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People use the word "conspiracy theory" as a shield against their own ignorance. "If I don't know about it, if it sounds 'spooky' to me, it must be because it'

by gslepak 6mo ago

People use the word "conspiracy theory" as a shield against their own ignorance. "If I don't know about it, if it sounds 'spooky' to me, it must be because it's a conspiracy theory, and therefore it is wrong," is essentially what runs through their minds. The reality is that top-down legislation is the norm rather than the exception, and there is plenty of evidence. It's not written by Joe on the street. It's not organic. It is top-down and imposed. This is what @kdheiwns rightly observes here, and in other fields like how all of a sudden every car manufacturer just up and decided simultaneously that it was a good thing to install spyware into all of their cars.

slg 6mo ago
Who do you think is behind this? That is the question no one is answering here and why people are calling it a conspiracy theory. And the car manufacturers all decided to install spyware because it made them money. That's just capitalism.
- gslepak 6mo ago
  > And the car manufacturers all decided to install spyware because it made them money. That just capitalism. Yes, you are right, it must be "capitalism" at fault. The sort of capitalism where nobody asks for the product, nobody wants the product, and yet somehow the product is the only choice you have.
  - slg 6mo ago
    It's very noticeable that this is the part of my comment you responded to and not the question of who is behind all this. That is why people consider this stuff conspiracy theories. You aren't analyzing the various parties and what motivates them. You're just seeing a result you don't understand and jumping to the conclusion that it's only possible if there is some unknown shadowy group behind it all. If anyone here is trying to create a "shield against their own ignorance"...
    - gslepak 6mo ago
      If that's the conclusion you'd like to walk away with, be my guest. ^_^
    - fc417fc802 6mo ago
      There's no requirement to name specific parties in order to make observations. Regardless of motivation it's clear from past examples that laws simply do not form across international borders in this manner. The lobbying is plain as day. What is your motivation for denying the obvious?
      - slg 6mo ago
        >What is your motivation for denying the obvious? Comments like this don’t make you folks sound less like “conspiracy theorists”. It’s also a tone that tells me that you aren’t going to approach anything I say in good faith so there is no point in me trying to engage with you on the topic anymore.
        gslepak 6mo ago
        Written by sig a few minutes ago: > It's very noticeable that this is the part of my comment you responded to and not the question How funny you won't answer his question now. I'm also curious, what is your motivation for denying the obvious?
        pessimizer 6mo ago
        It's so aggravating to have to have arguments about whether some coordinated political push is happening due to money being spent. Literally every coordinated political push, at least ones with any success, is consciously planned and lobbied for, even the ones that I support. I don't get pretending that no one is behind it. There are definitely people sitting in conference rooms in front of whiteboards trying to come up with ideas on how to do it most effectively. But people compartmentalize so hard, some people in that room would call you a conspiracy theorist for pointing out the meeting that they are currently attending. "I just do social media for a nonprofit. No, there's nothing wrong with us getting 90% of our funding from the US government, you're just a cynic. What evidence is there that we are working on their behalf? Do you think social media is good for teenagers?!"
- AnonymousPlanet 6mo ago
  > Who do you think is behind this? Anyone who is interested in connecting an identity with every computer on the internet, like a tamper proof license plate for computers. Just ask local law enforcement. There has been a growing awareness for the possibilities of foreign states to manipulate social media and other platforms with fake personas. So any kind of counter intelligence would be interested as well. There have been numerous incidents of politicians trying to go after critical posts using defamation laws. Often enough the investigations find a dead end when the account can't be connected with an ID. Religious advocacy groups have been more and more aggressive in trying to censor the internet, e.g. this Australian one that boasted having pushed Mastercard and Visa to enforce age verification https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jul/29/mastercard-visa-backlash-adult-games-removed-online-stores-steam-itchio-ntwnfb https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jul/29/mastercard-vis... So the list of suspects is actually long. I wouldn't be surprised if this was a very broad lobbying campaign that very easily finds local interest groups to help them meet the right law makers.
  - slg 6mo ago
    Do you not see how this comment is actually counterproductive to the point you’re arguing? The long list of suspects, most of them being totally independent of each other is evidence of this not being orchestrated by some central group.
    - gslepak 6mo ago
      And yet, it is all part of a script. The future, without naming names, without knowing names, without pointing fingers, can somehow still be known and seen. So is that a conspiracy? Even if it looks like many disparate groups, clearly there is a central script, and if there's a central script, there must be a central author of that script.
      - slg 6mo ago
        >And yet, it is all part of a script. You, AnonymousPlanet, and fc417fc802 are all responding to me in very similar ways and yet I'm not accusing you of reading from the same script or being puppeteered by the same person/group. This is because I can recognize that people can have the same thought process without any active collaboration. And yet I would have just as much evidence to make those accusations as the evidence that you provided here that all these laws have the same shady origin.
- fc417fc802 6mo ago
  > Who do you think is behind this? I don't recall off the top of my head but in past HN threads the global lobbyists for this were named with evidence. It's intriguing to me how there's seemingly a lot of objections in this thread to the idea that this movement was driven by lobbyists. I realize it's skirting the guidelines but the tone here comes across as some sort of astroturfing particularly when I consider the general tone of past threads on the same topic within the past few months.
  - slg 6mo ago
    Lobbyists don’t lobby just to lobby, they lobby on behalf of someone paying them. So this doesn’t actually answer the question, it just shifts it to “Who is behind the lobbyists?”
    - fc417fc802 6mo ago
      No kidding. I'm saying that those parties were mentioned in past threads and that I don't recall the details.
      - AnonymousPlanet 6mo ago
        It doesn't matter what you answer, slg will always try to use the way you answered to argue against you, not the substance. This person seems to be only interested in derailing the conversation.
      - philistine 6mo ago
        You're decrying this supposed issue, that multiple countries are all copying one another for legislation. You've repeated this multiple times in these comments. And yet, after all this, you're not interested enough to remember who's behind this important issue for you. If someone really cares they should get informed.
        card_zero 6mo ago
        So they don't really care, so what. It's Meta who are supposedly lobbying.
austin-cheney 6mo ago
Maybe it is spooky. I don't know and don't care. I will wait for evidence.
- pessimizer 6mo ago
  If you're proud of incuriousness, you'll never see evidence. I think I should be looking for evidence of the push being organic. I don't see it pushed anywhere but from the top down, even at sometimes heavy political costs to the incumbent leaders who are pushing it. You should always be asking who politicians are serving. You seem to comfortable with thinking that they must be serving some part of the electorate without actually needing to identify that part. A lot of people think social media is bad for teenagers. There are a lot of things that are bad for teenagers that we aren't making any particular, coordinated effort to ban.

by gslepak 6mo ago

slg 6mo ago

Who do you think is behind this? That is the question no one is answering here and why people are calling it a conspiracy theory. And the car manufacturers all decided to install spyware because it made them money. That's just capitalism.

gslepak 6mo ago
> And the car manufacturers all decided to install spyware because it made them money. That just capitalism. Yes, you are right, it must be "capitalism" at fault. The sort of capitalism where nobody asks for the product, nobody wants the product, and yet somehow the product is the only choice you have.
- slg 6mo ago
  It's very noticeable that this is the part of my comment you responded to and not the question of who is behind all this. That is why people consider this stuff conspiracy theories. You aren't analyzing the various parties and what motivates them. You're just seeing a result you don't understand and jumping to the conclusion that it's only possible if there is some unknown shadowy group behind it all. If anyone here is trying to create a "shield against their own ignorance"...
  - gslepak 6mo ago
    If that's the conclusion you'd like to walk away with, be my guest. ^_^
  - fc417fc802 6mo ago
    There's no requirement to name specific parties in order to make observations. Regardless of motivation it's clear from past examples that laws simply do not form across international borders in this manner. The lobbying is plain as day. What is your motivation for denying the obvious?
    - slg 6mo ago
      >What is your motivation for denying the obvious? Comments like this don’t make you folks sound less like “conspiracy theorists”. It’s also a tone that tells me that you aren’t going to approach anything I say in good faith so there is no point in me trying to engage with you on the topic anymore.
      - gslepak 6mo ago
        Written by sig a few minutes ago: > It's very noticeable that this is the part of my comment you responded to and not the question How funny you won't answer his question now. I'm also curious, what is your motivation for denying the obvious?
        pessimizer 6mo ago
        It's so aggravating to have to have arguments about whether some coordinated political push is happening due to money being spent. Literally every coordinated political push, at least ones with any success, is consciously planned and lobbied for, even the ones that I support. I don't get pretending that no one is behind it. There are definitely people sitting in conference rooms in front of whiteboards trying to come up with ideas on how to do it most effectively. But people compartmentalize so hard, some people in that room would call you a conspiracy theorist for pointing out the meeting that they are currently attending. "I just do social media for a nonprofit. No, there's nothing wrong with us getting 90% of our funding from the US government, you're just a cynic. What evidence is there that we are working on their behalf? Do you think social media is good for teenagers?!"
AnonymousPlanet 6mo ago
> Who do you think is behind this? Anyone who is interested in connecting an identity with every computer on the internet, like a tamper proof license plate for computers. Just ask local law enforcement. There has been a growing awareness for the possibilities of foreign states to manipulate social media and other platforms with fake personas. So any kind of counter intelligence would be interested as well. There have been numerous incidents of politicians trying to go after critical posts using defamation laws. Often enough the investigations find a dead end when the account can't be connected with an ID. Religious advocacy groups have been more and more aggressive in trying to censor the internet, e.g. this Australian one that boasted having pushed Mastercard and Visa to enforce age verification https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jul/29/mastercard-visa-backlash-adult-games-removed-online-stores-steam-itchio-ntwnfb https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jul/29/mastercard-vis... So the list of suspects is actually long. I wouldn't be surprised if this was a very broad lobbying campaign that very easily finds local interest groups to help them meet the right law makers.
- slg 6mo ago
  Do you not see how this comment is actually counterproductive to the point you’re arguing? The long list of suspects, most of them being totally independent of each other is evidence of this not being orchestrated by some central group.
  - gslepak 6mo ago
    And yet, it is all part of a script. The future, without naming names, without knowing names, without pointing fingers, can somehow still be known and seen. So is that a conspiracy? Even if it looks like many disparate groups, clearly there is a central script, and if there's a central script, there must be a central author of that script.
    - slg 6mo ago
      >And yet, it is all part of a script. You, AnonymousPlanet, and fc417fc802 are all responding to me in very similar ways and yet I'm not accusing you of reading from the same script or being puppeteered by the same person/group. This is because I can recognize that people can have the same thought process without any active collaboration. And yet I would have just as much evidence to make those accusations as the evidence that you provided here that all these laws have the same shady origin.
fc417fc802 6mo ago
> Who do you think is behind this? I don't recall off the top of my head but in past HN threads the global lobbyists for this were named with evidence. It's intriguing to me how there's seemingly a lot of objections in this thread to the idea that this movement was driven by lobbyists. I realize it's skirting the guidelines but the tone here comes across as some sort of astroturfing particularly when I consider the general tone of past threads on the same topic within the past few months.
- slg 6mo ago
  Lobbyists don’t lobby just to lobby, they lobby on behalf of someone paying them. So this doesn’t actually answer the question, it just shifts it to “Who is behind the lobbyists?”
  - fc417fc802 6mo ago
    No kidding. I'm saying that those parties were mentioned in past threads and that I don't recall the details.
    - AnonymousPlanet 6mo ago
      It doesn't matter what you answer, slg will always try to use the way you answered to argue against you, not the substance. This person seems to be only interested in derailing the conversation.
    - philistine 6mo ago
      You're decrying this supposed issue, that multiple countries are all copying one another for legislation. You've repeated this multiple times in these comments. And yet, after all this, you're not interested enough to remember who's behind this important issue for you. If someone really cares they should get informed.
      - card_zero 6mo ago
        So they don't really care, so what. It's Meta who are supposedly lobbying.

austin-cheney 6mo ago

Maybe it is spooky. I don't know and don't care. I will wait for evidence.

pessimizer 6mo ago
If you're proud of incuriousness, you'll never see evidence. I think I should be looking for evidence of the push being organic. I don't see it pushed anywhere but from the top down, even at sometimes heavy political costs to the incumbent leaders who are pushing it. You should always be asking who politicians are serving. You seem to comfortable with thinking that they must be serving some part of the electorate without actually needing to identify that part. A lot of people think social media is bad for teenagers. There are a lot of things that are bad for teenagers that we aren't making any particular, coordinated effort to ban.