[hypeatei]

I'm not sure why Meta's lobbying is harped on so much when all of Big Tech benefits from this; Zuckerberg is just the fall guy. Tech companies love the idea of identity / age verification so they can target ads more effectively. My general feeling is also that privacy is a thorn in their side when it comes to integrating more deeply into people's lives.

There are also state actors at play here who would love if computing without ID became a very niche thing to do. Obviously their top line would be "fighting terrorism" and "saving the children" but in reality we've seen how these organizations (ICE, NSA, etc.) abuse their power and spy on people without warrants.

tl;dr: there is much more at play here than Facebooks interests alone.

[benoau]

Google and Apple certainly don't benefit from this - they can serve more ads, track more data, and assume you're authorized to spend a gazillion dollars in a game if they don't know you're a child.

One example of this was last year when high-profile apps like Candy Crush Saga and Clash of Clans were found to have privacy policies on their websites restricting users to 13+ so they could track and advertise more while their Android and iOS apps were designated for all ages so they could get more downloads.

[hypeatei]

Fair point on the plausible deniability they currently have w.r.t. children. I'm thinking more about the possibilities that open up when software can assume that OSes have this information and start gating access based on it. Once the APIs are there, I fear the internet will turn into a bunch of ID-related prompts before you can do anything. I haven't thought it through fully, but I imagine what we see as benign today like using an Adblocker could actually become more "serious" once they know your identity and can seek damages... we see companies wanting to use the legal system in Germany for example when people find a connection string in plaintext on the client instead of just fixing the security hole.

It seems like a more lucrative path to go down even if you lose the under-18 crowd gambling / watching ads on your platform.

[herf]

for the youngest ones, a lot of these are "mom's phone" or something like that, it's not even accurate to say you are identifying the user

[pwg]

> Zuckerberg is just the fall guy

This is likely because of Zuck's testimony in the very recent court case where he testified exactly that the "best place" to do "age verification" was in the operating system.

This was but a few weeks before all these, largely very identical sounding bills, suddenly started appearing in state houses across the USA.

[abracadaniel]

This is one of the issues with all of the steadily eroding privacy that get accepted because you’re allowed to opt out. It doesn’t take long before you’re the only one in your neighborhood who opts out, and that makes you very identifiable and suspicious.

[jmclnx]

> I'm not sure why Meta's lobbying is harped on so much when all of Big Tech benefits from this

Because meta will not have to spend real $ to add/support age verification, plus they get to point the finger at someone else for age issues.

[pwg]

> plus they get to point the finger at someone else for age issues.

This is the real benefit to Meta/FB/etc. that many seem to overlook. Meta/FB/etc. are already staring down a lot of court cases related to "addicting youngsters" to their product (and potentially a lot [i.e. billions of dollars] of payout for settlements or penalties in cases that side against them).

But, if they can get the government to mandate that the operating system is responsible for verifying a user's age, they get to avoid liability (i.e., more billions of dollars) for serving anything from their properties to an underage user if the OS tells them that the user is "old enough" for whatever they served. So long as Meta follows the law and asks the OS "is this user old enough" and if the OS replies "old enough" then the liability for mistakes in the age identification shifts to the OS provider and away from Meta/etc.

The part that is odd here is why Microsoft, Apple and Google (the "OS providers" truly being targeted) are not massively lobbying against this due to the legal liability risk that Meta is trying to shift over to them.

[b00ty4breakfast]

because Meta's lobbying has been publicly identified. When the other companies are found to be spending millions of dollars to push these age verification laws, then they, too, will be harped on.

[AlexandrB]

Fall guy or not, Zuckerberg's influence on my life has been entirely negative. From addictive social media feeds, to anti-competitive acquisitions that ruin once good products, to crap like this - he's the worst, most destructive CEO in tech. Even Oracle at least provides some value through their database products. Meta can go die in a fire.