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submitted 1 week ago by LiamTheBox@lemmy.ml to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

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.

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[-] BeN9o@lemmy.world 157 points 1 week ago

"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 50 points 1 week ago

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

[-] kieron115@startrek.website 32 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I grew up in the 90s and there were some absolutely unhinged ads during saturday morning cartoons. This spoof is only slightly crazier than an actual capri sun liquid cool commercial.

https://youtu.be/eyd51lvu3xw

[-] damnthefilibuster@lemmy.world 35 points 1 week 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.

[-] starblursd@lemmy.zip 26 points 1 week 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

[-] d00ery@lemmy.world 14 points 1 week 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 - https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/mar/10/uk-junk-food-ad-ban-so-diluted-it-may-be-largely-ineffective-experts-say

[-] WoodScientist@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week 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?

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[-] kieron115@startrek.website 92 points 1 week ago

This isn't even a conspiracy theory, it's been investigated and found to be mostly true.

https://tboteproject.com/git/hekate/attestation-findings

[-] a_gee_dizzle@lemmy.ca 32 points 1 week ago

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 8 points 1 week 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.

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[-] Hodor@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 week ago

I'd argue it also has to do with "AI" training data

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[-] No1@aussie.zone 51 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

This is just the beginning.

You think it's just about ID?

Politicians in both the UK and Australia have spoken about banning VPNs, because VPNs have been used to avoid age verification in those countries.

[-] daannii@lemmy.world 12 points 1 week ago

Which is stupid. Kids aren't using vpns. Most good ones cost money. And kids aren't very tech savvy these days.

Most grow up with phones and tablets only. They don't even know how to use a keyboard or a PC.

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[-] gray@lemmy.ml 35 points 1 week ago

I don't love the word schizo, but otherwise I am on board

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[-] SendMePhotos@lemmy.world 35 points 1 week ago

That actually makes sense.

[-] Earthman_Jim@lemmy.zip 18 points 1 week ago

Honestly, the only "schizo" part of this is the assertion that people aren't allowed to advertise to children, otherwise this all makes perfectly sane sense.

[-] Pricklesthemagicfish@reddthat.com 33 points 1 week ago

Second to make all advertising illegal

[-] 0li0li@lemmy.world 12 points 1 week ago

I like it; let's get more support for this! How about an ad campaign?

[-] Anarki_@lemmy.blahaj.zone 33 points 1 week ago

Posted on Twitter lmfao

[-] FukOui@lemmy.zip 22 points 1 week ago

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

[-] ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml 22 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week 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.

[-] eli@lemmy.world 21 points 1 week ago

Want a real schizo theory?

People are going to use the ID verification thing to see which accounts are child accounts, pull all details for those accounts and make a database of children's accounts, and then sell that information to bad actors who plan to traffic children.

[-] freedickpics@lemmy.ml 8 points 1 week ago

Doesn't even need to be intentional when there are virtually no consequences for leaking that info

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[-] imjustmsk@lemmy.world 21 points 1 week ago

What a beautiful world we live in. 

(my first ever post in the fediverse lol) 

[-] mistermodal@lemmy.ml 12 points 1 week ago
[-] UnimportantHuman@lemmy.ml 11 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Just cut off a friend who tried to tell me racism isn't a choice. Knew him for over a decade but he fell into an algorithm that he became obsessed with. He really believed he was seeing the "truth" finally.

[-] MyVeryRealName@lemmy.world 8 points 1 week ago

Average Andrew Tate fan

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[-] kablez@lemmy.world 20 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week 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 20 points 1 week 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.

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[-] kahoodd@reddthat.com 19 points 1 week ago

and we have upcoming android lockdown👌

[-] metermatic26@lemmy.world 18 points 1 week 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.

[-] Gates9@sh.itjust.works 17 points 1 week ago

Seems like the most obvious fucking thing in the world

[-] AmbitiousProcess@piefed.social 11 points 1 week ago

I think it's probably not being pushed because of those things (though they are certainly possible outcomes), and more about the fact that they can just... scrape up a bunch of data about you in general.

Now they know your name, age, race, birthday, and can correlate that all with data brokers if they want more. Ad targeting becomes easier, thus making them more money. Simple as that.

I don't like this theory because they have already had access to this information with social media. Individuals willingly volunteer this information about themselves and their friends, and data brokers would collect and centralize it from multiple sources. This is why some platforms were trying out AI age verification in countries that hadn't officially mandated ID verification yet. They were confident enough, with all the info they had already collected, to assume someone's age. They would hope that the people who fail the check would be few enough to not cause an immediate uproar("just verify with ID, what's the big deal?")

This is most certainly more of an authoritarian power grab to prevent any anonymous criticism what so ever. Id verification will allow them to target any application that does not comply and preserves user privacy. Anyone who does not comply will be implied to be a criminal or enemy of the state. They want to make a system where corporate surveillance cannot be avoided.

The corporations lobbying for this want to benefit from being a part of the fascist state, but don't want to handle any legal obligation or public scrutiny from the obvious damages that will come from collecting this information. That's why you have different companies lobbying for different "solutions"; whatever keeps them from facing repercussions but still makes them money for being a part of the surveillance state is what they will support.

[-] null@lemmy.org 11 points 1 week ago

It makes more sense than it doesn't.

Maybe not as shadow cabal type of collusion, but as the path of least resistance that all these entities would find themselves going down independently... at the same time.

[-] GaMEChld@lemmy.world 11 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week 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).

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.

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[-] quinnart@lemmy.today 10 points 1 week 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.

[-] 1984@lemmy.today 8 points 1 week ago

I like how they call everything conspiracy theories these days. Yeah, nothing to see here, just wanna protect children.... :)

[-] Kintarian@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago

I believe the cat

[-] Avicenna@programming.dev 7 points 1 week ago

I mean AI goons are destroying the internet and open source, that much is true.

[-] collapse_already@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 week ago

The bad news for the AI goons is that the capitalists have squeezed us so hard that we no longer have any money to spend on the products we're programmed to lust after. Not sure what the end game is.

[-] Infernal_pizza@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 1 week ago

Governments have been pushing for more censorship and surveillance long before AI came onto the scene

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this post was submitted on 14 Mar 2026
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