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Comment by thewebguyd | Hacker News Reader

Meta is one of the biggest ones pushing for this, because they don't want to be accountable so these types of laws pass the buck onto the delivery platforms (Apple, Google, other OSes)

Meta is then funding/lobbying alongside a bunch of other conservative groups like Heritage Action, and the digital childhood alliance (also made up of a ton of other conservative lobbying groups)

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> Separately, and for very different reasons, NetChoice, the trade group that counts companies like Google and Meta among its members, filed testimony opposing the same bill. Its objection was First Amendment law and the risk of exposing sensitive user data, not open source specifically. It’s an odd pairing: a digital rights nonprofit and the lobbying arm for the platforms the bill is supposed to be regulating, arguing against the same bill for opposite reasons. Illinois lawmakers passed it unanimously anyway.

Sure, but Meta also wouldn't mind if age verification of some kind were used, because it would just increase the moat they already have. Meta or Google would have no difficulty complying with any of these laws regardless of how extreme they are, while the mom and pop shops can't comply and are forced out of business.

I have read this before, and while I do not disagree, I am about 100% convinced that this is NOT confined to merely facebook doing bribes. The reason I say this is because you can see many different countries all becoming victim to age sniffing. While in theory a single huge corporation could do that, I am pretty certain that this is NOT only facebook pulling the money-string here.

Oh yeah, of course Meta isn't the only one pushing for it, they are just one of the largest contributors in support of these legislations, generally. More specifically, it's governments coming up with these laws. Meta's lobbying is trying to make sure the laws stay focused on the app store's & OSes, rather than requiring social media and individual websites/services doing the age gating. Facebook does not want to police itself or its content.

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