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I didn't see it that way. It seems like NGOs and IGOs have been pushing for internet restrictions for a long time. There has suddenly been a push for age restri

I didn't see it that way. It seems like NGOs and IGOs have been pushing for internet restrictions for a long time. There has suddenly been a push for age restrictions allegedly because of abuse material. This happens annually. Some international group claims there needs to be something draconian abolishing encryption, or some other privacy invading measure to stop child abuse and help security. The laws are 1000s of pages and appear out of nowhere and we're expected to believe it's organic and that politicians are deeply concerned about the issue. So it really wouldn't be hard for the same legal framework that restricts age to happen in the US. It just takes compliance on our part. The UK is just one tentacle of the legal bureaucracy. It wouldn't surprise me if a bill appears called the Online Child Safey Act or something like that soon and it happens to coincide with a bunch of issues Ofcom raises in this lawsuit.

toofy 7mo ago
> It seems like NGOs and IGOs have been pushing for internet restrictions for a long time. There has suddenly been a push for age restrictions allegedly because of abuse material. This happens annually. we’re seeing some good evidence the most recent pushes were secretly funded and directly written by meta, the corporation. [0][1] according to the link in there, > Rep. Kim Carver (R-Bossier City), the sponsor of Louisiana's HB-570, publicly confirmed that a Meta lobbyist brought the legislative language directly to her. and they’ve put as much as 2 billion dollars into it. and yes, that’s billion, with a B. corporations openai, meta, and google were absolutely backing the push for the age verification bill in california and ohio. [2][3][4] [0] https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/reddit-user-uncovers-behind-meta-154717384.html https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/reddit-user-uncovers-beh... [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47361235 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47361235 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45244049 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45244049 [3] https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/13/california-advances-effort-to-check-kids-ages-online-amid-safety-concerns-00563005 https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/13/california-advances... [4] https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/meta-google-back-different-ohio-103000757.html https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/meta-google-back-differe...
- intended 7mo ago
  Reading the original research and stripping away the motives implied by the bot, the data is aligned with another interpretation. Namely that Meta is going with the flow and using the opportunity to push for regulation that impact its interests less, while affecting its competitors more. The original research is riddled with baked in conclusions, and has not been verified independently. Its also mostly LLM generated.
- Aurornis 7mo ago
  > and they’ve put as much as 2 billion dollars into it. and yes, that’s billion, with a B. The original report that cited the $2 billion number was AI generated slop. The $2 billion number wasn't from Meta, it was from Arabella Advisors. The AI-generated report showed only about $20-30 million in lobbying efforts per year across all lobbying. Even the Show HN post was full of AI slop, claiming things like "months of research" when the Claude-generated report showed it began a couple days prior. So please stop repeating this AI generated junk. It dilutes any real story and the obvious falsehoods make it easy for critics to dismiss.
  - w4der 7mo ago
    > only about $20-30 million That is still an absurd amount of money
    - Aurornis 7mo ago
      That’s on all lobbying efforts combined. It’s not out of line for a company of that scale that is trying to do things like build data centers and other such activities. There’s a motte-and-bailey fallacy happening with that “Meta spent $2 billion” report where the $2 billion number is used as a hook but then replaced with a different argument if the other parties are observant enough to see that it’s BS
    - pc86 7mo ago
      What's absurd is lying by two orders of magnitude and expecting people not to completely ignore everything you have to say because of that.
intended 7mo ago
India is considering these bans. I suspect every country in the world is thinking of them. I work in safety, and you are right in that this comes up every year. The pressures have been building up and it’s coming to a head. However: 0) Techlash is a thing, and HN regularly underestimates the vehemence and anger behind it. 1) There IS an organic component, driven by voters globally. 2) It is also meta and governments, taking advantage of a crisis to further their ends. Governments globally are tending towards authoritarianism. Tech firms impact most of the world, but are barely responsive to even the American government. Voters around the world are increasingly terrified of what tech is doing, while tech is entirely unresponsive to their concerns. Tech is very firmly the bad guy today, when it used to be the “good guy” in the 90s. So governments are more than happy to be seen as putting tech in its place, while gaining more power for themselves. A few anecdotes about how bad the safety side is: NDAs are so prevalent and tech is so averse to customer support, that safety teams have no formal signal sharing methods. The number of requests to recover accounts, point out fraud, or even to address CSAM, that go through WhatsApp, slack, discord, etc. is heart breaking. To be blunt, it’s a Kafkaesque fuck up that the whole world is stuck in, and people are pissed.
- speefers 7mo ago
  [dead]
raverbashing 7mo ago
Honestly there's nothing more corrosive and corrupt than "politics behind the back" from NGOs It's 90% corporate lobbying with a "do gooder" varnish

toofy 7mo ago

> It seems like NGOs and IGOs have been pushing for internet restrictions for a long time. There has suddenly been a push for age restrictions allegedly because of abuse material. This happens annually. we’re seeing some good evidence the most recent pushes were secretly funded and directly written by meta, the corporation. [0][1] according to the link in there, > Rep. Kim Carver (R-Bossier City), the sponsor of Louisiana's HB-570, publicly confirmed that a Meta lobbyist brought the legislative language directly to her. and they’ve put as much as 2 billion dollars into it. and yes, that’s billion, with a B. corporations openai, meta, and google were absolutely backing the push for the age verification bill in california and ohio. [2][3][4] [0] https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/reddit-user-uncovers-behind-meta-154717384.html https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/reddit-user-uncovers-beh... [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47361235 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47361235 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45244049 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45244049 [3] https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/13/california-advances-effort-to-check-kids-ages-online-amid-safety-concerns-00563005 https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/13/california-advances... [4] https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/meta-google-back-different-ohio-103000757.html https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/meta-google-back-differe...

intended 7mo ago
Reading the original research and stripping away the motives implied by the bot, the data is aligned with another interpretation. Namely that Meta is going with the flow and using the opportunity to push for regulation that impact its interests less, while affecting its competitors more. The original research is riddled with baked in conclusions, and has not been verified independently. Its also mostly LLM generated.
Aurornis 7mo ago
> and they’ve put as much as 2 billion dollars into it. and yes, that’s billion, with a B. The original report that cited the $2 billion number was AI generated slop. The $2 billion number wasn't from Meta, it was from Arabella Advisors. The AI-generated report showed only about $20-30 million in lobbying efforts per year across all lobbying. Even the Show HN post was full of AI slop, claiming things like "months of research" when the Claude-generated report showed it began a couple days prior. So please stop repeating this AI generated junk. It dilutes any real story and the obvious falsehoods make it easy for critics to dismiss.
- w4der 7mo ago
  > only about $20-30 million That is still an absurd amount of money
  - Aurornis 7mo ago
    That’s on all lobbying efforts combined. It’s not out of line for a company of that scale that is trying to do things like build data centers and other such activities. There’s a motte-and-bailey fallacy happening with that “Meta spent $2 billion” report where the $2 billion number is used as a hook but then replaced with a different argument if the other parties are observant enough to see that it’s BS
  - pc86 7mo ago
    What's absurd is lying by two orders of magnitude and expecting people not to completely ignore everything you have to say because of that.

intended 7mo ago

India is considering these bans. I suspect every country in the world is thinking of them. I work in safety, and you are right in that this comes up every year. The pressures have been building up and it’s coming to a head. However: 0) Techlash is a thing, and HN regularly underestimates the vehemence and anger behind it. 1) There IS an organic component, driven by voters globally. 2) It is also meta and governments, taking advantage of a crisis to further their ends. Governments globally are tending towards authoritarianism. Tech firms impact most of the world, but are barely responsive to even the American government. Voters around the world are increasingly terrified of what tech is doing, while tech is entirely unresponsive to their concerns. Tech is very firmly the bad guy today, when it used to be the “good guy” in the 90s. So governments are more than happy to be seen as putting tech in its place, while gaining more power for themselves. A few anecdotes about how bad the safety side is: NDAs are so prevalent and tech is so averse to customer support, that safety teams have no formal signal sharing methods. The number of requests to recover accounts, point out fraud, or even to address CSAM, that go through WhatsApp, slack, discord, etc. is heart breaking. To be blunt, it’s a Kafkaesque fuck up that the whole world is stuck in, and people are pissed.

speefers 7mo ago
[dead]

raverbashing 7mo ago

Honestly there's nothing more corrosive and corrupt than "politics behind the back" from NGOs It's 90% corporate lobbying with a "do gooder" varnish