Comment by wren6991
15 hours ago
I think the causality is a bit mixed up here given Meta have put millions of dollars into child safety lobbying
15 hours ago
I think the causality is a bit mixed up here given Meta have put millions of dollars into child safety lobbying
What's their motive there?
Smaller entrants to the field cannot as easily comply with the law. It’s about raising barriers to entry. Trust in Meta might be low here, but to the general public, it’s higher than some small startup they’ve never heard of, so they won’t upload their ids there.
I linked to two articles describing Meta's fight to have age verification laws put into place (even before the settlement). The most obvious reason is to try to get some sort of law in place that they believe they can comply with _without_ having to make changes to their algorithms in a way that might hurt their business.
I don't think they particularly _want_ legal id (though maybe they do? who knows)... but it's obviously false that this was caused by the government when Meta itself was lobbying for such laws even before then.
https://techoversight.org/2025/07/29/bloomberg-meta-google-l...
https://thedeepdive.ca/who-pushes-age-verification-bills/
Creates another expensive bar for prospective challengers to clear - regulation nearly always ends up favouring incumbents, especially if they have a hand in shaping it.
I'm honestly not sure. Often when companies lobby for regulation it's to avoid other types of regulation they would find more troublesome. I don't buy the popular narrative that Meta is lobbying for verification laws for the purpose of getting ID data because surely they have a lot of signal there already. At the same time I think it's backwards to say "Meta are behaving this way because of regulation" when they actively lobbied for it.
Obviously, none of us have any proof, but I'm on board with the theory that they've been lobbying for it to push things subtly. Specifically because it looks like a lot of these laws are being made to absolve the person creating the gate of responsibility and liability when the gate is there, even if it fails. The idea of the theory being that if they can push that part in then it's better off for them rather than if it's done in a vacuum where they can end up responsible.
It makes it impossible for anyone except huge existing players to have a legal social network if there are enough hoops to jump through to run one.