shaicolemanMeta Platforms: Lobbying, dark money, and the App Store Accountability Act
https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1rshc1f/i_traced_2_b...
https://github.com/upper-up/meta-lobbying-and-other-findings
I know most of this affects only the US, but I'm wondering where this will go in the EU if the Age Verification Tech goes ahead in America. There's been lots of efforts to increase surveillance disguised as protection for kids in the EU and UK.
The Swiss implementation of eID may be hint that governments may/will take the responsibility to implement and maintain the tech, but the multiple intrusions and lobbying by Palantir and friends in the EU gives me the ick.
The EU, unfortunately, has shown to be very susceptible to this kind of lobbying in the past. We regularly see legislation that is being rammed and rushed through in spite of vocal opposition. I would be very, very worried. (EU citizen)
What examples of this do you have in recent years (post 2016)? The clearest example of lobbying (chat control) has repeatedly been struck down.
https://noyb.eu/en/project/dpa/dpc-ireland
GDPR is entirely unenforced, it's not worth the paper it's written on, and this is due to lobbying. The situation continues to this day. The DPAs simply throw reports of violations into the trash bin.
It's hilariously transparent - Ireland recently (less than 6 months ago) added a former _Meta lobbyist_ to their DPA board [0].
US Big Tech is now spending a record €151 million per year on lobbying the EU [1], and it's completely implausible to believe they're doing that with 0 RoI. "The number of digital lobbyists has risen from 699 to 890 full-time equivalents (FTEs), surpassing the 720 Members of the European Parliament (MEPs). A total of 437 lobbyists now have continuous access to the European Parliament.
Three meetings per day: Big Tech held an average of three lobbying meetings a day in the first half of 2025, which speaks volumes about their level of access to EU policymakers." It's impossible that this doesn't influence things.
[0] https://noyb.eu/en/former-meta-lobbyist-named-dpc-commission...
[1] https://corporateeurope.org/en/2025/10/revealed-tech-industr...
Extending one organization's results to saying "completely unenforced" is definitely something, considering the ~billion of fines per year.