Christine Lemmer-WebberApr 15

Well this is truly bad. US national level OS-level age verification bill. https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/8250/all-info

The text of it isn't out yet.

EDIT: Well the text is now out and it's as bad as you could imagine. It's not even just that you need to verify your age to access a website... operating systems must verify your age to let you *use a computer at all*

EDIT EDIT: Thanks to @Andres4NY for pointing out that it also holds responsible anyone who has any software shipped on the operating system of a computer, meaning FOSS developers eveywhere

Show threadChristine Lemmer-WebberApr 15

We don't know who's funding this stuff for sure, there was the vibecoded analysis that came to the conclusion of Meta, but I suspect that could be true but Meta wouldn't be alone.

Who stands to benefit from this? A lot of forces of centralization, and anti-LGBTQ orgs:

- Microsoft, for sure, since they are seeing Windows' dominance threatened?
- Apple, for similar reasons?
- Peter Theil and similar surveillance company owners and operators?
- Anti-queer orgs and think tanks like the Heritage Foundation?
- Cloudflare, who will probably run the age verification paywalls everyone will be forced to deploy?

Who's behind this? Who's getting politicians so excited about it? There's such a swell of bipartisan support seemingly out of nowhere, and my suspicion is a lot of that enthusiasm is coming from check-writing.

So who's behind it?

Show threadJacquelineApr 15
@cwebber because we are governed by corpo backed Nazis who are eager to consolidate the fascist ownership and control of the media and both parties are filled to the brim with these scum.
Show threadJacquelineApr 15

@cwebber

The fascist playbook is to use the pigs to kill the people who oppose the regime, and to use censorship to silence those who would support them.

Show threadJacqueline

@cwebber

The function that was played by Gramscian hegemony is giving way to cold hard fascism.

Apr 15 at 11:55amWeb