I'm confused where all of this censorship is originating from. What wave of efforts is culminating? I can't really explain this from any movement I can see.
There is no evidence it is actually coming from Meta. The Reddit researcher the article cites generated their entire "analysis" in three days using Claude: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47659552
Their website also added this page since I posted that comment: https://web.archive.org/web/20260411112604/https://tboteproj... where they claim their website is under "surveillance" because it got a few thousand requests from Google Cloud et al, most of them to a single page. This shows how low their standards are.
The way that Reddit "researcher" had Claude bang out a GitHub repo in a couple days and single-handedly established the narrative throughout the internet is scary.
When it was released I read a few of the reports in this repo and they didn't even support the claims made. Claude was admitting it couldn't find the evidence.
It's terrifying how easily this misinfo operation established itself as fact on websites where users view themselves as being more informed than average on these topics, like Hacker News.
The users here are probably more misinformed than average on several topics, including this one, due to community flagging and downvoting behavior which has the effect of filtering out reasonable criticism, and restricting discussion to a narrow range of viewpoints.
Ironically I had to go into Google's AI mode and ask it three times not to use any TBOTE Project sources before it would give me the actual original source on this. But the article has a bunch of quotes from big tech lobbyists in support of California's age surveillance bills. Whether or not it was originally their idea is still up in the air, but given that the California, Colorado, and New York bills were largely identical, it's not crazy to say "maybe these were all Big Tech's idea".
I also have this Bloomberg article from 2025 (a year ago) claiming Meta funds the Digital Childhood Alliance[1], which has been pushing for "App Store Accountability Acts" that would mandate app stores do all the age verification (conveniently for Facebook).
Or maybe it was ALEC. :P
[0] It is always ethical to deadname corporations.
> There is no evidence it is actually coming from Meta
My personal view that social media should be age gated is caused by Meta. But broadly, polling shows a commanding majority (60+ percent) of Americans believe in restrictions for under 14s.
Is there broad support for digital ID, age verification, etc? Or is it a broad sentiment that kids shouldn’t be on social media. Everyone I know agrees with latter but almost no one supports the former.
The parent commenter is conflating two things. Your right, there can be broad general sentiment that "kids probably shouldn't on social media, or better framed, social media in it's current iteration isn't healthy for people especially kids" but that doesn't imply people are asking for intrusive surveillance or to be monitored at all times when they are online.
> that doesn't imply people are asking for intrusive surveillance or to be monitored at all times when they are online
There is strong demand for regulation and low awareness of the surveillance consequences. We don’t have anyone advocating for a privacy-preserving solution, not effectively at least. Given the demand for something to be done, each jurisdiction is basically taking from the first available option.
Two thirds of Americans believe in "setting limits on how much time minors can spend on social media" [1]. Where we have limited polling, a similar fraction support "banning social media use for all kids under 14" [2].
These are policy polls. The sentiment has moved beyond vague notions that kids should be entrusted to Meta less.
There seems to be a growing movement worldwide to restrict social media to under (some teenage range). I understand some of frustration. It comes from the increase in mental health issues with minors… but they are using that as cover to overreach and impose censorship for many. An alternate method is stop social media etc from abusing their users with algorithms favoring “engament”.
It is also convient for people to have a single outside source to blame their and their children's problems on. Rather than admit their poltical and economic policies and cultural expectations might all be a bigger problem.
Everyone agrees kids shouldn't be on social media. Some people think this should be done by your phone asking if you're over 18 when you set it up, which is one way to go about it. Some other people hijacked this proposal to make your phone verify if you're over 18 because they want your identification.
I keep reading this but I don't understand how a company might want to push censorship on users. What is the economic benefit of censorship? Does Meta's bottom line increase if there is no illegal content and every user is age verified on the site? Would Meta care if you use a VPN?
The ones that stand to benefit the most are the governments themselves and their surveillance network.
Barriers to entry. If I want to make a small forum, these laws make that potentially much more difficult. Now users who may have used my forum may spend more time on facebook instead.
Multiply that times tens of thousands of new sites not being created, tens of thousands of existing sites no longer existing or being accessible due to new laws, this occurring over multiple surfaces (content moderation, age verification, etc) and the positive impact for meta is meaningful.
This is grasping at straws. Centralised social media platforms have won long ago for completely different reasons (mostly network effects and convenience). They haven't been threatened by independent sites for ages.
Not that many years ago, Facebook tried to broker a deal to provide free internet to India if all of their web traffic and communications would happen within the Facebook ecosystem.
It's long been the dream of more than a few American companies to be the gatekeepers of the web.
IIRC the model was closer to a freemium model where you would get free internet to approved websites (including Facebook) with the ability to access the entire internet for an extra fee.
Facebook and approved sites wouldn’t count towards your mobile bandwidth quota, but the rest of the internet does and requires a data plan.
I've read a take somewhere that seemed to make sense. They don't want to get stuck with the liabilities of the content that gets posted on their platforms. So by forcing the age verification onto the users, forcing users to identify and track themselves, they can have a "clean" route to someone who posts illicit content on their platforms.
It just sucks that that's all in sacrifice of our privacy.
The thing that makes this plausible is that the California and Colorado bills are specifically written to either allow or outright require self-attestation. Children will just lie about their ages because if they don't, the computer is basically useless. So it would give Meta the ability to dodge lawsuits, but still actually have kids on their dangerous platforms, with the argument of "well, the law makes us trust this unreliable indicator".
Not if the parents are setting it up beforehand (like with small children) then their iaccount or Google account will be under parental controls from that point on.
It seems reasonable that if a parent enables their child to visit sites after that, then that's just their prerogative (like giving your kid beer)
The tigher, more believable theory is that Meta wants Operating Systems to be responsible for delivering an age or an "over 18 attestation" to apps/websites so it's not Meta's problem.
The idea from the case in the link is that their competitors would be more regulated then them but in general, if regulation is a requirement and they’ve already implemented the regulation then it’s hard for a competitor to emerge.
I keep reading this but I don't understand how a company might want to push censorship on users.
We're being astroturf-ed guy.
The comment you're responding to. The comments responding to you. All shaped by influence campaigns from the beginning.
Meta, X, google, data based big tech, the billionaires, and the government were in on the plan from the start. We were always the ones kept in the dark as to the ultimate intent. Even the anti-censorship and anti-surveillance posts and content that we saw, were being paid for by the same puppet masters. Professional influence campaigns controlled by these same groups shaped the internet discussion of both sides.
And it seems a lot of us still haven't figured that out yet.
We got played. We'll continue to be played if we don't recognize that fact and act to prevent it in the future.
Because I can assure you, censorship and surveillance is not the endgame. And their endgame is very likely not to our benefit.
I wouldn't say captured. Zuckerberg has been cutting deals with the new administration so often people were seeing him at the Pentagon. It's a partnership
Yep. I brought this up yesterday on the Roblox thread but HN has been ingesting the propaganda for too long to understand their beliefs about Roblox are misled.
Time to adjust your priors y'all. This is a concentrated effort toward surveillance, controlling who we talk to, and what information we're fed.
Pretend to be anti-censorship. Get voted in. Fast track all of the censorship and surveillance through congress.
When I saw certain billionaires talking up anti-censorship and anti-surveillance a few years ago, I knew we would be screwed. (I knew the same billionaires had large positions in censorship and surveillance tech.) No one ever talks against their own book unless they're planning on screwing you.
> What wave of efforts is culminating? I can't really explain this from any movement I can see.
Look at any thread about social media, TikTok, smartphones, or porn sites on Hacker News: They are instantly filled with comments claiming that the internet is to blame for all of society's ills with younger generations. The HN threads fill with comments proposing that we ban children from having smartphones until they're 16 or 18 and similar ideas. Abstract ideas about banning kids from social media or porn sites are weirdly very popular even here, mostly from people who haven't thought about what that would mean for privacy for everyone.
These ideas have become pervasive, even inside tech communities. It was so easy to blame social media and the internet for everything for years, and now lawmakers are riding that wave for political points. It's "think of the children" built on top of the current moral panics.
My guess is bots. Govts and law makers are afraid of the barrage of bots DDOSing them so they are slowly and surely tightening the noose around the internet. I'm all for net neutrality and anonymity on the internet and I don't like the age laws one bit, but I too am afraid of the bots scorching the internet. I still hate these growing dystopian laws but I also want the bots to be driven away from the "human internet" .
Easy: from the fascist psychopaths at the whelm of the world.
People started to understand too much about who's the real enemy, and are not willing to kill and die in meatgrinders of the new world order for the interests of the unelect 0.001%.
Big tech wants regulatory capture.