Reddit User Uncovers Who Is Behind Meta’s $2B Lobbying for Invasive Age Verification Tech

Key takeaway points:

Meta funneled over $2 billion through shadowy nonprofits to push age verification laws that would force Apple and Google to build surveillance infrastructure into every device, while exempting Meta’s own platforms from the same requirements.

Meta’s lobbying operation spans 45 states using nonprofit shells to avoid transparency requirements, with funding traced through organizations like the Digital Childhood Alliance (DCA) as part of a $70 million fragmented super PAC strategy designed to evade FEC tracking.

Proposed age verification laws would embed persistent identity verification directly into operating systems, with Meta’s Horizon OS for Quest VR already implementing this infrastructure and lobbying efforts targeting Meta’s competitors while leaving Meta platforms untouched.

A Reddit researcher just exposed how Meta funneled over $2 billion through shadowy nonprofits to push age verification laws that would force Apple and Google to build surveillance infrastructure into every device—while conveniently exempting Meta’s own platforms from the same requirements.

Following the Money Trail Through Dark Networks

Meta’s lobbying operation spans 45 states using nonprofit shells to avoid transparency requirements.

The investigation by GitHub user “upper-up” traces funding through organizations like the Digital Childhood Alliance (DCA), which launched December 18, 2024, and testified for Utah’s SB-142 just days later. Bloomberg and Deseret News reported Meta’s backing of DCA, part of a $70 million fragmented super PAC strategy designed to evade FEC tracking. Traditional election spending disclosure requirements don’t apply to this fragmented approach.

What ‘Get Age Category API’ Really Means for Your Device

Proposed laws would embed persistent identity verification directly into operating systems.

The technical reality hits harder than policy abstractions. These bills mandate OS-level APIs that apps can query for age data—creating a permanent identity layer baked into your phone’s core functions. Meta’s Horizon OS for Quest VR already implements this infrastructure through Family Center controls. Now they want Apple and Google to build similar systems that every app can access, turning age verification into persistent device fingerprinting.

The Curious Case of Platform Exemptions

Age verification bills target Meta’s competitors while leaving Meta platforms untouched.

Here’s where the lobbying gets surgical. The proposed laws hammer Apple’s App Store and Google Play with compliance requirements but reportedly spare social media platforms—Meta’s core business. It’s like Spotify lobbying for streaming regulations that only apply to Apple Music. The “child safety” rhetoric masks a competitive strategy that shifts liability from platforms to operating system makers.

Europe Shows a Different Path Forward

EU’s eIDAS 2.0 offers privacy-preserving age verification with zero-knowledge proofs that protect personal data.

The European Union’s Digital Identity Wallet takes a radically different approach. Zero-knowledge proofs let you verify age without revealing personal data—like showing you’re over 18 without disclosing your birthdate or identity details. It’s open-source, self-hostable, and only applies to large platforms while exempting FOSS and small entities. Meanwhile, US lawmakers seem ready to let Meta bamboozle them into complete privacy annihilation.

Your device’s trustworthiness hangs in the balance. These laws could force every Linux distribution and privacy-focused Android fork to implement identity verification or face legal liability. The choice between surveillance-free computing and regulatory compliance is coming faster than you think.

Source:supplied

Fuel & Other Shortages, a DELIBERATE 'failure of government'.

Australia has truly either absolute fuckwits or arseholes in charge of this colony.

In any event MANY should be removed from their positions, as they have failed the people.

Australia is one of the most resource rich land masses on the planet, yet it's wealth has been squandered by the morons in charge.

See a video of approx. a dozen minutes by TopherField:

"Australia - the 'Lucky Country'" run by total arseholes. 

or more eloquently put by David Horne as explained in the following post:

TIL calling Australia 'The Lucky Country' was actually intended as an insult, not a compliment.     

Police corruption rife: I Catch Killers podcast Deborah Locke reveals death threats after exposing NSW police corruption that changed everything

Unfortunately for the 'good people' of Australia, the colony's police forces are rife with corruption.

The police literally cannot be trusted in any 'alleged' criminal matter.

In court they lie, tamper with evidence, destroy evidence and even tamper with witnesses and/or produce false witnesses with full support of the Anglo-Masonic setup legal system.

After all, the brethren look after each other.

Miscarriage of justice occurs in every single courtroom across the land, to the detriment of society as a whole, where the victims of the justice business are deliberately left without a remedy. 

Keep in mind that the old-adage "the system is broken" is a false one, as the reality is that the system is functioning perfectly, the way it was designed to.

Corruption has increased over the years, but the authorities would have you believe there is less.

Here is one story that the public news media are allowed to inform the general population of, the one that the colony's original corrupt police force could no longer hide.

I Catch Killers podcast: 
Deborah Locke reveals death threats after exposing NSW police corruption that changed everything

She saw too much. Then they found $20,000 in her car. What happened next would spark Australia’s biggest police corruption inquiry.

When former detective Deborah Locke joined the NSW police force in 1984 as part of the last class to graduate from the Redfern Academy female officers were, in her words, “lower than a police dog.”

“They used to make us wear these big, baggy culottes – [pants that were like] big long skirts,” she recalls of the bizarre uniform choices made on behalf of police women in the eighties on this week’s episode of I Catch Killers with Gary Jubelin.

“I remember once jumping a wooden fence chasing a bloke who was doing a break-and-enter, and I’ve jumped over the fence and my big baggy culottes have come over and hooked over the top of the wooden paling fence, and I’m hung up and I am just hanging on the fence, waiting for someone to come.”

 Yet little did Locke know that her outfit would end up being the least of her concerns during her time on the force.

The former officer turned whistleblower after witnessing first-hand the corruption that was rampant in the NSW police force during the eighties, a move that would leave her in fear for her life, a pariah in the force and the catalyst for the infamous Wood Royal Commission into police corruption.

‘They’re going to kill us’

The journey from ‘one of the boys’ to whistleblower unfolded over several years. After beginning her career in North Sydney, Locke eventually took a role within the Gaming Squad in the late eighties, at a time when she was heavily in the grips of alcoholism, something that made her male colleagues view her as a ‘drinking buddy’, on the many trips to bars and pubs the squad would partake in as part of its questionable methods.

Yet it was here that the extent of the corruption became apparent.

Cash bribes were commonplace between illegal gambling providers and police, and Locke regularly witnessed police tipping off providers before a raid in exchange for payment.

“Every time we did a raid they knew we were coming,” she tells Jubelin, “the cops, there were cops taking quids.”

“One time we went and [the illegal gaming crew] had a film crew and they’re videoing us. They had a big welcome sign waiting for us, they knew we were coming.”

But the point of no return came when $20,000 was discovered in the boot of Locke’s surveillance car. She’d been in Bathurst on a two-week study block, as part of a course she had enrolled in to advance her career, and when she returned she discovered the money had come from an illegal bookie who’d bribed members of her squad. Her boss, who was not involved in the corruption, had discovered the bribe, and had made the extraordinary decision to arrest the officers involved through the Highway Patrol.

“The next day, I rock into work and everyone’s just traumatised,” Locke, who was part of the small surveillance team now dubbed ‘dogs’, recalls. “Everyone’s rocking. And the next thing you know, people are drawing pictures. They’re going to kill us.”

“It was dangerous, we were all scared,” Locke continues. “And it was a horrible situation. It was just ridiculous. Even though I wasn’t even there or part of it, I was just tarred with the same brush – it was my car, and so I’m in on it.”

Locke was granted an overnight transfer to the Parramatta detectives unit, in order to be protected.

“By the time I got to Parramatta though, they already knew who I was, what had happened,” she says.

“And I was classified as a dog and a whistleblower.”

‘I’m going to go jail with these guys’

At Parramatta, Locke continued to witness corruption.

“If the gaming squad was like a circus, Parramatta was a whole different ball game,” she says, where detectives would have frequent contact with Roger Rogerson, a disgraced former cop who had already been dismissed from the force. Locke recalls Rogerson would “hold court” in Chinese restaurants, associating with major gangsters and being fawned over by police officers keen to win his favour.

It was Lenny MacPherson, one of Sydney’s most notorious gangsters in the eighties, that eventually triggered Locke’s whistleblowing. While drinking with senior officers and underworld figures at a Parramatta hotel, Locke was pulled aside and asked to perform a ‘favour’: obtain a gun license for MacPherson’s second wife.

The scheme was as bizarre as it was corrupt. Her superiors wanted her to go to Gladesville police station, present the application, and effectively pretend to be MacPherson’s wife.

 Despite being offered increasing amounts of money to comply, Locke refused the bribe.

However, in the process of handling the paperwork, she realised she was trapped. “I was hanging on to the piece of paper,” she says, “so the fingerprints are on it.”

Ultimately, it was a literal interpretation of the police code of conduct that led to Locke becoming an official whistleblower.

“It’s probably my autism,” she explains, “I’d read the policies and procedures and it said, if you saw corruption and you didn’t say anything or do anything, you would also be guilty of that offence. And the stuff I saw going down, I was worried. I took it literally. I thought: ‘I’m going to go to jail with these guys.’

Whistleblowing, death threats and a royal commission

When Locke first went to then soon-to-be commissioner Tony Lauer to report the corruption, she says she was met with “disgust”.

“He said, ‘you don’t know what a detective is, you’re a whistleblower’ and I’d never heard that term,” she says. “I got up my courage and I bravely said to him ‘what’s a whistleblower?’ He looked at me with disgust and said, ‘you know, that’s cops who are dobbing in cops’.”

 At Parramatta, the atmosphere turned lethal. Officers openly discussed her “disappearing,” and Locke lived in constant fear for her life.

“There was a copper that was going to speak out against the abortion squad in the seventies,” she says, “and he got shot sitting on the toilet. And I got told a few times that was gonna happen to me.”

The path to systemic change finally opened through independent MP John Hatton, a long-time crusader against the ‘boys’ club’. Locke became the only officer in the state with the backbone to sign statutory declarations alleging current corruption.

Her lone statutory declaration was enough for Hatton to set things in motion, and eventually the Wood Royal Commission into police corruption, which shattered the bubble of police impunity. It exposed a widespread culture of bribery, drug trafficking, and protecting criminals.

While many corrupt officers were granted amnesty to resign, the Commission’s findings fundamentally changed Australian policing by introducing rigorous accountability and oversight.

The downfall of Roger Rogerson and Glen McNamara

While Roger Rogerson had previously been acquitted of the attempted murder of whistleblower Michael Drury, he would eventually face justice in 2014, when he and Glen MacNamara – who had previously made a name for himself as a ‘clean’ cop – were convicted of the murder of Jamie Gao.

Locke – who had formerly posed with MacNamara at the launch of his own ‘anti-corruption’ book, was especially outraged by his involvement.

 “They said, look, he’s doing a book, come and support him … We’ve got a photo in the paper, you know, his arm around me,” she says.

Years later, Locke watched the downfall of the men who had once operated in the shadows. “I used to go down and watch them at court, and I’d wave, ‘hi Glen, hi Roger,’ and they’d just look at me. He had the gunpowder all over him and it was like a video in court,” Locke explains, describing how surveillance footage captured the pair drinking beers and stepping over Gao’s body.

“I just felt so good to see Roger in the dock, you know? He was glaring at me, like ‘that b***h!’”

See YouTube video:

source:news.com.au

Iran War: What the mainstream will not tell you?

As some even say it's "The Epstein War", a distraction from the 'Files'.

In any event BOTH Netanyahu and Trump are war criminals, that will never see the light of day in a court room, where they are literally untouchable by any law.

See 12.5 min video by George Galloway of the title 

MONOLOGUE: More than a crime, a blunder :

Australians to face age checks on porn sites from March

Another (deliberately) flawed implementation of control of 'what we think is right for you', buy the Nanny State of Australia:

New adult content rules will also apply to AI bots, app stores.

Warning: This story contains references to sexual content, self-harm, and disordered eating.

Australians will need to prove they are over the age of 18 when accessing pornographic websites from 9 March 2026, under new industry codes registered Tuesday by the eSafety Commissioner.

Services hosting online porn must provide “appropriate age assurance measures” when the codes take effect in six months’ time, or face potential civil penalties from the regulator in the millions of dollars.

Similar age assurance technologies will be used by platforms to prevent under-16s from accessing social media under the government’s forthcoming ban in December, and to check a user’s age when they are logged into a search engine from later that same month.

Stricter rules on accessing online pornography have been floated by governments for several years, but age assurance technologies were not previously considered accurate enough by lawmakers and regulators.

Such technologies can include age verification systems, which typically rely on government documents or ID; age estimation systems, which use biometrics; and age inference systems, which use online activity or account data to infer a person’s age.

The federal government commissioned a trial of such technologies in 2024, which found age assurance could be done effectively in Australia despite no solution being infallible and some systems raising privacy and data retention concerns.

The new industry codes required service providers to not use or share Australians’ personal information in a way which would breach privacy laws, eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said.

“In determining appropriate age assurance measures to take under any code, services are also required to consider if those measures are compliant with privacy laws and whether the impact on user privacy is proportionate to the safety objectives,” she added.

Any company covered by the new codes “must also take appropriate steps to test and monitor the effectiveness of its age assurance and access control measures over time", according to the new rules.

Age checks to access online porn have already been implemented for sites accessed in the United Kingdom, in some European Union nations, and in many jurisdictions in the United States.

Canadian pornography giant Aylo — which runs major sites such as Pornhub and YouPorn — introduced age assurance methods in the UK in July to comply with new online safety laws in that country, including “email-based age estimation, credit card age checks, mobile network operator age checks and open banking, and, as of August 5, Google Wallet”, according to the company.

However, some UK residents have used Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) and facial recognition tricks to get around the new age checks.

eSafety goes after ‘lawful but awful’ material

The six new codes registered by Australia's eSafety Commissioner were co-developed with industry organisations and aimed to protect children from exposure to a range of “lawful but awful” content, including pornography, self-harm, and high-impact violence, Inman Grant said.

Development of the codes began in July 2024 and involved several industry groups: the Australian Mobile Telecommunications Association (AMTA), the Communications Alliance, the Consumer Electronic Suppliers Association, Digital Industry Group Inc. (DIGI), and the Interactive Games and Entertainment Association (IGEA).

Inman Grant said her office would be responsible for enforcing the codes “to protect children from accidental exposure to content they are not cognitively ready to process and certainly cannot ‘unsee’”.

“We know this is already happening to kids from our own research, with one in three young people telling us that their first encounter with pornography was before the age of 13,” she said.

“And this exposure was ‘frequent, accidental, unavoidable and unwelcome’, with many describing this exposure as being disturbing and ‘in your face’."

_{Age checks have already been implemented for pornographic sites accessed in the UK, some EU countries, and many US states. Image: Shutterstock}

DIGI, which counts the likes of Google, Microsoft, Meta, Apple, TikTok, and Twitch among its members, said the new codes were “a major milestone in creating a safer online environment for all Australians”.

"The registration of the codes shows what can be achieved when industry and government work together on safeguarding the community against online harms,” said Dr Jennifer Duxbury, DIGI’s director of policy, regulatory affairs, and research.

"It's vital the rules that apply to the online world keep pace with changes in the threat landscape.”

Australia's adult entertainment association Eros was contacted for comment.

AI chatbots, app stores told to protect kids

To prevent children from accessing adult content on other platforms, the new codes would also apply to AI chatbots, app stores, hardware manufacturers, social media services, and other designated internet services, Inman Grant said.

“Under these new codes, app stores will have to make sure that apps are appropriately rated and that there are appropriate age assurance measures before permitting users to download or purchase apps rated as 18+,” she said.

The commissioner said she was concerned by “a recent proliferation” of unregulated AI companion chatbots — some of which have allegedly engaged in sexually explicit conversations with minors, or encouraged self-harm or disordered eating.

“As with other forms of online pornography, there is a danger that excessive, sexualised engagement with AI companions could interfere with children’s social and emotional development, setting up misguided or harmful beliefs and patterns that are damaging to individuals or relationships in real life,” Inman Grant said.

“We’ve also seen recent reports of where AI chatbots have allegedly encouraged suicidal ideation and self-harm in conversations with kids with tragic consequences.”

US company OpenAI recently pledged to make further improvements to its ChatGPT service following the death of a teenager who discussed much of his life with the popular AI chatbot.

Source: ia.acs.org.au

Age Verification At Operating System Level, i.e. Windows/Linux

WTF? The authorities are enacting a fascist/Nazi/totalitarian online world and it’s coming to your state or colony soon.

In California and Colorado, law is being put in place that if operating system manufacturers like Microsoft and the various organisations that distribute their own version of Linux want to do business there, they must have an age verification option prior to the user using the operating system, even if the PC is in a closed system, meaning not connected to the internet.

The action for age verification is so that the children (of the cannon fodder) are allegedly protected from harm when interacting with others on the internet, but the real reason is to officially catalogue every person on the internet to their real identity in order to censor ‘free speech’ and to  later punish them for whatever the governments see fit at a later time, e.g. for not liking the colour blue if the government see this as being ‘offensive’.

Operating systems do NOT cause harm to underage children, period, where if there is any allegation that they do, where is the 'white paper' on this topic?

This action just shows the sociopathic or retarded mentality of the lawmakers that are enacting these types of laws.

If there was truly an action to protect the children, then the victims the 'Epstein Files', would have their ('alleged') assailants brought before the courts and incarcerated.

What an absolute clown show!

This is just another farce enacted by the authorities to silence the masses, in order to control and force whatever narrative governments desire.

For more information on this topic see articles:

https://www.pcmag.com/news/colorado-lawmakers-push-for-age-verification-at-the-operating-system-level

https://itsfoss.com/news/colorado-age-attestation-bill/

They ask us to complete ID Verification. 1 billion personal/ID information is leaked by IDMerit

This is huge news, that the time of this post, it's not covered by Australia's mainstream media.

For your benefit, realistically do not rely on Information Technology news by Australian 'news' outlets, but rather refer to trusted specific sources.

Approximately 12 million Australians are affected.

What Personal Data Was Leaked?

Because IDMerit is an AI-powered KYC (Know Your Customer, a government requirement fro U.S. telecomms) provider, the data it collects is incredibly sensitive. The unsecured 1-terabyte database didn't just leak passwords—it leaked the core personal identifiers used for your financial and digital life. The following structured data was left open for anyone to download:

• Full names

• Addresses

• Post codes

• Dates of birth

• National IDs

• Phone numbers

• Genders

• Email addresses

• Telco metadata

• Breach status and social profile annotations

The last data point – breach status and social profile annotations – could refer to a database identifier indicating whether the data originated from a data breach or a leaked database. However, at this point, the true meaning of the data point is unclear. The team noted that this specific data point was present only in some regions.

“At this scale, downstream risks include account takeovers, targeted phishing, credit fraud, SIM swaps, and long-tail privacy harms. Industry-wide, the case underlines how third-party identity vendors have become critical infrastructure and can become single points of catastrophic failure,” our team explained.

See more:
https://cybernews.com/security/global-data-leak-exposes-billion-records/

Secret Control Room In Victoria's Parliament House

MANY of the colony’s party officials that are in office are not elected democratically by the people, but rather decided in house which one of them would be a better corporate whore.

With regards to Victoria, it is truly irrelevant which premier puppet is on display whether it’s Labor’s Jacinta Allan, Daniel Andrews or the Liberals’ Denis Napthine or ‘Ted’ Ballieu, the most important room in the building is the one the politicians or staff aren’t allowed to talk about that is the ‘blue room’.

This masthead was informed under the condition of anonymity, that what is in store for Victoria over a period that exceeds the tenure of a premier is decided by ‘faceless men’, the men that truly run the nation and states.

Nothing gets done unless it's passed by members of the 'blue room', said the source.

It is what they decide that happens not only within the state but what is coordinated by their brethren in similar positions in other states is what will be executed over the years that follow.

Whether it’s new law they have waiting, for a particular trigger moment to occur that will oppress the people to town planning or infrastructure projects and who will benefit from the falsified tenders to immigration arrivals, even though they are a federal task, they still are discussed at state level.

The 'housing crisis' is a deliberate political move to cause turmoil and financial harm for the good people of Australia that will have a generational effect.

The people are truly conned if they believe that they have voted for a person that will serve them.

These politicians only take actions that are of benefit to them, where one of the goals is to fleece from the public purse as much as possible, where even if whatever is classified as ‘too much’ will not incur any consequences.

Australia’s governments are some of the most corrupt in the world, where currently Victoria’s ‘Big Build’ is just one example of this government supported fraud.

Privacy and Security Warning: myki system bank card upgrade

Australia’s governments are all about creating more customers.

Creating more 'consumers' and importing more useless eaters, where that subject is beyond the scope of this article.

What could go 'wrong', right?

Well, banks and financial institutions do factually commit offences and breach various Australian law, but they’re allowed to get away with it as seen within the Royal Commission, which at the end of the day was a ‘money for mates’ farce at the expense of the Australian Taxpayers.

Another action banks do, is aggregate your information, package it up, and sell it many times over.

If you ‘tap on’ and ‘tap off’ with your bank issued credit or debit card, then the bank will know your movements, package up this data and again, sell it many times over.

If you truly value your privacy, and therefore security you will not use your card or even phone with its virtual card for myki related travel.

In any event, that will just be another database which hackers will be able to eventually access and use it for whatever purpose they see fit.

The question is not ‘if’ but rather ‘when’ will your data get hacked?

How to determine Australian currency is real

Middle Eastern criminal syndicates from Melbourne and Sydney have been involved in the production of counterfeit currency for quite some time, and it seems that there is no stopping them.

Unfortunately the authorities are not doing enough, where the good people are ultimately victims of this highly organised criminal venture.

The new generation of Australian notes shown in the illustration below show that under UV (Ultra Violet) light features birds and flora which currently cannot be replicated in counterfeit currency.

Also, the other side of the notes shows their year of production under UV light as shown in the photo below.

See also a 'counterfeit detection guide' document from the Reserve Bank of Australia which contains information on the first generation of polymer notes: