this post was submitted on 14 Mar 2026
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Privacy

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Age verification is the new digital ID (lemmy.ml)
submitted 1 day ago by LiamTheBox@lemmy.ml to c/privacy@lemmy.ml
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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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[–] kablez@lemmy.world 5 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 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.