Age Verification Lobbying: Dark Money, Model Legislation, Institutional Capture

I think this is the third time this has effectively been posted see:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47362528

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47365597

This is a "productionisation" of the same content discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47362528

I would caution readers to do their due dilligence as the presentation may be fancy but that should not immediately translate into a signal of quality in itself given the author has disclosed using Claude Code for a chunk of this work.

While I won't outright discount the findings (as there is "too much" to reasonably verify), there are a few oddities around the source repo such as errors where Claude has tried to access sources, been denied and then noted as much or where it has seemingly fetched incorrect files and tried to interpret them (https://github.com/upper-up/meta-lobbying-and-other-findings...)

I am not under the immediate impression that the author has done thorough due diligence rather than just offloading that to readers by saying "You can just check the sources yourself"

Here's the author's description of their work:

  ## Methodology and Tools

  This investigation was conducted by a human researcher who directed all research decisions, selected sources, evaluated findings, and wrote the public-facing posts. Claude Code (Anthropic's CLI tool, running Claude Opus) was used as a research assistant for:

  - Bulk data processing: parsing 4,433 IRS Schedule I grant records, 59,736 DAF recipients, 132MB of Colorado TRACER campaign finance data, and IRS Business Master File extracts covering all US tax-exempt organizations
  - Cross-referencing findings across 24 analysis files and identifying patterns that span multiple research threads
  - Drafting intermediate working documents and structured data summaries
  - Web searches against public databases (OpenSecrets, ProPublica, state lobbying portals, WHOIS/DNS, Wayback Machine)

  Claude Code did not independently choose what to investigate, decide what constitutes a finding, or determine what to publish. Every factual claim in this repository cites a primary source (IRS filing, Senate disclosure, state database, legislative record, or published reporting) that can be independently verified. The tool does not change whether Meta's LD-2 filing lists H.R. 3149, whether DCA has an EIN, or whether Stefanski admitted tech funding under oath. The records exist or they don't.

  If you want to verify any finding, the source URLs and database identifiers are provided throughout. Start with the primary records, not with this repository.

I find it valuable to know the author was responsible for selecting what sources & questions to analyse.

Corporate lobby should be treated as bribing the politicians.

In ideal world (where we don't live), some of the primary goals of corporations and governments contradict to each other (and there is another body):

* Corporations - maximum profit at all cost to its shareholders

* Government (I mean the ideal one) - prosperity for its citizens

* UN - prosperity for the world (because governments can achieve prosperity for own citizens by exploiting other government citizens)

When they have contradictory goals, lower in the chain should not drastically impact the higher body's goals.

Corporate lobby is doing it, hence US is moving towards feudal system. Because corporations wants to exploit people at maximum speed and squeeze everything, but do not want to take the responsibility for nurturing the people.

Here is how it looks like:

    * You hire Sr eng, squeeze max out of them, lay them off
    * Demand government to have better education, so it can squeeze out next
    * Stop unionization at all costs
    * now we are seeing this with Junior positions, no one wants to nurture and grow them, everyone wants Sr+ engineers

There is a global coordinated effort around digital id, banning end2end encryption, etc. the goal is ending anonymity online. As far as I can tell it's all coordinated through the World Economic Forum's "Global Coalition for Digital Safety" it started in 2021.

https://initiatives.weforum.org/global-coalition-for-digital...

It's not just the US, similar legislation in Australia, UK and the EU.

One thing we can look forward to is platform-side detection of 'illegal' material, so like you organize a protest in a private discord, discord recognizes the illegal act and automatically forwards it to the local police that give you a visit. This is where the road is headed.

HN: Please post substantive thoughtful replies only in these AI threads.

Also HN: LLM AI generated sloppa with errors even on top of front page.

clown emoji

And none of it matters. Netchoice is shooting down legislation as fast as grandstanding legislators propose it. The bill of rights doesn't have an age limit. If a 10 year old can own an AR-15, that same 10 year old definitely has 1A rights too. Freedom of speech. Freedom of assembly. They can decide who they want to talk to online without a parent getting in the way of it.

I was not surprised to see Meta behind all this privacy invading stuff but Anthropic surprised me.

LLM slop, they even left the 403 errors in the original dump, and accepted hallucinations.