Not just another money-grubbing lawsuitNot just another money-grubbing lawsuit
This stuff really freaks me out. Apparently, people are suing Meta and YouTube and all the other social media platforms for not preventing them from using social media.
Mark Zuckerberg spent more than five hours on the stand in Los Angeles Superior Court on Wednesday, testifying before a jury for the first time about claims that Meta deliberately designed Instagram to addict children.
The lawsuit was filed by a plaintiff identified as KGM, now 20 years old, who claims she began using Instagram at age 9 and that the platform’s design addicted her to it, worsening her mental health, contributing to anxiety, body dysmorphia, and suicidal thoughts.
TikTok and Snapchat settled before trial. Meta and Google’s YouTube remain defendants. Over 1,600 related cases are pending nationally. This is a big business. A verdict here could set the template for all of them.
The case rests on a contested scientific premise: that social media is clinically addictive and that this addiction causes measurable harm. That premise drives the legal strategy, the media coverage, and the resulting policy agenda. It deserves scrutiny that most coverage is not giving it.
This routes around section 230This routes around section 230
Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act has long shielded platforms from liability for what users post. Plaintiff’s lawyers here found a route around it: they argue that the platform itself is a defective product. The claim is not about user content but about design choices. Infinite scroll, auto-play, algorithmically amplified notifications, beauty filters linked to body dysmorphia. The lawsuit treats them like a car without brakes.
And if we're all driving cars with poorly designed brakes, don't we need big daddy government to come in and make sure we are being safe?
“Addiction” is how you get a public health emergency. A public health emergency is how you get emergency powers and make it easier for people to overlook constitutional protections. Emergency powers applied to the internet mean mandatory access controls. And mandatory access controls on the internet mean the end of anonymous and pseudonymous speech.
I was thinking that it was gonna take a number of years before the internet got fully gated. I'm not feeling so good about that anymore. This is moving fast.
Zuckerberg is not proposing that Instagram verify the ages of Instagram users. He is proposing that Apple and Google verify the identity of every smartphone user, for every app, at the OS level.
The regulations are coming:
California’s SB 976, the Protecting Our Kids from Social Media Addiction Act, mandates age verification systems for social media platforms in the state. The California Attorney General must finalize implementation rules by January 2027.
The Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), pending at the federal level, would direct agencies to develop age verification at the device or operating system level, the same framework Zuckerberg promoted from the stand.
KOSA also carries broad definitions of “harmful” content that leave moderation decisions subject to government influence, with no independent review. Age verification and content restriction in a single bill, with the government writing the definition of harm.
New York’s SAFE For Kids Act restricts algorithmic feeds for users who don’t complete age verification. Acceptable alternatives to submitting a government ID include facial analysis that estimates age. Biometric data, collected to scroll a social media feed.
The whole article is worth a read.
As long as this only applies to platforms, we'll be fine; Nostr and others will pop up. The problem is if this is applied at a deeper level, limiting access to any communication over the internet, like at the ISP or DNS level or something like that.
They seem to be keen on implementing it at the OS level. If that actually happens, do you really think that it will only be used for "risky" apps?
Also, given the fun Android has been having trying to prevent side-loading (#1193945, #1244535) what makes you think it will be possible to load nostr apps that circumvent such OS-level checks?
I wonder if device-level checks aren't sneakily worse in some way: I would think things like China's firewall (which to my naive mind is similar to ISP or DNS level filtering) are always playing catch-up, but if they switch to a white-list model, where they use the device to enforce "only access approved sites" it becomes a lot harder to circumvent.
Considering all these moves, things get really scary because they mess with the base level. Even so, I hope these changes force the emergence of more tools to bypass this—new OSs, new communication protocols, new encryptions; we can always count on one or more Satoshis working on their own and sharing with others. Still, this concern reminded me of that report about Windows 11 acting at the processor level to share data, and what @justin_shocknet already mentioned here about us having a false sense of control using software since we don't have control over completely closed hardware.
The takeaway from my Nietzschean slop should be that the doomerism is either inadequate, or completely unwarranted, depending on your preferred framing with no in-between.
As such, these articles are bait for the already blackpilled or the helplessly naive. Complete noise.
Consider first that there is already no privacy on the internet. Everything is pwned by the NSA already. The panopticon has nothing to gain by feigning less privacy... the illusion of privacy that people have is a honeypot of SIGINT.
Enhancing ID for platforms just undermines the utility of their honeypots.
China comparison? It simply does not have these capabilities, Huawei et al still have decades of catch up to do before getting there in terms of distribution. That's the difference.
Consider next that platforms like Zuck's simply want to shift liability, that's their only incentive for pushing this. If they can get their pawns to astroturf this into existence, they can save a ton of money on compliance etc by shifting responsibility to the Device/OS. "Reclaim The Net" is a shady front org itself, likely run by the same IC that relies on privacy honeypots, and publishes this slop to perpetuate the illusion that the internet could be less private and whip the naive into a frenzy and demand the civilian government leave the honeypots in place as they are. It's classic nudging the pendulum one way to have it come back the other way, boomerang.
Further, the internet is mostly a machine-to-machine communication network, that is things without identities for which platform controls are out of scope. It's a much different animal to whitelist all that traffic than it is to KYC publishing platforms where identity is inherent to the experience.
If one is going to chicken-little at every opportunity, at every IC published article targeted at useful idiots... then realize that the boot has full control of all things PHYSICAL. How does the internet work? With wires, wires that cross physical borders.
If the national security state was really afraid of the internet, it would be made a splinternet almost overnight and it wouldn't take any legislation to do it... just a false flag and resultant memos to the ISPs under existing statutes already wargamed by teams of lawyers.
That's really what China's great firewall is, KYC platforms are weakness imitating strength, the ultimate lever of control is whitelisting IP's beyond borders.
Have hope that satellites will aid the resistance? Good luck, the national security state has made clear for decades they know space is the next war-fighting domain and has spared no expense in assuring space dominance. "Semper Supra", always above.
I really don't know if you are right, might as well be.
I think this kyc push is for control.
They NEED your consent, only then their hands are washed.
People enslave themselves voluntarily, they just have to set the trap.
That's the error in framing, they already have full control. KYC is subtractive rather than additive. They gain nothing.
Zuck is who would stand to gain, or rather, mitigate losses. The article specifically mentions lawsuits, he's seeking immunity and stifling competition. That's a different set of concerns than the national security state.
There are obviously factions within the state, perhaps the FBI or even CIA for example may want this since they don't have NSA-level capabilities... but they are small fish by comparison.
That helps in civilian court, and things you consent to are things that can serve as a replacement for capabilities they'd rather not divulge over mundane matters. It lowers the fruit, but garnering consent hasn't really met much resistance since people volunteer data already whether they think they are or not.
They're already trapped, so why put up billboards saying its a trap?
imo, that's the error in framing
Because it's how law works. If you are anonymous on the platform, they legally can't do shit. If you KYC, you accept the person's t&c, all your actions on the platform are now in a jurisdiction where there's no freedom. Control is trivial/automatic at this point
That simply means certain evidence can't be introduced in court (courts with compromised judges/prosecutors), but the intelligence doesn't disappear.
"Show me the man i'll show you the crime", if they know the man the legality doesn't matter. They'll use the extra-legal means to find a legal means if deemed necessary.
well, first, I don't operate from the same axiom of complete pwnership by the NSA as you do. I simply do not buy that the intelligence community is as competent as you claim. My experience is that people -- mostly -- are stupid. I know this from my own self-awareness, but also from the great mass of stupidity I frequently see in the world. Highly concentrated power is highly unstable.
counterargument: how is it that Xi has been able to maintain power for as long as he has?
This could also be said for most of the things in our lives: how does the water system work? with pipes. Pipes that can be centrally shut off. Yet, to my knowledge, the state tends not to exert this sort of control over people. Not because they think it's a bad idea, but rather because they can't actually use such blunt instruments. Sure the internet is an assemblage of known wires crossing borders, but everything I've seen of our government is that they are not actually competent enough to "splinterize" the internet.
counterargumnet: they managed to pull off some pretty crazy blunt-force trauma to civil rights during covid didn't they?
I will likely continue to chicken-little away on this topic. I am not a historian, but I've spent a bit of time reading about the past, and the trend I see is that power structures always assume they are more capable than they actually are, and technologies inevitably destabilize entrenched systems.
It's not exactly black magic, perhaps a rabbithole you should explore if you can stomach realizing how obvious it was in hindsight
Individuals are indeed stupid which is why we build systems of knowledge. Individuals being stupid project that onto everything to cope, "The thing about smart people is that they seem like crazy people to dumb people" - Hawking.
That's why it's a consensus view to think the government is incompetent and has no vision, because the masses are incompetent and have no vision.
Institutions of course are as subject to the chaos of entropy as anyone... the state particularly so because it's a battlefield rather than a monolith. But, scale comes with inertia, which attracts the resourceful. That's how large companies survive centuries beyond their founders and governments beyond "great man" type leaders.
You wouldn't say that people at the top of the most powerful corporations are stupid and yielding to chaos. Plans are executed over years and decades routinely in the corporate world, and done so through compartmentalization rather than concentration. Like modules in software, cells in an organism, shell corps in an enterprise, etc.
There's no firewall between the most capable people in business and the power of the state, business and state are just tools wielded as leverage over society in general. People tend to either think that businesses run the government, or that the government interferes with business, when in reality they are levers on the same machine. Cisco, Broadcom, Verizon, ATT, Apple, Google, MSFT, Intel... all compartments of the same train. All one needs to surveil the internet.
Who are those companies largest consistent customer? This will be relevant below. Do you believe any of these companies would meaningful resist cooperation under classified pretenses with the state?
If you're smart enough to recognize people are stupid, there's people even smarter than you that can leverage that mass of stupidity. I used the term useful idiots intentionally. KYC Facebook is a distraction from the larger structure that already exists.
But they have that control still, don't they?
There has to be a good reason to open pandora's box. Stupidity would be to exert that control for no good reason.
Not having an uprising or declines in industrial production due to water is in the state's interest, so the water flows. SIGINT and industrial production over the internet is in the state's interest, so the packets flow.
It's Zuck's fear of lawsuits bringing up KYC, not a lack of control by the apex force.
China and Iran have done it with a fraction of the capabilities, stuff only got out of Iran because they don't have space dominance. China allows what it allows for purposes of commerce.
Never once outside of inter-state rivalry.
Specific companies or industries get disrupted, but the replacements are still subordinate to the apex force.
Militaries always lead in technology through bounties and the "State-Customer" relationship. This another 1:1 parallel from Hamilton's Report on Manufactures that is as relevant today as it was throughout history leading up to that writing. Even those that would invoke Adam Smith in defense of their free-market fantasies clearly never read him.
Technology is physical, subject to physical supply-chains, created and operated by people with necks that fit under a boot.
Leaders fall, structures don't, they simply change hands.
afaik Australia, France passed social media ban, Czechia, Croatia in the process, Germany and UK considering
Arkansas, California, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Ohio, and Tennessee all have variations on social media bans for minors.
I'd like to meet the voters who support this and ask them why
save the children, kill freedom on the platforms.
i hope nostr fixes this
nostr is already full of bots. You don't know anymore if you are talking with a real man behind the keyboard. Everybody is running "his agent" now.
TOTAL FUCKING MESS. A JOKE.
Internet is dead. At this stage doesn't make any sense to publish any content online. Only make memes and fun.
The only thing you can do now with nostr is to run your own relays and allow only people you know and communicate like that, in private.
Unfortunately, bots and bullshit is the price of free communication without PoW.
The best thing to do, create your own virtual network through relays to isolate the bots.
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