[uncircle]

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.

[soared]

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.

If there are less sites, meta wins.

[fauigerzigerk]

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.

[nine_k]

Facebook in particular many times voiced its support for various regulations that would be onerous for smaller players.

[fauigerzigerk]

Does that mean they actually support these regulations or could it mean that they think sounding supportive benefits them?

Even if they really did support a particular regulation, it could be to prevent a version of the same regulation that actually has teeth.

Or it could mean they hope to be consulted on the details of any regulation, which is more likely to happen if they sound constructive.

Corporations constantly navigate the political and regulatory landscape. You can't just take "supportive" statements like these at face value.

And finally there's the general fallacy of thinking that if B happens and A wanted it to happen then A must have caused B.

[washadjeffmad]

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.

[cj]

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.

Which raised net neutrality concerns.

[luisfmh]

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.

[kmeisthax]

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".

[bryan_w]

> Children will just lie

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)

[yojo]

Meta’s bottom line is driven entirely by their ability to uniquely and persistently identify users for the sake of advertising.

Anything that makes it harder for a user to escape their dragnet is a win.

[tylerchilds]

Rug pull Ladder pull

It’s just that

“Move fast, break things, regulate impossible to repair.”

[bryanlarsen]

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.

[teratron27]

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.

[xkcd1963]

They realized all the data on user behaviour is useless after trying to leverage on it with LLMs and now they go after seemingly new riches

[fn-mote]

Useless data??

There is a massive revenue stream that says this is completely off base.

The data they have is already extremely valuable.

[xkcd1963]

It all feeds into the bubble. Facebook and Co dont provide real value to people

[bilbo0s]

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.

[kelseyfrog]

Can you describe in detail the end game and how you came to know it?

[wartywhoa23]

The endgame is perfectly described in Orwell's 1984 and certain Protocols.

[kelseyfrog]

> Protocols

The antisemitic ones?

[wartywhoa23]

No. It is zionism, which is orthogonal to semitism, that was chosen as the blame-shifting cover for the message, to put both proponents and opponents of said message on the false trail, but that's not how they should be read.

The Protocols should be read as the message from those who are absolutelty corrupt with absolute power and want to remain in that power forever, regardless of the mask they wear. And they always wear and drop multiple masks, to render all attempts to identify them futile.

It is their actions that identify their presence and persistence better than any labels, and those actions doubled down since 9/11 and quadrupled since 2020.

Orwell used the term "Big Brother", and that should suffice.

[kelseyfrog]

Any insight on how this is related to the new world order and extra-terrestrials, specifically the Grays?

[hacker161]

It’s nice you’re comfortable outing yourself as a freak who reads and agrees with the Protocols of the Elder Zion.