvy enough to come up with the wording. It is often given to them.
@chantaryu2 @cwebber Oh yeah. Meta and others are definitely involved. But it might not be cash changing hands, just the possibility of universal surveillance.
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@chantaryu2 @cwebber Oh yeah. Meta and others are definitely involved. But it might not be cash changing hands, just the possibility of universal surveillance.
@duncan_bayne @cwebber why not both?

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Well this is truly bad. US national level OS-level age verification bill. https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/8250/all-info
The text of it isn't out yet.
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Well this is truly bad. US national level OS-level age verification bill. https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/8250/all-info
The text of it isn't out yet.
@cwebber They'll release 900 pages of dense legalese the night before the vote, and nobody will read it but they'll all vote on it and there will be just enough Democrats crossing the aisle to make it pass.
I remember the PATRIOT Act.
Before anyone attacks me for being a cynic and shutting down progress: Use this information to your advantage and harass the fuck out of your Congresspeople, as I will be.
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R relay@relay.an.exchange shared this topic
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Well this is truly bad. US national level OS-level age verification bill. https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/8250/all-info
The text of it isn't out yet.
@cwebber whoever pushes this cyberfascist idea needs to be jailed for Crimes against Humanity!
- EVERYONE needs to REFUSE TO COMPLY as a matter of principle!!!
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We don't know who's funding this stuff for sure, there was the vibecoded analysis that came to the conclusion of Meta, but I suspect that could be true but Meta wouldn't be alone.
Who stands to benefit from this? A lot of forces of centralization, and anti-LGBTQ orgs:
- Microsoft, for sure, since they are seeing Windows' dominance threatened?
- Apple, for similar reasons?
- Peter Theil and similar surveillance company owners and operators?
- Anti-queer orgs and think tanks like the Heritage Foundation?
- Cloudflare, who will probably run the age verification paywalls everyone will be forced to deploy?Who's behind this? Who's getting politicians so excited about it? There's such a swell of bipartisan support seemingly out of nowhere, and my suspicion is a lot of that enthusiasm is coming from check-writing.
So who's behind it?
@cwebber You forgot #NSAbook / #StasiBook / #Facebook (I refuse to call it "#Meta!") who want to criminalize the #Fediverse and other decentralized competition!
- Same goes for any other business that may get treatened by it!
- EVERYONE needs to REFUSE TO COMPLY!
Kevin Karhan (@kkarhan@jorts.horse)
@cwebber@social.coop whoever pushes this cyberfascist idea needs to be jailed for Crimes against Humanity! - *EVERYONE* needs to *REFUSE TO COMPLY* as a matter of principle!!! https://jorts.horse/@kkarhan/116408661032102186
jorts.horse (jorts.horse)
- Same goes for any other business that may get treatened by it!
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The fascist playbook is to use the pigs to kill the people who oppose the regime, and to use censorship to silence those who would support them.
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@cwebber It may just be old fashioned authoritarianism too, I guess. Very convenient for politicians if all online speech can be tied back to individuals through official ID.
-
We don't know who's funding this stuff for sure, there was the vibecoded analysis that came to the conclusion of Meta, but I suspect that could be true but Meta wouldn't be alone.
Who stands to benefit from this? A lot of forces of centralization, and anti-LGBTQ orgs:
- Microsoft, for sure, since they are seeing Windows' dominance threatened?
- Apple, for similar reasons?
- Peter Theil and similar surveillance company owners and operators?
- Anti-queer orgs and think tanks like the Heritage Foundation?
- Cloudflare, who will probably run the age verification paywalls everyone will be forced to deploy?Who's behind this? Who's getting politicians so excited about it? There's such a swell of bipartisan support seemingly out of nowhere, and my suspicion is a lot of that enthusiasm is coming from check-writing.
So who's behind it?
The name Elon comes to mind
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D dantescanline@autonomous.zone shared this topic
R relay@relay.publicsquare.global shared this topic -
We don't know who's funding this stuff for sure, there was the vibecoded analysis that came to the conclusion of Meta, but I suspect that could be true but Meta wouldn't be alone.
Who stands to benefit from this? A lot of forces of centralization, and anti-LGBTQ orgs:
- Microsoft, for sure, since they are seeing Windows' dominance threatened?
- Apple, for similar reasons?
- Peter Theil and similar surveillance company owners and operators?
- Anti-queer orgs and think tanks like the Heritage Foundation?
- Cloudflare, who will probably run the age verification paywalls everyone will be forced to deploy?Who's behind this? Who's getting politicians so excited about it? There's such a swell of bipartisan support seemingly out of nowhere, and my suspicion is a lot of that enthusiasm is coming from check-writing.
So who's behind it?
@cwebber I would assume it is not the platform owners (Apple and Microsoft) because their prior arguments have been that the social media companies should be doing the verification.
And the social media companies want the platform owners to do the age verification.
Neither group realizes we don’t need age verification at all, but when it comes to a bill that requires OS owners to build in age verification it wouldn’t make sense that Apple and Microsoft would be lobbying for it.
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Well this is truly bad. US national level OS-level age verification bill. https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/8250/all-info
The text of it isn't out yet.
@cwebber I think I'll say I'm 184.
It's an absurd and dangerous thing.
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We don't know who's funding this stuff for sure, there was the vibecoded analysis that came to the conclusion of Meta, but I suspect that could be true but Meta wouldn't be alone.
Who stands to benefit from this? A lot of forces of centralization, and anti-LGBTQ orgs:
- Microsoft, for sure, since they are seeing Windows' dominance threatened?
- Apple, for similar reasons?
- Peter Theil and similar surveillance company owners and operators?
- Anti-queer orgs and think tanks like the Heritage Foundation?
- Cloudflare, who will probably run the age verification paywalls everyone will be forced to deploy?Who's behind this? Who's getting politicians so excited about it? There's such a swell of bipartisan support seemingly out of nowhere, and my suspicion is a lot of that enthusiasm is coming from check-writing.
So who's behind it?
@cwebber Move fast, break things and f**k the public.
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Well this is truly bad. US national level OS-level age verification bill. https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/8250/all-info
The text of it isn't out yet.
@cwebber Putting aside the obvious privacy concerns, a big question is "what *is* an operating system?"
Do medical or industrial devices need to verify age? Do any of the appliance IoT devices like security cameras, ovens, washing machines, etc etc need to verify a users age? They all run some sort of operating system. Sometimes a pretty advanced one at that.
If not then what if I build a custom embedded linux distro using yocto for myself to browse the web? Does it need to verify age? What about nixOS or arch?
Any law about this is going to have vague definitions and unequal enforcement. Which may be the whole point actually.
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We don't know who's funding this stuff for sure, there was the vibecoded analysis that came to the conclusion of Meta, but I suspect that could be true but Meta wouldn't be alone.
Who stands to benefit from this? A lot of forces of centralization, and anti-LGBTQ orgs:
- Microsoft, for sure, since they are seeing Windows' dominance threatened?
- Apple, for similar reasons?
- Peter Theil and similar surveillance company owners and operators?
- Anti-queer orgs and think tanks like the Heritage Foundation?
- Cloudflare, who will probably run the age verification paywalls everyone will be forced to deploy?Who's behind this? Who's getting politicians so excited about it? There's such a swell of bipartisan support seemingly out of nowhere, and my suspicion is a lot of that enthusiasm is coming from check-writing.
So who's behind it?
@cwebber in Europe the corresponding law was just defeated yet again 2 weeks ago and had been spearheaded by Thorn (Ashton Kutcher's org, and it "happens" to be an age verification vendor) along with lobbyists for FAANG companies. We've had to shoot down Chat Control 1.0 so many times in the past year and they're already pushing hard on Chat Control 2.0. So expect similar players behind the US version and a long fight. There is a lot of money in age verification, the associated data, and the power of gatekeeping. They're not going to let go of this agenda easily, especially given that the US is led by gullible zealots who desperately need to appear by the midterms as if they care about child sexual exploitation. So the lobbyists have leverage rn to railroad this through in the US if we don't pushback hard and fast.
To bootstrap, anti-Chat Control orgs such as https://fightchatcontrol.eu/ have helpful talking points and templates that can be adapted.
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We don't know who's funding this stuff for sure, there was the vibecoded analysis that came to the conclusion of Meta, but I suspect that could be true but Meta wouldn't be alone.
Who stands to benefit from this? A lot of forces of centralization, and anti-LGBTQ orgs:
- Microsoft, for sure, since they are seeing Windows' dominance threatened?
- Apple, for similar reasons?
- Peter Theil and similar surveillance company owners and operators?
- Anti-queer orgs and think tanks like the Heritage Foundation?
- Cloudflare, who will probably run the age verification paywalls everyone will be forced to deploy?Who's behind this? Who's getting politicians so excited about it? There's such a swell of bipartisan support seemingly out of nowhere, and my suspicion is a lot of that enthusiasm is coming from check-writing.
So who's behind it?
@cwebber the whole ds industry would benefit. Some service doing age verification with a payment is a pretty strong tell tale.
You the guarantee, by law, you are showing ads to adult who can make impulsive purchase. Or to kids, who will get very differenf ads, to bother their parents until they buy the stuff. -
@cwebber It may just be old fashioned authoritarianism too, I guess. Very convenient for politicians if all online speech can be tied back to individuals through official ID.
@duncan_bayne @cwebber it's this.
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We don't know who's funding this stuff for sure, there was the vibecoded analysis that came to the conclusion of Meta, but I suspect that could be true but Meta wouldn't be alone.
Who stands to benefit from this? A lot of forces of centralization, and anti-LGBTQ orgs:
- Microsoft, for sure, since they are seeing Windows' dominance threatened?
- Apple, for similar reasons?
- Peter Theil and similar surveillance company owners and operators?
- Anti-queer orgs and think tanks like the Heritage Foundation?
- Cloudflare, who will probably run the age verification paywalls everyone will be forced to deploy?Who's behind this? Who's getting politicians so excited about it? There's such a swell of bipartisan support seemingly out of nowhere, and my suspicion is a lot of that enthusiasm is coming from check-writing.
So who's behind it?
@cwebber an entire industry exists to monitor and enforce and gatekeep and curtail human sociotechnical choices and free will with technical governance.

Lots of folks will bank. Lots. Think of the recurring durable revenue of enforcement. Naturally free humans and their lifecycles of choices is the renewable resource being mucked with.

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If *I* were an investigative journalist, this is a piece I'd be pouring a lot of energy into. I know we have a few investigative journalists on here... maybe someone wants to take it up?
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M mttaggart@infosec.exchange shared this topic