I traced $2 billion in nonprofit grants and 45 states of lobbying records to figure out who's behind the age verification bills

ikidd@lemmy.world · edit-2 7 hours ago

I traced $2 billion in nonprofit grants and 45 states of lobbying records to figure out who's behind the age verification bills

lmmarsano@group.lt · edit-2 3 hours ago

continued

CBS News, “Report: Facebook Hired PR Firm To Smear TikTok”: https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/report-facebook-hired-pr-firm-to-smear-tiktok/

Engadget, “Meta reportedly paid political consultants to smear TikTok”: https://www.engadget.com/meta-targeted-victory-tiktok-smear-campaign-133139892.html

Boston Globe, “Facebook paid GOP firm to malign TikTok, internal e-mails reveal” (March 30, 2022): https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/03/30/business/facebook-paid-gop-firm-malign-tiktok-internal-e-mails-reveal/

Georgetown Free Speech Project, “Facebook hires GOP consulting firm to smear rival TikTok”: https://freespeechproject.georgetown.edu/tracker-entries/facebook-hires-gop-consulting-firm-in-dc-area-to-smear-rival-tiktok/

Nature Scientific Reports, “Coordination patterns reveal online political astroturfing across the world” (2022): https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-08404-9

Medium/HR News, “Study: At Least 15% of All Reddit Content is Corporate Trolls”: https://medium.com/@hrnews1/study-at-least-15-of-all-reddit-content-is-corporate-trolls-trying-to-manipulate-public-opinion-49cb302c26a5

TechCrunch, “Facebook Group admins complain of mass bans” (June 24, 2025): https://techcrunch.com/2025/06/24/facebook-group-admins-complain-of-mass-bans-meta-says-its-fixing-the-problem/

YNet News, “Public opinion for sale: The new startup causing a storm” (Doublespeed): https://www.ynetnews.com/tech-and-digital/article/hyraenbmzx

Meta Transparency Center, “Inauthentic Behavior” policy: https://transparency.meta.com/policies/community-standards/inauthentic-behavior/

The Hacker News, “Meta Disrupts Influence Ops Targeting Romania, Azerbaijan, and Taiwan” (May 2025): https://thehackernews.com/2025/05/meta-disrupts-influence-ops-targeting.html

incompetent@programming.dev · 1 hour ago

I know it’s a lot of information and difficult to summarize, but doesn’t anyone have a TL;DR? Who’s behind it?

lmmarsano@group.lt · 47 minutes ago

Those are found in other comments: Meta, NCOSE, Heritage Foundation.

Meta is covertly supporting bills to weaken the burden on itself and shift it on others (especially competitors) while NCOSE & Heritage Foundation want to regress society as usual.

Crozekiel@lemmy.zip · 44 minutes ago

Conveniently while also forcing all operating systems to install infrastructure to collect data about the user and broadcast it to every single program ran on the device… Make the OS do the data collection, give it to Meta for free.

incompetent@programming.dev · 45 minutes ago

Thanks. Yeah, I saw Meta in another comment after I posted my question.

I traced $2 billion in nonprofit grants and 45 states of lobbying records to figure out who's behind the age verification bills

I traced $2 billion in nonprofit grants and 45 states of lobbying records to figure out who's behind the age verification bills

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