Source: https://xcancel.com/vxunderground/status/2032600868005310638#m

Yeah, so basically the current prevailing schizo internet theory is that AI nerds have destroyed the internet and created infinite spam.

The advertisement goons are now incapable of determining who is a bot and who is an actual human. The advertisement goons no longer want to pay as much to social media networks.

Social media networks, in full blown panic of losing potential revenue, decided to lobby governments saying “we gotta protect the kids! ID everyone to protect the kids from pedophiles!”.

The social media networks know this doesn’t really protect kids. But, it does two things (and a third accidentally).

  1. They now can identify who is human and who is AI slop machine, or enough to appease the advertisement goons

  2. Advertising to children is a general no-no from politicians, or something, so with ID verification they can say with confidence they’re not advertising to children because it’s been ID verification. Basically, they can weed out the children and focus on advertising to adults

  3. The feds can now tell who is human and who is AI slop. This inadvertently helps them with tracking people and serving fresh daily dumps of propaganda, or whatever they want to do.

It’s a win-win-win for advertisers, social media networks, the government, and any business which does data collections.

It fucks over everyone else.

Chat, I’m not going to lie to you. This is an extremely good conspiracy schizo theory and I unironically believe it.

  • quinnart@lemmy.today
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    4 hours ago

    This is not a conspiracy. Look at who funded the bill, who wrote it, and who funded the opposition to the bill in each state. Every time one of these passes, each legislating body already has the votes the need to pass before the actual bill material surfaces.

    Meta has reportedly funneled over $65 million into a network of four primary super PACs to manage this state-by-state strategy. While they appear distinct on paper to “scatter filings” and avoid centralized FEC scrutiny, they are managed by the same leadership: Brian Baker (a veteran GOP strategist) and the Democratic consulting firm Hilltop Public Solutions.

    1. American Technology Excellence Project (ATEP): The national “umbrella” super PAC that serves as the primary funding hub.

    2. Forge the Future Project: The GOP-focused arm, active in states like TexasFlorida, and Utah. It frames the legislation as a “parental rights” and “pro-family” issue.

    3. Making Our Tomorrow: The Democratic-focused arm, active in Illinois and California. It frames the same legislation as “tech accountability” and “corporate responsibility.”

    4. Mobilizing Economic Transformation Across California (META PAC): A California-specific PAC focused on protecting Meta’s interests in its home state, particularly regarding AI and child safety regulations.

    The “Shadow” Advocate: Digital Childhood Alliance (DCA)

    The group providing the “boots on the ground” testimony for these bills is the Digital Childhood Alliance. Investigations have found that:

    • Legal Status: The DCA reportedly has no EIN, no IRS registration, and no incorporation records. It is essentially a “ghost organization” or astroturf group.

    • The Meta Link: Internal filings and investigative reports confirmed the DCA is almost entirely funded by Meta, though its website and testimonies never disclose this.

    • The Mission: They are launching Proof-of-Personhood for exactly the reasons specified in this post. By integrating a unique identifier at the OS-level, they are effectively killing the VPN. Soon websites will start requiring that unique identifier to view “adult” content in order to comply with the government.

    How will this data be used? I’ll let you speculate, but let me reassure you that privacy is dead and a bunch of know-nothing geriatric pigs come up with a new way to destroy democracy every day.

  • metermatic26@lemmy.world
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    8 hours ago

    Conspiracy theory? It’s not, it’s absolutely true. But they left out the bit about the quasi-alliance between big tech and right-wing extremists.

    Tech bro’s want to keep their revenue streams, techno-fascists want to remove privacy barriers that stop them from training AI with your personal data and actual fascists want to crack down on public speech and dissidents.

    The political right in both the US and EU are continuously working to remove privacy and surveillance restrictions under the auspices of free markets and innovation.

  • ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml
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    9 hours ago

    How is this a theory? This is literally what’s happening lol

    Even if it’s not advertising itself pushing it, the rest of what was said is true.

  • kablez@lemmy.world
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    14 hours ago

    Advertising doesn’t seem like a large enough lever to drive something this globally coordinated.

    My read is that governments and large institutions are preparing for the kind of systemic instability climate change is going to produce.

    Across the world we’re already seeing laws and policies that quietly restrict the ability to organise, protest, or remain anonymous online, while surveillance capabilities expand at the same time. None of this is particularly popular, yet it keeps happening.

    Why?

    Because the next few decades are likely to involve continuous pressure from climate-driven problems: migration, water shortages, falling crop yields, energy instability, and the political conflict that follows when resources get tighter.

    From that perspective, universal ID verification online isn’t mainly about ads or “protecting the kids”. It’s about mapping who is who, who talks to who, and how information spreads.

    If you expect future mass unrest, protest movements, or large-scale political instability, that kind of data becomes extremely valuable.

    And historically, elites often choose to invest more effort in managing the consequences of systemic problems than in solving the underlying causes.

    So instead of “AI spam broke advertising”, the bigger story might be that institutions are building the infrastructure to monitor and manage populations during a much messier future.

  • IratePirate@feddit.org
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    20 hours ago

    The advertisement goons are now incapable of determining who is a bot and who is an actual human.

    Bullshit. Social networks track the living shit out of everyone and know exactly what’s human traffic and what isn’t. Device identifiers (user agent, IP ranges, browser fingerprint, (lack of) ad id, etc.) and behavioral patterns (including purchase history) differ wildly.

    Advertising to children is a general no-no from politicians, or something,

    Bullshit. Even advertising to kids were outlawed (it isn’t), politicians could be just bought off by advertisers to turn a blind eye. This is particularly true for the land of their formerly free and home of the formerly brave where corruption is now an above-the-counter item, practiced out in the open by the president himself.

    • Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world
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      14 hours ago

      Social networks track the living shit out of everyone and know exactly what’s human traffic and what isn’t.

      Over 80% of Twitter’s accounts are actually bots

      The difference now is that paying advertisers are demanding proof that their adverts are reaching humans, not bots.

      Why are you given adverts for products you’ve just bought? So that paying advertisers can be tricked by the data into thinking their advert resulted in a sale.

      • plyth@feddit.org
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        7 hours ago

        Why are you given adverts for products you’ve just bought?

        You could return it. Better make sure that you stick to your choice.

  • GaMEChld@lemmy.world
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    18 hours ago

    🧩 Hyper Rationalizing Autistic person here. My condition makes me view reality as systems within systems within systems with infinite recursion.

    I have read this post.

    I have not detected logical inconsistency in this theory… And all the facts that I know seem to support the hypothesis.

    And yes I know I sound like AI. Ironically, AI tools tell me that too. 😅

    If anyone wants to introduce a new premise or fact into the hypothetical scenario, I’ll let you know if it makes sense or not (to me).

    • Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world
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      14 hours ago

      New premise.

      New datacenters are not for AGI and never have been. The are to support the hyper personalisation of advertising that requires a massive surveillance apparatus and data mining operation.

      • GaMEChld@lemmy.world
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        3 hours ago

        Correct. But not wholly correct. There are legitimate advancements being made by the serious ppl. But 99% yeah, it’s a smokescreen and everyone sees it coming a mile away, and they think we’re fucking stupid. They have no respect for us, the common people.

        They are too busy robbing their own children of a future metaphorically, and then finishing up by raping and eating said children on the island.

        Why?

        Because:

        Darkseid

        is.

        Edit: Which is why I opted out of the system. I play games for fun. Unfair games are inherently not fun, so I stopped playing. Made a straight 🐝 Line to the exit.

        Bought a house when the historic market low hit after 2008 recession during 2013.

        Paid it down aggressively in 10 years with a cherry 2.3% interest rate.

        Solar panels and efficiency upgrades to decrease lifetime cost of living.

        Rent 50% of property for supplemental rental income (charging UNDER market rate intentionally because I am not trying to be greedy).

        Filled property tax grievance to drive property tax down as much as possible.

        In 2024 I retired at age 38 by allowing my unethical employer to walk into a wrongful termination lawsuit because they are morons who think they know more than me.

        Litigation in progress but I can confidently predict the outcome.

        They will either settle for 1 million, or take my custom package. If they value their pride they will settle. If they value money, they will take my custom package. If they litigate it will likely destroy their company. 1.6 million in fees and defense costs, a humiliating public loss, and then I will go tell local news just to finish them off for fun.

        Oh and I did all that with a few emails and a couple forms for $0. Just answering the complaint alone has cost them $60k so far.

        FATALITY.

    • thedeadwalking4242@lemmy.world
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      13 hours ago

      Humans are illogical creatures who hype over irrational things. Some random key players pulling strings to heard the mob just a little but no greater strategy exists then “make money by any means possible fuck everyone else”"

  • FukOui@lemmy.zip
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    1 day ago

    Plausible considering it’s been shown that meta is the one responsible for lobbying this shit

  • BeN9o@lemmy.world
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    “Advertising to Children is a general no-no…”

    Uhh what? Advertising to children is like no1 priority. That’s why Kim K etc is in fortnite, happy meals are bad food aimed at kids and of course standard TV adverts can be heavily aimed at kids, even tho its the parents spending the money.

    • new_world_odor@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Advertising to children is significantly more tightly regulated, for the very reason that they’re so damn thirsty for it.

    • starblursd@lemmy.zip
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      1 day ago

      Data collection* from children is a general No-No but with this they don’t have to collect the data to know they’re a child and can now specifically target them without having to collect data first. Thereby avoiding coppa fines

    • damnthefilibuster@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Facebook has known since over a decade that under 13s are on their networks and instead of booting them, the CEO (whoever he is) decided to make the platforms more addictive to under 13s. Real quote from the LA court case going on right now.

      Also, the new CEO of Xbox Gaming is ex-AI Head of Microsoft and the ex-Head of under-13 policy at Facebook. So she did everything the CEO (whoever he is) asked her to do, including making the platforms more addictive and pushing back on govt intervention.

      • WoodScientist@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        Not saying it’s right, but only appropriate things can be advertised to children, so in the UK that’s no junk food for example

        When was the last time any company got prosecuted for violating that? And was the fine less than the profit they made by violating the law?

        • atomicbocks@sh.itjust.works
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          The US doesn’t allow cigarettes to be advertised to children or anywhere where they might see it. This was a Clinton administration thing. That’s why the Winston Cup became the Nextel Cup in NASCAR as just one for instance.

          • damnthefilibuster@lemmy.world
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            1 day ago

            And so JUUL, which is made from all the main ingredients of a cigarette, is not a cigarette? And it’s not advertised heavily on social media like Snapchat, where most youth are? Instead of the fucking nascar?

            • atomicbocks@sh.itjust.works
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              1 day ago

              Unfortunately we live in a time when if the law doesn’t specifically call out something then it doesn’t apply. So no, as far as US law is concerned, Juuls are not cigarettes just like Uber isn’t a taxi service and YouTube isn’t a broadcaster.

              • damnthefilibuster@lemmy.world
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                1 day ago

                But we as common sense people can say that Juul is a cigarette and the govt hasn’t done enough to kill its advertising to children.

                • atomicbocks@sh.itjust.works
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                  1 day ago

                  Yes and no. Juuls and the like contain nicotine salts that degrade the heating element. There is mounting evidence to suggest that these will need their own awareness campaign as they have very different health risks to original tobacco use. However, there are other kinds of vape pens that don’t contain nicotine salts or that use solids instead of liquids that have already been grouped in with Juuls in legislation. Simply applying common sense is often not enough to cover the whole situation which is why industries like this rely on legislation being too slow to stop them.

            • new_world_odor@lemmy.world
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              23 hours ago

              I think you make a fair point here, partially. However, Marlboro could also advertise on snapchat if they wanted. Now there’s no doubt something like that would catch massive eyes, landing them in hot enough water to probably change the law around it. If Marlboro leadership saw Juul as a threat, that would make sense to do. They lose a pittance in advertising and court fees, and cut off a competitor from an advertising stream.

              But they’re not a threat, they’re an asset. Altria, the parent company of Philip Morris and NJOY, has a 35% stake in Juul. Altria is incentivized to keep their piles of shit separate.

              Vaping has the potential to be healthier than cigarettes, socially and physically. But not when it’s almost entirely controlled by companies that have a history of marketing to children. It’s physically healthier sure, but only 107 countries have laws regulating the age for vaping, vs 188 for cigarettes. The e-waste factor is also huge, something that a lot of people who vape choose to ignore and I wish they couldn’t. I vape myself, have for years, and it’s a shit state of affairs with how popular disposables are. But I don’t know what the realistic solution is. People are going to use tobacco products in a dystopia.

        • jedibob5@lemmy.world
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          What? Tobacco is like, the one thing that actually has extremely stringent advertising regulations in the US. When vaping products like Juul came around, they were able to exploit loopholes in those laws, but I think those have pretty much been patched up by now.

    • a_gee_dizzle@lemmy.ca
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      I never thought about it until I clicked on this link, but repositories are actually a really good format for investigative journalism. Allows you to organize all the supporting documents alongside the article in an organized way.

      • msage@programming.dev
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        18 hours ago

        It’s great for most written things in society.

        Laws? Oh yes, please.

        Any official communication? Thank you.

        Even mundane things like cooking guides would benefit from history and versioning. Imagine entire family sending their branches for favourite pie/turkey/whatever else.

    • Tiresia@slrpnk.net
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      It’s not even a conspiracy, it’s just corporations and politicians behaving according to individual incentives and communicating about it publicly with a basic level of indirectness to avoid outrage.

      • kieron115@startrek.website
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        1 day ago

        They also want to defer the costs of positively identifying users to the various governments, presumably so it doesn’t eat into their advertising revenue even further.