jwzMar 14

This is some boss-level forensic accounting demonstrating that Facebook secretly wrote and is shepherding the various "age verification" bills.

Age Verification Lobbying: Dark Money, Model Legislation & Institutional Capture: How corporate lobbying, think tank infrastructure, competing model legislation, and obscured funding networks are shaping age verification policy across 45 states and Congress...
https://jwz.org/b/yk4c

Show threadval
@jwz It's not "boss-level forensic accounting", it was hallucinated by a LLM (cf disclosure at the end of https://tboteproject.com/git/hekate/attestation-findings).
The "analysis" contains nonsense like: https://tboteproject.com/git/hekate/attestation-findings/src/branch/main/output/reports/anomaly_report.md
attestation-findings

Age attestation investigation

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Mar 14 at 10:44pmWeb
Show threadDavid RevoyMar 14
@val @jwz Yes, +1; the methodology part in the repo is big red flag https://tboteproject.com/git/hekate/attestation-findings#methodology-and-tools
attestation-findings

Age attestation investigation

Forgejo: Beyond coding. We Forge.
Show threadGhostOnTheHalfShellMar 14

@davidrevoy @val @jwz

I have a tendency to believe the conclusions, even if this particular thing might be garbage. This is because another individual went over the records of companies and organizations paying for in particular the California bill on age verification that recently passed.

Many of the usual suspects are there. The real question then becomes finding we’re going through the date that’s available.

Show threadDianeMar 15

@GhostOnTheHalfShell @davidrevoy @val @jwz

It's a plausible conclusion.

To me the other likely suspect is the far right christian censors who want to block kids from having access to any information about LGBT people. (and any history that makes the far right look bad)

There's a proposed bill
https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/7661/text
that would ban schools from providing any access to any sexually orientated material, and it ends with defining that anything related to gender dysphoria is sexual related material.

The age verification laws certainly seem consistent with their push to censor kids from being able to participate on the internet.

Text - H.R.7661 - 119th Congress (2025-2026): Stop the Sexualization of Children Act

Text for H.R.7661 - 119th Congress (2025-2026): Stop the Sexualization of Children Act

Show threadGhostOnTheHalfShellMar 15

@alienghic @davidrevoy @val @jwz

16 min

For the curious, this is the source I’m referring to. They say that they don’t think this is a deep dive, but they go through lists of organizations that lobbied on this area

https://youtu.be/b_x4Q0_RQQs

Who's behind the California Age Verification Law?

YouTube
Show threadSassinake!Mar 15

@alienghic @GhostOnTheHalfShell @davidrevoy @val @jwz

it also keeps privacy-aware adults off the internet, or by default, infantilizes them, or even makes us 2nd-class netizens, potentially refusing us essential services and information.

Show threadDianeMar 15

@Sassinake @GhostOnTheHalfShell @davidrevoy @val @jwz

I mean they're also buying up all the mass media and turning it into the oligarch propaganda channel.

It's not like they want anyone to be well informed.

Show threadFrank DaviesMar 15

@alienghic @GhostOnTheHalfShell @davidrevoy @val @jwz this is also a bill which censors many works of literature. It uses an edition of Encyclopedia Britannica noted for its narrow focus on Western European / American works written by men, and Compass Education is an explicitly Christian organization

all other works which are not on the list of maybe 150 books and contain "sexual material" may be censored

Show threadJuno JoveMar 14

@val @jwz
Just because a model "found" it looking through a host of data doesn't necessarily mean it's a hallucination... :/

But yes, Boss-Level-Investigation, it is not.

Show threadTael 🔜 AC26Mar 15
@jupiter @val @jwz Using an LLM for this purpose introduces an untold number of embarrassing failure points which could poison or misdirect the entire investigation. Literally any piece of data, big or small, could be entirely fabricated and every single one needs to be traced back to its source to validate it. The OP used an LLM for this task presumably because they didn't feel capable of ingesting that amount of information on their own, therefore they certainly were not capable of exhaustively checking its work. As a result, I'm not interested in reading, let alone supporting or spreading, their conclusion which I cannot trust to be well-researched and accurate.
Show threadJuno JoveMar 15

@tael @val @jwz
I don't disagree with this.
I think LLMs are tools, so if they just slapped it all into SPSS instead and found a correlation, and jumped to conclusions, I'd be as wary.

LLMs are by now far better at reading comprehension than humans, especially when it's about finding needles in haystacks.

They do suck when asked to check financial records, which is why I whole-heartedly agree that this is a flawed methodology to jump to conclusions from.

Show threadTael 🔜 AC26Mar 15
@jupiter @val @jwz LLMs are terrible at reading comprehension. They can't actually *comprehend* anything. They are bad tools because they don't deliver predictable results. Whether you receive an accurate result or even one relevant to your prompt is a matter of statistical probability. SPSS is deterministic software; I'd be far more willing to listen to any conclusion formed based on that technology. LLM use is an automatic disqualification for a discussion of this seriousness. Did you read this page linked by @val?
https://tboteproject.com/git/hekate/attestation-findings/src/branch/main/output/reports/anomaly_report.md
It's pure "AI LARP" and amounts to an LLM Gish gallop. This analysis is worthless.
attestation-findings/output/reports/anomaly_report.md at main

attestation-findings

Forgejo: Beyond coding. We Forge.