[felooboolooomba]

Meta has spent $2B on verification lobbying. Very successfully it seems.

In 1-2 years, you won't be able to browse the internet without scanning a body part and providing a ID for your ass.

https://www.gadgetreview.com/reddit-user-uncovers-who-is-beh...

[iugtmkbdfil834]

While your post is joking in tone, depending on how much we push back now is the exact level of delta between actual future and 'drink verification' copypasta[1].

[1]https://www.reddit.com/r/copypasta/comments/1dfea32/drink_ve...

[Cider9986]

>You've been blocked by network security. To continue, log in to your Reddit account or use your developer token

....

[inigyou]

It's just the "drink verification can" meme, and could have linked to any site but chose Reddit...

[iugtmkbdfil834]

I am debating an appropriate response, but maybe just an answer is not exactly what is called for here.

What do you think a meme is? What function does it serve?

[inigyou]

A meme is a unit of information. It serves no function, it just is. Like life itself.

[efreak]

A meme is a _self-propagating_ unit of information. Like a gene.

Tangent: I would call a datum the basic unit of information. Not sure if there's an official word, given the prevalence of the Wikipedia article for unit of (digital) information in every relevant search.

[iugtmkbdfil834]

This explains a lot and I am glad you answered this way, because it suggests that you may be open to the possibility that while, to you, memes serve no function, there are people out there, who can use it in a way that make the difference on whether it has an function inherently or not, largely irrelevant. Just like life.

[Cider9986]

I use redlib so it wasn't an issue for me. I was showing how my result trying to use the website is similar to the meme.

[yomismoaqui]

That is funny, sad & scary at the same time.

[ryandrake]

I guarantee you that there are real people out there in tech who think getting to a "Drink verification can" world would be great for corporate profit, and are actively doing things that bring us closer to that world rather than farther away.

[Atreiden]

"I think that AI will probably, most likely, sort of lead to the end of the world. But in the meantime, there will be great companies created with serious machine learning."

— Sam Altman

[masfuerte]

My mother tried to buy something on Amazon yesterday. It wouldn't let her check-out until she'd entered a code sent via WhatsApp. Which she doesn't have and doesn't want. She'll be buying her tat on eBay in future.

I dream that Amazon will lose lots of sales and backtrack, but I don't suppose they will.

[hnlmorg]

Which country was this? I’ve never known Amazon requiring WhatsApp. It uses SMS a lot.

The only service I’ve used which does offer WhatsApp as a form of identification is PayPal. But even that is just one of many different authorisation options.

I don’t have WhatsApp either and never once found that to be a limiting. So I wonder if the experience your relative was having is more nuanced than suggested.

[mrec]

I've never had it require SMS either. Probably because I've never given it a portable telephone number. (Until a couple of years ago I didn't have one, and I still use it as little as possible.)

[walrus01]

Are you sure it was actually via whatsapp, and not just a six digit code sent via regular SMS to the phone number on record for her account? It's possible whatsapp on her phone has simply hijacked the SMS client functionality and set itself as the default.

[subscribed]

I know it was 3 days ago, but I just got an additional data point.

In the Amazon app, the same I normally use, on my normal account, I used Switch Accounts option, and proceeded to create a separate, additional Amazon account.

I entered a different, new email address and my real name.

Amazon happily sent me a verification email, I entered the code. I was then prompted to enter a phone number, I did so (it's a number I never used with Amazon (to my second phone)).

Amazon then requested me to enter the code it sent over on *WhatsApp*. I tried to take a screenshot but it came out all black.

I don't have WhatsApp account with this number.

There was an option to resend it through a normal text message but first it sent out a code on WhatsApp. That should never be a default.

[alasdairking]

No, my Microsoft Azure 2FA sends codes to WhatsApp, not SMS.

UK, where WhatsApp is absolutely mandatory.

[Sophira]

WhatsApp is not in any way mandatory in the UK. I say this as someone who lived in the UK and does not use and has never installed WhatsApp.

[subscribed]

> "WhatsApp on her phone"

GP clearly said she doesn't have WhatsApp.

[walrus01]

If I had a dollar for every time I've seen an older person that doesn't even know what application they're running, or can't tell the difference between the content of a website inside a browser window and an application that runs natively on their computer. I read what the GP wrote, I'm saying there's a non zero possibility she's misunderstanding something.

It seems like something you have to specifically choose, on the amazon account side.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeI...

[subscribed]

I choose to not call a GP a liar or too thick for being unable to differentiate between apps :)

I also chose their presumed first hand statement than your unrelated experience with unrelated third parties.

Your point re: having to subscribe to WhatsApp notifications, if we're staying in the realm of "what ifs" and looking for the awkward but possible ways to discredit the claims, I can believe that she was enrolled without being asked. I've seen at least one person complaining about that exact scenario.

Cheers!

[benj111]

> I choose to not call a GP a liar or too thick

GP of the post or actual GP.....

It's not about being thick. I had a old person ranting at me once because all these Ukrainian girls were emailing him wanting dates, and didn't they realise he was too old for them.

[jonners00]

If I forget to pause my VPN before going to Amazon's website, I can't log in with just username and password, I get a page telling me they've sent a code to WhatsApp (which I don't have) with a button to click if I want an SMS instead. Clicking that button never works (error message that I've 'requested too many OTPs') but opening the Amazon app on my phone shows a modal saying 'someone who knows your password is trying to log in... etc' and asking me to approve. They're definitely trying to use WhatsApp by default for sending verification codes.

[em-bee]

but then amazon would not tell her that she should find the code in whatsapp, because amazon would still be sending send an sms. it should not have any awareness of whatsapp hijacking the sms function, and therefore the amazon message should reference the SMS. if it references whatsapp then it means amazon wants to send to whatsapp directly.

[NetMageSCW]

“which she doesn’t have and doesn’t want”

[dude187]

Sure it was Amazon? Sounds like a scam

[deltoidmaximus]

The frustrating part is that since so many companies collect PII under the guise of security (and then use it for advertising) it's harder to tell if this is a legal scam or illegal scam.

[dylan604]

>if this is a legal scam or illegal scam.

the fact this is something to be distinguished says a lot about where we are now and none of what it says is good

[inigyou]

He calls "legal scam" what you probably call "legit business"

[jayGlow]

I has Facebook send a verification through Whatsapp, I legitimately thought it was a scam until I googled it and realized they do actually send verification that way.

[delecti]

Still annoying, but at least then it's the same company.

[masfuerte]

Yes. I'd gone round to see her and I checked her history to ensure it wasn't dodgy.

[whoopdedo]

> She'll be buying her tat on eBay in future. A third of the things I buy* from eBay come shipped by Amazon. I can't always tell if they were using the warehouse for logistics or the seller is doing arbitrage. Either way, it would seem Amazon isn't bothered by people "voting with their wallet".

(*That are new of course, used and open-box still come from the seller as I expect.)

[NuclearPM]

What is a tat?

[seanhunter]

“Tat” means miscellaneous junk.

That said, the anecdote is made up or important details have been elided to make it sound more interesting than it is. Amazon doesn’t depend on whatsapp for 2fa. You can configure amazon 2fa to send an SMS and it’s possible that the poster’s mother has misconfigured her phone to claim that it needs whatsapp to read the sms 2fa message but I highly doubt even that. When I look on amazon it allows passkeys, regular TOTP like with DUO authenticator or google authenticator or whatever or SMS with a backup of sending the TOTP code to the registered email on the account. Whatsapp isn’t even an option.

[giardini]

How does "tat" differ from "grot"?

[card_zero]

Grot is from grotesque and implies dirty or primal, as in grotto, a cave. Sans-serif fonts were called grotesque because they looked primitive. The word grot appears in various 19th century poems as a noun meaning a grotto, where it was supposed to be a lovely place full of fairies. But that meaning wore off and now something grotty is something you'd find in a gutter. The US equivalent is grody.

Tat meanwhile, like gunny, refers to a kind of sackcloth. These words are both from Hindi. The concept is of some cheap filler material. If you want to rush something out, you can wrap it in sackcloth, bag it up in sackcloth, sell it to them in sackcloth, make it quickly out of sackcloth. Or maybe it was left over and has been sitting in a corner for years, at the bottom of a sack. That is "some old tat".

[ChrisRR]

Tat is general rubbish, but generally implies something a bit old fashioned as well. Those decorative plates and figures that old people love? Tat

Grot I've never heard of in terms of buying stuff. Grot to me just implies something dirty

[giardini]

Thank you all for the explications!

My first encounter with "grot" was a BBC comedy, apparently " The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin", wherein a gentleman suffering a mid-life crisis tries to fail at business. However no matter what he does, everything he touches turns to money! At the end he sets up a series of shops named "GROT" which, of course, sell grot and also become enormously successful.

[6031769]

Grot is usually intentionally and always utterly unfit for purpose.

[phs318u]

Perhaps the options vary by region?

[felooboolooomba]

tat n.

  anything that looks cheap, is of low quality, or in bad condition:
  * Like most souvenir shops, it sells a lot of old tat.
  * I'm not spending fifty quid on a piece of tat.

People buy it all the time when they practice retail therapy.

[dude187]

Sure it was Amazon? Sounds like a scam

[walrus01]

(13 years ago)

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/632877-halo-4/66477630

[dredmorbius]

TIL the phrase's origin.

("Please drink a verification can.")

[teeray]

I really wish there was a way for the electorate to preempt the votes of their representatives, so this kind of lobbying would be less effective. Sure, they might try carpet bombing the airwaves with PSA campaigns, but if the people really really don’t want what the lobbyist is selling, they would still be able to rip the ballot out of their congress critter’s hands and change the vote.

[voakbasda]

I would settle for representatives that actually represented the interests of the people rather than those of the wealthiest and their corporations.

[win311fwg]

That would require the people making their interests known, which would never happen in practice. The reality is that most representatives are well-intentioned and try to do the job in good faith, but only the wealthy/corporations ever give them the time of day to tell what their interests are. The representative can only work with the information they have available.

When do you think the last time the average Joe talked to their representative to communicate their interests, as is their democratic duty? The answer is, unfortunately, half past never. A representative cannot represent someone who keeps their interests a secret.

[upboundspiral]

"Never happen in practice" is objectively false given the civil rights wins of the past century. While incomplete they were real, and real change followed.

Starting with the premise that it's impossible won't improve society.

[win311fwg]

Maybe you have a certain story in mind, but the civil rights wins that everyone remembers were wins only after the people waited too long to make their interests known to their representative, completely boiled over, and threw themselves directly onto the fire to compensate. That is quite different to having regular conversations with their representative throughout the normal course of their lives so that the representative could regularly do their job with the full understanding of the people's interests.

You've pointed out something real, but it does not appear to be within the scope of our discussion.

[SoftTalker]

They arent there to represent the interests of the people. Rather, the people vote for representatives whose positions they agree with.

[mothballed]

Ballot initiative. Californians tried that to stop "gay marriage" (Prop 8) so the courts just told the people to fuck themselves and overturned it. Again in South Dakota for legalizing marijuana, the voters voted in favor by special initiative so the state just overturned it.

[hunterpayne]

Also the overturning of bail reform that the current CA state government refuses to honor or fund. Politicians seem to like the ballot initiatives until people actually use it. Then they feel free to ignore it, even continue to pass laws that go directly against it. All while somehow making enough unexplainable money that would get any of us put in prison for tax evasion.

[tokioyoyo]

It will sound insane, but I would love a parallel (not a replacement!) internet where everyone is ID verified. Time and place for both.

[inigyou]

It's called the telephone network. Also Facebook.

[Aurornis]

Meta has not spent $2 billion on ID lobbying.

That bogus number came from a complete AI slop Reddit post that was later removed.

That’s why the only references you can find to it are from sites like your gadgetreview.com link that repost clickbait without fact checking anything.

[nottorp]

It doesn't matter what they spent excatly but it's in their direct interest to raise legal moats for competitors. Kind of like what Allegedly Open AI tried with the "AI will kill us all" threats.

[Aurornis]

> It doesn't matter what they spent excatly

If the number didn’t matter then the comment above wouldn’t have led with it to make their point.

The flaw in the original study was that someone started with a premise that Meta was at the heart of this and all spending could be traced back to Meta. They made Claude generate a report but they didn’t read any details, so they didn’t notice that Claude couldn’t access the actual documents. So it started guessing and hallucinating until it came up with the scary number that Meta was spending $2B on lobbying.

The entire premise that Meta is driving this with $2B of lobbying is an AI hallucination.

Reddit obviously is adding login gates to combat AI scrapers.

[nottorp]

> he entire premise that Meta is driving this with $2B of lobbying is an AI hallucination.

I guess the $2B is hallucination. But it makes sense for them to do the "think of the children" lobby.

[NetMageSCW]

>But it makes sense for them to do the "think of the children" lobby.

Why? It seems more like that’s baseless speculation with an agenda.

[Scubabear68]

I disagree a little bit, but only for this reason: the amount matters because it is invariably very, very small compared to the revenue/profit of the company and the impact the lobbying has.

It is shocking what politicians will do for just five or six figure donations to their campaigns.

[ChrisRR]

> It doesn't matter what they spent excatly

Yes it does. Let's not misrepresent the figures just because it doesn't suit our narrative. There's already way too much of that in the world

[giardini]

"excatly"????wtf?

[nottorp]

I'm not an "AI" so I make spelling mistakes?

[felooboolooomba]

Meta hasn't corrected it and there's absolutely no way I give Meta the benefit of a doubt.

[inigyou]

You will if we create websites that don't require it.

[dzhiurgis]

And ~20 years ago computer riddled with porn malware was kinda normal.

Times change, so does certain expectations.

[uhhhhwhaaaa]

I would view a website that requires users to go through a lengthy verification process.

Given all the astroturfing from companies and governments, this would give a bit of trust.

[antihipocrat]

Would it? Or would it just open up another revenue stream for websites? Verified corporate accounts sure, but with prices set per number of usernames per account, billed monthly.

[Herbstluft]

The actors running astroturfing will just continue to get direct access. If those sites cared about those things they would have done something long ago.

All the verification process does is making astroturfing and propaganda campaigns even more desirable.

[dzhiurgis]

Wasn't twitter/x meant to be that? Pay and verify to enter members club. Didn't quite take off all while destroying goodwill that blue badge used to have.

[inigyou]

That's Facebook. How do you like it?