Secrets of Privacy | Make Yourself a Harder Target

Mark Zuckerberg keeps telling lawmakers and jurors that Apple and Google should verify everyone's age at the operating system level. ➡️ He said it under oath last month in Los Angeles. ➡️ Meta, X, and Snap sent a joint letter to South Dakota legislators saying the same thing. ➡️ Meta's youth safety policy director has testified in multiple state hearings pushing this approach. The framing is always about protecting kids. But look at what OS-level age verification actually builds. First, it moves legal liability off Meta. Zuckerberg is facing 1,600+ lawsuits alleging Instagram harmed minors. If Apple and Google own age enforcement, Meta's lawyers get to point at Cupertino and Mountain View when enforcement fails. Google's own director of government affairs called this out: "fast-moving legislative proposals being pushed by Meta and other companies in an effort to offload their own responsibilities." Second (and few people are talking about this) it gives Meta better data. California's AB 1043 (effective Jan 2027) requires operating systems to sort every user into an age bracket at setup and expose that data to any app via real-time API. Colorado's SB26-051 does the same. Right now Meta relies on self-reported birthdates for age data. Their own internal documents showed millions of underage users slipping through. An OS-verified age signal, potentially backed by government ID or biometrics, gives Meta a high-confidence demographic data point for every user, on every device, delivered via API, at zero implementation cost to Meta. They don't build the system. They don't store the IDs. They don't take the PR hit. They just read the signal and feed it into the ad targeting machine that generates $130B+ in annual revenue. Meta gets identity infrastructure without the surveillance optics. The IAPP noted that OS-level verification forces all users to unmask. Which overrides the possibility of anonymous interaction with the device itself. Every app that queries that API benefits. So when Zuckerberg says age verification at the phone level is "just a lot cleaner," he's right. It's very clean. For him.

Mark Zuckerberg keeps telling lawmakers and jurors that Apple and Google should verify everyone's age at the operating system level. ➡️ He said it under oath last month in Los Angeles. ➡️ Meta, X, and Snap sent a joint letter to South Dakota legislators saying the same thing. ➡️ Meta's youth safety policy director has testified in multiple state hearings pushing this approach. The framing is always about protecting kids. But look at what OS-level age verification actually builds. First, it moves legal liability off Meta. Zuckerberg is facing 1,600+ lawsuits alleging Instagram harmed minors. If Apple and Google own age enforcement, Meta's lawyers get to point at Cupertino and Mountain View when enforcement fails. Google's own director of government affairs called this out: "fast-moving legislative proposals being pushed by Meta and other companies in an effort to offload their own responsibilities." Second (and few people are talking about this) it gives Meta better data. California's AB 1043 (effective Jan 2027) requires operating systems to sort every user into an age bracket at setup and expose that data to any app via real-time API. Colorado's SB26-051 does the same. Right now Meta relies on self-reported birthdates for age data. Their own internal documents showed millions of underage users slipping through. An OS-verified age signal, potentially backed by government ID or biometrics, gives Meta a high-confidence demographic data point for every user, on every device, delivered via API, at zero implementation cost to Meta. They don't build the system. They don't store the IDs. They don't take the PR hit. They just read the signal and feed it into the ad targeting machine that generates $130B+ in annual revenue. Meta gets identity infrastructure without the surveillance optics. The IAPP noted that OS-level verification forces all users to unmask. Which overrides the possibility of anonymous interaction with the device itself. Every app that queries that API benefits. So when Zuckerberg says age verification at the phone level is "just a lot cleaner," he's right. It's very clean. For him.

Like I said in a previous post on the topic of ID/Age Verification - I started digging into the topic quite a bit, especially after that Meta lobbying exposed news dropped. What I have (and more of others) found is something that is so stupid, but also makes a whole lot of sense...in fact imo its the perfect piece of the puzzle. I will lay out my digging through a series of events: 1. Advertisers (ie Corporations with products or services to sell), contract with big Social media platforms, paying boatloads of money for adspace. The logic is that even if 10% of the tens of millions of users buy into their ads, its worth the investment. 2. The onset of botting, has led to ads being viewers by more bots than they do humans. No matter how many bots watch your ads, they never need your products or services. So they will never give advertisers' money and business. 3. This essentially means that, Advertisers are proverbially throwing money into the drain. Paying the price with practically no ROI. Many reports indicate that this botting problem resulted in multi-billion dollar wastage on ad spending. 4. Advertisers have started grilling social media companies, especially Meta which was one of the biggest sources of the issue. This resulted in many advertisers basically threatening to pull ad money until the botting situation is controlled. 5. The botting situation became even WORSE around 2023-2025 with the Ai-Bros and Ai Companies hard pushing Ai development. The past anti-bot systems and measures lose effectiveness as Ai makes bots more sophisticated. 6. Then late 2025/2026, you can see the SNAP. The nuclear solution - Age/ID verification being pushed or implemented across multiple countries at around the same timing (within months). 7. Then now all the news about Socmed and big tech corps lobbying politicians and governments for mass ID/Age Verification on an OS/Appstore level. 8. Why? Since you pick your poison to "age verify"...a selfie, submit your ID, or Ping your credit card. Sure your age will be "verified", but it also comes with the useful byproduct of confirming you are HUMAN. So as a takeaway, what does this mean? Well to me at least, this quite neatly explains why BOTH Governments and large Corporations have collaborated and colluded to push for ID Verification at an alarming pace Globally. In the end, it really was about money. It also means quite simply in my opinion - these Corporations and Governments, NEVER really cared about "the children". "Think of the Children" imo, has always been, and will continue to be the convenient excuse for these corporations and politicians to implement this privacy-invasive system. Because if only PROVEN humans can use social media, or other similar sites/services - Advertisers will be mollified and continue to throw money at these Big Tech corporations for continued ad space. This ALSO means - that the so-called parents and people like the Riceman who run defence of ID Verification, are either very stupid, or complicit in this. Either way, the only winners are the Advertisers, the Big Tech Corpos, and the Politicians. We all however, lose.

"Massive investment in AI contributed basically zero to US economic growth last year," per Goldman Sachs

Keto diets have literally been used as a defense in DUI cases because the sensors can't tell the difference. Now they want this in every car deciding whether you're allowed to drive yourself to the hospital during an emergency.