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
These discussions remind me so much of the US discussions about federal ID documents as verification.
There's a vocal portion of people which opposes any solution because "privacy, government overreach, surveillance ...". So instead of a solution like e.g. zero-proof age verification, that tries to minimize intrusions on privacy, the result is the worst of all worlds, maximum surveillance (but I guess it's ok if it is not the federal government, but meta), with minimum utility. Just look at the freaking mess that is trying to proof your identity in the US.
When I hear this argument ("better the government do it than a private company") I recoil. The government is sovereign, only accepts lawsuits at its discretion, and can use violence to get its way. We also know for a fact that it abuses its powers and conducts surreptitious unlawful campaigns against its citizens.
I'm not on board with any of it, but the last thing I want is the government to control it.
The government is also, at least theoretically, democratic and accountable to the population.
Meta on the other hand is a dictatorship run by Zuck that's only marginally accountable to stockholders (which are only a small subset of the population).
They're still accountable to customers/users. If you don't like their products, don't use them. I don't.
The unfortunate thing about this lobbying effort is that it's making the government accountable to Meta, which is the worst of all worlds.
You know meta keeps a shadow profile on every person who is know to every one of their customers, right? So even if you don't use it, they almost certainly have you in their system.
At least when the government is working, there are controls around what they can collect, what they can do with it, and who they share it with. And what they cannot do with it.
There aren’t really. The NSA keeps a shadier profile on you too, and the information Meta has is a subset of that. Snowden disclosures showed that.