A redditor (Ok_Lingonberry3296) traced $2 billion in nonprofit grants and lobbying records across 45 states to figure out who's behind the age verification bills.

The answer is Meta - a company that profits from your data writing laws that collect more of it.

Page: https://github.com/upper-up/meta-lobbying-and-other-findings?tab=readme-ov-file

Page backup: https://archive.ph/2026.03.13-193015/https://github.com/upper-up/meta-lobbying-and-other-findings?tab=readme-ov-file

Reddit discussion: https://web.archive.org/web/20260313143853/https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1rshc1f/i_traced_2_billion_in_nonprofit_grants_and_45/

#Meta #Facebook #AgeVerification #privacy #surveillance #dystopia #socialmedia #technology

@jonsnow

this investigation used Claude Code

@jonsnow @pluralistic has some very strong words on the age verification racket in his latest screed, starting here: https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/116219490674047669
Cory Doctorow (@[email protected])

Content warning: Long thread/24

Mamot - Le Mastodon de La Quadrature du Net
@jonsnow are you using an approved browser while reading this?
@gary_alderson yes. I approved it myself 👍 @Vivaldi
@EUCommission is lying and in great support of #meta #eu politicians are casting in on lobby money. @HennaVirkkunen #StopMeta before #fascists taking over.

This is terrible research that would not pass grad school year 1.

Meta is plenty evil, and the overall claim may indeed be true. But this misguided AI hallucination makes a very poor way to support those claims.

@jkn Which parts of this have been determined to be false, i.e. hallucinations?
Age Verification Lobbying: Dark Money, Model Legislation & Institutional Capture

Investigative research into age verification lobbying, dark money, and model legislation

The TBOTE Project
@luminos yup, it was added after my post.