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submitted 2 days ago by LiamTheBox@lemmy.ml to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

Source: https://xcancel.com/vxunderground/status/2032600868005310638#m

Yeah, so basically the current prevailing schizo internet theory is that AI nerds have destroyed the internet and created infinite spam.

The advertisement goons are now incapable of determining who is a bot and who is an actual human. The advertisement goons no longer want to pay as much to social media networks.

Social media networks, in full blown panic of losing potential revenue, decided to lobby governments saying "we gotta protect the kids! ID everyone to protect the kids from pedophiles!".

The social media networks know this doesn't really protect kids. But, it does two things (and a third accidentally).

  1. They now can identify who is human and who is AI slop machine, or enough to appease the advertisement goons

  2. Advertising to children is a general no-no from politicians, or something, so with ID verification they can say with confidence they're not advertising to children because it's been ID verification. Basically, they can weed out the children and focus on advertising to adults

  3. The feds can now tell who is human and who is AI slop. This inadvertently helps them with tracking people and serving fresh daily dumps of propaganda, or whatever they want to do.

It's a win-win-win for advertisers, social media networks, the government, and any business which does data collections.

It fucks over everyone else.

Chat, I'm not going to lie to you. This is an extremely good conspiracy schizo theory and I unironically believe it.

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[-] metermatic26@lemmy.world 15 points 1 day ago

Conspiracy theory? It’s not, it’s absolutely true. But they left out the bit about the quasi-alliance between big tech and right-wing extremists.

Tech bro’s want to keep their revenue streams, techno-fascists want to remove privacy barriers that stop them from training AI with your personal data and actual fascists want to crack down on public speech and dissidents.

The political right in both the US and EU are continuously working to remove privacy and surveillance restrictions under the auspices of free markets and innovation.

[-] ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml 19 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

How is this a theory? This is literally what's happening lol

Even if it's not advertising itself pushing it, the rest of what was said is true.

[-] quinnart@lemmy.today 9 points 1 day ago

This is not a conspiracy. Look at who funded the bill, who wrote it, and who funded the opposition to the bill in each state. Every time one of these passes, each legislating body already has the votes the need to pass before the actual bill material surfaces.

Meta has reportedly funneled over $65 million into a network of four primary super PACs to manage this state-by-state strategy. While they appear distinct on paper to "scatter filings" and avoid centralized FEC scrutiny, they are managed by the same leadership: Brian Baker (a veteran GOP strategist) and the Democratic consulting firm Hilltop Public Solutions.

  1. American Technology Excellence Project (ATEP): The national "umbrella" super PAC that serves as the primary funding hub.

  2. Forge the Future Project: The GOP-focused arm, active in states like TexasFlorida, and Utah. It frames the legislation as a "parental rights" and "pro-family" issue.

  3. Making Our Tomorrow: The Democratic-focused arm, active in Illinois and California. It frames the same legislation as "tech accountability" and "corporate responsibility."

  4. Mobilizing Economic Transformation Across California (META PAC): A California-specific PAC focused on protecting Meta's interests in its home state, particularly regarding AI and child safety regulations.

The "Shadow" Advocate: Digital Childhood Alliance (DCA)

The group providing the "boots on the ground" testimony for these bills is the Digital Childhood Alliance. Investigations have found that:

  • Legal Status: The DCA reportedly has no EIN, no IRS registration, and no incorporation records. It is essentially a "ghost organization" or astroturf group.

  • The Meta Link: Internal filings and investigative reports confirmed the DCA is almost entirely funded by Meta, though its website and testimonies never disclose this.

  • The Mission: They are launching Proof-of-Personhood for exactly the reasons specified in this post. By integrating a unique identifier at the OS-level, they are effectively killing the VPN. Soon websites will start requiring that unique identifier to view “adult” content in order to comply with the government.

How will this data be used? I’ll let you speculate, but let me reassure you that privacy is dead and a bunch of know-nothing geriatric pigs come up with a new way to destroy democracy every day.

[-] kablez@lemmy.world 19 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Advertising doesn't seem like a large enough lever to drive something this globally coordinated.

My read is that governments and large institutions are preparing for the kind of systemic instability climate change is going to produce.

Across the world we're already seeing laws and policies that quietly restrict the ability to organise, protest, or remain anonymous online, while surveillance capabilities expand at the same time. None of this is particularly popular, yet it keeps happening.

Why?

Because the next few decades are likely to involve continuous pressure from climate-driven problems: migration, water shortages, falling crop yields, energy instability, and the political conflict that follows when resources get tighter.

From that perspective, universal ID verification online isn't mainly about ads or "protecting the kids". It's about mapping who is who, who talks to who, and how information spreads.

If you expect future mass unrest, protest movements, or large-scale political instability, that kind of data becomes extremely valuable.

And historically, elites often choose to invest more effort in managing the consequences of systemic problems than in solving the underlying causes.

So instead of "AI spam broke advertising", the bigger story might be that institutions are building the infrastructure to monitor and manage populations during a much messier future.

[-] BeN9o@lemmy.world 153 points 2 days ago

"Advertising to Children is a general no-no.."

Uhh what? Advertising to children is like no1 priority. That's why Kim K etc is in fortnite, happy meals are bad food aimed at kids and of course standard TV adverts can be heavily aimed at kids, even tho its the parents spending the money.

[-] ParlimentOfDoom@piefed.zip 1 points 20 hours ago

YouTube Kids has no ads at all because of this.

Google isn't doing this because they're being nice.

[-] new_world_odor@lemmy.world 47 points 2 days ago

Advertising to children is significantly more tightly regulated, for the very reason that they're so damn thirsty for it.

[-] kieron115@startrek.website 30 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I grew up in the 90s and there were some absolutely unhinged ads during saturday morning cartoons. This spoof is only slightly crazier than an actual capri sun liquid cool commercial.

https://youtu.be/eyd51lvu3xw

[-] damnthefilibuster@lemmy.world 33 points 2 days ago

Facebook has known since over a decade that under 13s are on their networks and instead of booting them, the CEO (whoever he is) decided to make the platforms more addictive to under 13s. Real quote from the LA court case going on right now.

Also, the new CEO of Xbox Gaming is ex-AI Head of Microsoft and the ex-Head of under-13 policy at Facebook. So she did everything the CEO (whoever he is) asked her to do, including making the platforms more addictive and pushing back on govt intervention.

[-] starblursd@lemmy.zip 24 points 2 days ago

Data collection* from children is a general No-No but with this they don't have to collect the data to know they're a child and can now specifically target them without having to collect data first. Thereby avoiding coppa fines

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[-] kieron115@startrek.website 88 points 2 days ago

This isn't even a conspiracy theory, it's been investigated and found to be mostly true.

https://tboteproject.com/git/hekate/attestation-findings

[-] a_gee_dizzle@lemmy.ca 29 points 2 days ago

I never thought about it until I clicked on this link, but repositories are actually a really good format for investigative journalism. Allows you to organize all the supporting documents alongside the article in an organized way.

[-] msage@programming.dev 8 points 2 days ago

It's great for most written things in society.

Laws? Oh yes, please.

Any official communication? Thank you.

Even mundane things like cooking guides would benefit from history and versioning. Imagine entire family sending their branches for favourite pie/turkey/whatever else.

[-] plyth@feddit.org 5 points 1 day ago

Grandma's brunch grits git branch

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[-] IratePirate@feddit.org 20 points 2 days ago

The advertisement goons are now incapable of determining who is a bot and who is an actual human.

Bullshit. Social networks track the living shit out of everyone and know exactly what's human traffic and what isn't. Device identifiers (user agent, IP ranges, browser fingerprint, (lack of) ad id, etc.) and behavioral patterns (including purchase history) differ wildly.

Advertising to children is a general no-no from politicians, or something,

Bullshit. Even advertising to kids were outlawed (it isn't), politicians could be just bought off by advertisers to turn a blind eye. This is particularly true for the land of their formerly free and home of the formerly brave where corruption is now an above-the-counter item, practiced out in the open by the president himself.

[-] kieron115@startrek.website 2 points 1 day ago

Bullshit. Social networks track the living shit out of everyone and know exactly what’s human traffic and what isn’t. Device identifiers (user agent, IP ranges, browser fingerprint, (lack of) ad id, etc.) and behavioral patterns (including purchase history) differ wildly.

https://github.com/xvzc/SpoofDPI plus a browser fingerprinting blocker.

Social networks track the living shit out of everyone and know exactly what's human traffic and what isn't.

Over 80% of Twitter’s accounts are actually bots

The difference now is that paying advertisers are demanding proof that their adverts are reaching humans, not bots.

Why are you given adverts for products you've just bought? So that paying advertisers can be tricked by the data into thinking their advert resulted in a sale.

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[-] core@leminal.space 4 points 1 day ago
[-] No1@aussie.zone 49 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

This is just the beginning.

You think it's just about ID?

Politicians in both the UK and Australia have spoken about banning VPNs, because VPNs have been used to avoid age verification in those countries.

[-] daannii@lemmy.world 12 points 2 days ago

Which is stupid. Kids aren't using vpns. Most good ones cost money. And kids aren't very tech savvy these days.

Most grow up with phones and tablets only. They don't even know how to use a keyboard or a PC.

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[-] imjustmsk@lemmy.world 19 points 2 days ago

What a beautiful world we live in. 

(my first ever post in the fediverse lol) 

[-] mistermodal@lemmy.ml 11 points 2 days ago
[-] UnimportantHuman@lemmy.ml 10 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Just cut off a friend who tried to tell me racism isn't a choice. Knew him for over a decade but he fell into an algorithm that he became obsessed with. He really believed he was seeing the "truth" finally.

[-] MyVeryRealName@lemmy.world 8 points 2 days ago

Average Andrew Tate fan

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[-] GaMEChld@lemmy.world 12 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

🧩 Hyper Rationalizing Autistic person here. My condition makes me view reality as systems within systems within systems with infinite recursion.

I have read this post.

I have not detected logical inconsistency in this theory... And all the facts that I know seem to support the hypothesis.

And yes I know I sound like AI. Ironically, AI tools tell me that too. 😅

If anyone wants to introduce a new premise or fact into the hypothetical scenario, I'll let you know if it makes sense or not (to me).

New premise.

New datacenters are not for AGI and never have been. The are to support the hyper personalisation of advertising that requires a massive surveillance apparatus and data mining operation.

[-] GaMEChld@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Correct. But not wholly correct. There are legitimate advancements being made by the serious ppl. But 99% yeah, it's a smokescreen and everyone sees it coming a mile away, and they think we're fucking stupid. They have no respect for us, the common people.

They are too busy robbing their own children of a future metaphorically, and then finishing up by raping and eating said children on the island.

Why?

Because:

Darkseid

is.

Edit: Which is why I opted out of the system. I play games for fun. Unfair games are inherently not fun, so I stopped playing. Made a straight 🐝 Line to the exit.

Bought a house when the historic market low hit after 2008 recession during 2013.

Paid it down aggressively in 10 years with a cherry 2.3% interest rate.

Solar panels and efficiency upgrades to decrease lifetime cost of living.

Rent 50% of property for supplemental rental income (charging UNDER market rate intentionally because I am not trying to be greedy).

Filled property tax grievance to drive property tax down as much as possible.

In 2024 I retired at age 38 by allowing my unethical employer to walk into a wrongful termination lawsuit because they are morons who think they know more than me.

Litigation in progress but I can confidently predict the outcome.

They will either settle for 1 million, or take my custom package. If they value their pride they will settle. If they value money, they will take my custom package. If they litigate it will likely destroy their company. 1.6 million in fees and defense costs, a humiliating public loss, and then I will go tell local news just to finish them off for fun.

Oh and I did all that with a few emails and a couple forms for $0. Just answering the complaint alone has cost them $60k so far.

FATALITY.

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[-] FukOui@lemmy.zip 22 points 2 days ago

Plausible considering it's been shown that meta is the one responsible for lobbying this shit

[-] gray@lemmy.ml 34 points 2 days ago

I don't love the word schizo, but otherwise I am on board

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[-] Resonosity@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 day ago

I absolutely believe this

[-] eli@lemmy.world 20 points 2 days ago

Want a real schizo theory?

People are going to use the ID verification thing to see which accounts are child accounts, pull all details for those accounts and make a database of children's accounts, and then sell that information to bad actors who plan to traffic children.

[-] freedickpics@lemmy.ml 8 points 2 days ago

Doesn't even need to be intentional when there are virtually no consequences for leaking that info

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[-] kahoodd@reddthat.com 19 points 2 days ago

and we have upcoming android lockdown👌

[-] farfalla@jlai.lu 2 points 1 day ago

~~feds~~ corpos

[-] SendMePhotos@lemmy.world 35 points 2 days ago

That actually makes sense.

[-] Earthman_Jim@lemmy.zip 16 points 2 days ago

Honestly, the only "schizo" part of this is the assertion that people aren't allowed to advertise to children, otherwise this all makes perfectly sane sense.

[-] Pricklesthemagicfish@reddthat.com 33 points 2 days ago

Second to make all advertising illegal

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[-] Anarki_@lemmy.blahaj.zone 33 points 2 days ago

Posted on Twitter lmfao

[-] Gates9@sh.itjust.works 16 points 2 days ago

Seems like the most obvious fucking thing in the world

[-] bitwolf@sh.itjust.works 5 points 2 days ago

If of wasn't Metas involvement, I was thinking it would be the first stab at a social credit system.

Is definitely a ploy to identify us all and certainly not to protect children.

[-] null@lemmy.org 11 points 2 days ago

It makes more sense than it doesn't.

Maybe not as shadow cabal type of collusion, but as the path of least resistance that all these entities would find themselves going down independently... at the same time.

[-] collapse_already@lemmy.ml 6 points 2 days ago

The bad news for the AI goons is that the capitalists have squeezed us so hard that we no longer have any money to spend on the products we're programmed to lust after. Not sure what the end game is.

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this post was submitted on 14 Mar 2026
910 points (98.6% liked)

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