this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2026
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Big brother wants to help (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 day ago by Laggindragon@lemmy.world to c/memes@lemmy.world
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[–] orca@orcas.enjoying.yachts 28 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Here’s the take I read elsewhere:

  • Meta is pushing this hard through various lobbyist groups and shell groups
  • The supposed reasoning is that because of the massive flood of bots on the internet, advertisers are now incapable of discerning between bots and humans. This is bad for the advertising industry, so advertisers are apparently bailing on Meta. This means Meta is bleeding income on that front
  • To stop the bleeding, Meta is pushing age verification for a few reasons: 1. It signals that the entity on the other side is indeed a human and this gives advertisers more confidence; 2. It ensures that advertisers are not advertising to children (a big no-no)
  • Next up comes the government buy-in. They see this as a new wedge for pushing mass surveillance and shoving tons of people out of the shadow of privacy.

Here’s a chart I grabbed from elsewhere that shows how Meta is achieving this and how the money is exchanging hands:

[–] Deme@sopuli.xyz 10 points 1 day ago

After they know if the user is human, the logical next step would be to nail down exactly which human. The governments would of course love that and the advertisers would start manipulating people on the individual level like never before. I wouldn't be surprised if this is also laying the foundations for some universal digital ID that would do just that.

[–] dellish@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago

This is the theory I tend to believe.