Simon Brooke5d ago

Guess who's behind the sudden rush of age verification legislation?

In the US, #Meta is spending $26.3 Million to hire at least 86 Lobbyists from 40 lobbying firms, and lobbying in at least 45 states. It is confirmed that Meta wrote the Louisiana age verification bill.

In the EU, Meta is spending ten million euros annually on lobbying, retaining 18 lobbying firms.

Edit: this article is based on LLM generated material, and I haven't spent the time to check its sources

https://tboteproject.com/

Age Verification Lobbying: Dark Money, Model Legislation & Institutional Capture

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

The TBOTE Project
Show threadMichael Cook5d ago

@simon_brooke Are we sure about this? I thought I saw a post yesterday that said that this idea had come from an LLM someone was using to help them figure it out and they wrote a post based on that.

But I don’t know if that was this post or a different one.

Show threadSimon Brooke

@foobarsoft Follow the link.

Yes, provided we accept the authenticity of the authors of that site, we are sure about that. They publish enough of their data that it would be possible to verify it, although I have not done so in any depth.

Mar 15 at 10:58pmWeb
Show threadgotofritz5d ago

@simon_brooke @foobarsoft

It's the same post, I read it yesterday too and it was mentioned in the methodology section. Which today however looks a bit cleaned up from what I remember
https://tboteproject.com/git/hekate/attestation-findings#methodology-and-tools

The potential LLM authorship discussion on reddit, make of that what you will
https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1rshc1f/i_traced_2_billion_in_nonprofit_grants_and_45/oa7lywh/

attestation-findings

Age attestation investigation

Forgejo: Beyond coding. We Forge.
Show threadKynx5d ago

@gotofritz @simon_brooke @foobarsoft the first I saw of this was https://github.com/upper-up/meta-lobbying-and-other-findings?tab=readme-ov-file

They freely admit the AI and tell you to check the primary sources. Which I do not have time to do.

I don’t condemn using AI for research - it’s a tool, and clearly assembled this in inhuman time. Is some of it wrong? Probably.

AI hype is a planet-cooking disaster. The tech itself is just another tool - maybe useful for good, or evil: https://pluralistic.net/2026/03/12/normal-technology/

GitHub - upper-up/meta-lobbying-and-other-findings

Contribute to upper-up/meta-lobbying-and-other-findings development by creating an account on GitHub.

GitHub
Show threadnear5d ago
@gotofritz @simon_brooke @foobarsoft there's more discussion on lobste.rs about how the research isn't very reliable because they used an llm: https://lobste.rs/s/ddrcpa/i_traced_2_billion_nonprofit_grants_45#c_alwe0c
I traced $2 billion in nonprofit grants and 45 states of lobbying records to figure out who's behind the age verification bills

23 comments

Lobsters