Get the top HN stories in your inbox every day.
9dev
vodou
I think it is great that people point out LLM generated articles here on HN. Sadly, it feels like I am slowly loosing my skill to identify LLM speak. Maybe I am getting worn out of all LLM content... So, please, list the indicators and telltale signs from the specific article or blog post (like others have done here already). At least I would appreciate it a lot.
joenot443
> It is not age verification. It is identity verification.
> You can change a password. You cannot change your face.
> This is not a popularity contest, and refusal is not a vote you are trying to win
These were a couple sentences that were immediate flags to me. There've been countless articles written on this (I can dig them up if you want), but IMO there are pretty clear semantic rhythms you start to notice.
It is not foo, it is bar. You can zip, you cannot zap.
xmprt
I agree that these are signs of AI, but they're also the way that people write. I use the "it's not X it's Y" framing a lot of the time because it's a quick way to get my point across. It's probably the sign of a bad writer because I can't come up with a different/better way to say the same thing, but I'm not AI.
antisthenes
If anyone uses a couple of these red flags to dismiss the entire article and the underlying idea, that says a lot more about them than the author.
ShinyLeftPad
Tons of people write that way.
Henchman21
These are normal patterns in US English. The zeal to accuse limits the scope of possible responses. There are all sorts of things humans do when writing that LLMs mimic — em-dashes for instance — that are entirely legitimate ways to communicate but get shouted down for… reasons?
Surely you’re aware that LLMs were trained on the ways humans write specifically to mimic them? Yes? So what’s the gripe? Someone cranked out a “thought piece” with no effort or actual thinking on their own?
But thats the promise of AI.
So are you advocating doing away with AI tools and research? Maybe we start asking “should we” not “can we”? Now that is a position I might get behind.
But really how the hell am I supposed to write at all when nearly ANYTHING I write could be interpreted as AI-generated and then shouted down in some quasi-ad-hominem attack on me while not engaging with any points made?
It is the utter end of written discussion.
Anoian
Although these are indicators, real people also use these sometimes.
mawadev
My brain skims the entire blog before reading it and if I see two short sentences with dots and negation or even one single em dash, I ctrl+w out
shantnutiwari
>>Sadly, it feels like I am slowly loosing my skill to identify LLM speak. Maybe I am getting worn out of all LLM content...
Its quite simple, at least by HN rules. If you dont like an article, post "This is LLM" and move on. Within 5 minute your post will be voted t o the top.
Easy karma farming!
chwtutha
Straight quotes were my first clue, followed by “it’s not this it’s that” and subheads.
ShadowOfThePit
Straight quotes? I thought an LLMs thing was always using the curly ones?
amalcon
I know, right? It used to be easy: just look for writing in a very long-winded style, almost as if the author is being paid per word, in a place where that sort of writing didn't belong. I think it was because that type of writing represented a disproportionate fraction of the tokens in the training data due to the long-winded-ness. Somewhere around a year ago, they figured out some way to deal with that problem.
edg5000
The em-dashes
gusmally
The multiple uses of "it's worth X" made me question the authorship, for one
lenkite
> Sadly, it feels like I am slowly loosing my skill to identify LLM speak.
Just read a few fiction books written in 2026 in Amazon Kindle Unlimited. Your brain will be trained to recognize AI-Slop Speak in No Time.
archagon
I think it will become pretty simple. Does the author say somewhere on their site that they don't use AI for writing? If yes, then great. Otherwise, it's very likely LLM-generated — particularly if the author spends a lot of time writing positively about AI. (And what if they lie? They will be discovered eventually, at which point they can be blacklisted.)
josmar
I hear you — and the problem is real
yuriyguts
This comment is load-bearing − the LLM-generated text was the smoking gun. (Claude)
stephbook
Your observation is spot on. (Gemini Pro)
throwaway29812
[dead]
bklosky
it's wild to me how many AI written articles get front page on HN
red-iron-pine
You're on Y-Combinator here, a start-up incubator all about AI and launching new things, that literally used to be run by Sam Altman, and that was the launching pad of OpenAI.
And you're surprised there is a lot of AI content?
bots are like 50% of the internet now brah: https://cybersecuritynews.com/bots-surpass-humans-in-web-tra...
garciansmith
I'm always amazed too. I waste so much time clicking on links like that only to find slop that just wastes my time.
I'm guessing a huge number of people never even bother to click on the article and just comment based on the title, so there's that. Then there's cases where they are sympathetic to the subject or opinion and talk about that in the comments and ignore that the machine-written article doesn't actually contribute to the conversation at all.
da_grift_shift
Yeah. If the "don't post AI generated comments" guideline was extended to cover posts, I wonder what % of recent front page articles would be impacted.
ranger_danger
Either way how could that even be enforced? Even if it's "painfully obvious", that's not proof.
semilin
It is upsetting. Is it worth surrendering one's practice of thinking and communicating effectively in order to resist corporate overreach? Or is such a neglect doomed to result in the very problem of passivity that this post pushes back against?
asgeirtj
FWIW it has one thing pointing it to be human written; the typo worthles
tim333
I think the trouble is the LLM is quite catchy and so gets more upvotes. We are losing to the clankers!
Jasp3r
Here is the trick:
dust-jacket
Exactly. I stopped reading part way through. The first thought was ... this seems like quite a lot of words to say not an awful lot of contents. And then the sentences started jumping out.
> A verification regime does not need your approval — it needs your participation
Ugh
__MatrixMan__
I quit facebook over a decade ago. Then, a few months back, I was under some pressure to sell something, and the facebook marketplace appears to be the way to go locally. So I tried to create a facebook account.
They wanted to scan my face, and in a moment of weakness, I performed the ritual. Thirty seconds later, they suspended my account due to violations of their terms of service: "this decision cannot be appealed". So now they have my face and I still can't use the marketplace.
I can only assume I'm suspended due to the behavior of somebody who tried to use my identity for something during the decade when I had no facebook account. Apparently not even my face is strong enough authentication for me to convince them that I'm not whoever it was that caused whatever the problem was.
This is why biometrics will never make sense. They're too immutable. Maintaining multiple accounts is not a bug, it's a debugging mechanism. Since I have only the face that I do, I can't even figure out why I'm banned.
We need to instead stop trusting people merely because they have an account. 10k upvotes/likes/5-star-reviews should mean nothing if I don't explicitly or transitively trust the upvoters/likers/reviewers. We have to build things that make decisions by traversing the trust graph so instead of being banned with no recourse, I can create a no-trust identity and elevate it back to personhood status by convincing my meatspace friends to trust it by having a conversation with them in meatspace.
howard941
I don't think you can assume your identity was compromised. I know the Facebook denial dialog suggests that "unusual activity" was detected and you need to access it via your mobile device. Of course as you know that doesn't help.
I signed on for Meta enhanced support for a month (nb, don't bother doing this, it's a waste of money) and had numerous voice calls with pandering support people who assured me it had nothing to do with identity and everything to do with vague "Community Standards violations" that can't be identified. FWIW the restrictions are indefinite and can't be appealed.
FB is set up like it's based on the film "Brazil" mated with Sartre's "No Exit."
red-iron-pine
"hell is other people's social media posts"
ornornor
> Meta enhanced support
I’m sorry am I reading this right? You now have to pay for the privilege of getting support so you can participate in Zuck’s infostealer so that he can then sell your data and make money off it? I think I’m getting too old for tech.
__MatrixMan__
I do strange things, so it's possible that the cause has to do with some quirk of my behavior while closing the account in 2011, or while attempting to reopen it in 2026, and not somebody else's behavior in the interim.
I don't really care about facebook, I found a buyer for the thing. I'm just saying that the use of biometrics is bad engineering because it amplifies the severity of adjacent bugs to "blocker". Starting over with a new identity should be painful enough to discourage bad behavior, but it should be possible to enable users who do strange things sometimes to navigate the system.
jazzyjackson
I tried to make an account while forgetting my VPN was engaged. Another US IP address but one from a block of IPs I’m sure is used for nefarious purposes. So because I briefly shared an IP block with ne’erdowells, I am, without an option to appeal, banned from interacting with Facebook forever.
Google Ads is ghosting me too. I really could get behind legislation that requires companies to have a human point of contact in these cases, but I guess a private company has the right to ignore people they don’t want as customers.
a2128
I made an account on LinkedIn while forgetting my VPN was enabled and set up my profile. They immediately flagged me as suspicious and restricted my account, and demanded I upload an ID to remove the restriction, to which I complied and they lifted the restriction. Then about a month later I tried to add my sibling as a connection and they didn't get any notification, then my sibling tried to search up my name to add me and I wasn't showing as a search result. Seems I was shadowbanned even after providing my ID, which seems insane to me that the main professional social network can just do that to someone without due process or any indication. This type of thing could sabotage someone's entire professional career or ruin their self-confidence as everyone ignores all of their messages and activity
b40d-48b2-979e
but I guess a private company has the right to ignore people they don’t want
as customers.
JackFr
[flagged]
flipbrad
This is what the EU has: https://www.eu-digital-services-act.com/Digital_Services_Act...
ranger_danger
I have the same problem with my actual residential ISP. You wouldn't think sites like Etsy would ban entire IPs, but they apparently have; can't view the site at all, just a generic "you are blocked" message.
At least half the sites I try to visit are endless captcha loops, mostly from cloudflare. Trying to make online orders with a credit card often gets the order automatically flagged or canceled. Many sites give a generic cloudflare "you are blocked" message, when I've never visited them before.
I recently tried to download some manuals from the RICOH website, and all four different residential ISPs I tried from were blocked, and these were family members' connections that aren't part of any sort of proxy botnet or similar.
dd8601fn
Meta, obviously the same company, has four separate pages that handle the creation of a “page” for a business.
They all prompt for the same information to do the same job.
You are required to make one of these “pages” to be able to advertise on any Meta property.
None of them work, and they have non-functional error handling. And if you keep trying, getting zero feedback about what’s wrong, you get the “scan your face and give us your biometric data” wall.
As such I cannot advertise on Instagram. Like, I can’t give them money, even when I try. It’s impossible that I’m the only one in the world, and it’s costing them money. Directly.
You would think that with their infinite AI resources they would be able to recognize problems, identify the source, and unfuck themselves… right?
In days, not years… right?
At least that’s what we’re told. But it seems reality doesn’t quite agree.
addedGone
It's actually real that a ton of businesses must resort to shady providers of "Ads account" for legitimate stuff, nowadays it's very hard to join Facebook, if you didn't have an account made the past years, it's likely that you can't signup and run your business on it, you have to use illegal methods.
howard941
What illegal methods work? I'd like to post again (non-commercially)
pkulak
I bought my last car on Craigslist. It was quite pleasant and I like the car. Not that there isn't garbage/scams there, but there's garbage on marketplace too (more, to my eye). I make a point to always go to Craigslist first. It still exists, and it's kicking!
cbdevidal
OfferUp also has a ton, as does AutoTempest and even good old fashioned AutoTrader. I'm currently shopping for my son.
Facebook seems to have the lowest cost cars, but it also seems to be the least successful way of contacting people. When I bought a car for my sister in April, I contacted (no exaggeration) 70+ sellers and heard back from about ten of them. And yes, I changed the default "Is it still available?" message to something demonstrating urgency e.g. "I have cash and would like to buy." But with persistence, I found her the right car through Marketplace. Really hate the FBook search interface though, it's total garbage.
I spend most of my time looking on CList and OfferUp.
pkulak
> I'm currently shopping for my son.
Same! I recommend an old (2017-) Nissan Leaf. I got one for very cheap when gas was at a local peak, and now that's it's going down, I'm seeing even better deals. The low range can be a plus when it's a 16-year-old driver whom you have no interest in seeing drive out of the city. haha
ferngodfather
I had the exact same experience. Never used Facebook. Wanted to create a page for a product. Suspended. Did the face scan. Now they have my face and I'm still suspended. Absolute joke. Zuckerberg can go suck a fat one.
maaarghk
I had the same thing, tried to set up an instagram account for a website I run. It locked me out instantly and asked for a face photo; after I uploaded it it went to review; after about 40 minutes that brand new instagram account was permanently suspended for posting content which breaches the terms of service, with no appeal possible. It did let me download the full account data which of course had nothing in it and no further info about why it got permabanned.
It is obvious something is broken but they are quite good at blocking you from accessing any possible avenue of support once the account is in this state.
On the off chance someone from Meta is reading: Please unban the account "rareboc" :-)
algoth1
When a xiaomi 15 phone asks to scan your face for phone unlock, it specifically warns that a photo of you may be sufficient to unlock the phone. Not sure how it works with other brands/models, but i don’t think the way they are doing face verification is the right way to do it
duskwuff
Apple's devices use an IR depth scanner, not the camera, and do not expose the data to software.
chamomeal
That happened to me to! A similar moment of weakness: I got tired of being locked out of like half of small business profiles. A local brewery (very small brewery, but top tier beers) posts on instagram if they’ll even be open that day.
Caved, tried to sign up, asked for my face, then rejected me forever.
harel
It ends with "The platforms need you far more than you need them". And I think this is the misconception. No, they don't. The amount of people who will sign this, is a fraction of a fraction of a "platform"'s users. They will not care if they lose 50,000 users out of 2 Billion. A drop in the ocean. Not the target audience anyway.
And that is the real shame. Because I don't want to have to give my face or do age verification but I know when the time comes, and If I need to use a service now, I will give them whatever they want to get past the hurdle and use the service. It sucks, but I don't think a petition will help. Unless of course you get the 50 million to sign the petition AND stick to it.
munk-a
You are correct that your data isn't particularly impactful for these platforms - but you're also overestimating the value that many of these services have. A fair few of them have competitors with better features and privacy offerings so the only reason you need them is purely for the network effect of everyone else using them.
wwweston
And increasingly, everyone isn’t using them, even if they’re on them.
I’m on Insta and WhatsApp and I use them a few times per year. I’m on Messenger and have seen a dramatic dropoff in messages. I’m on FB frequently and notice only a small fraction of my friends bother anymore and it’s become an interest platform to make up the lack, so I’m trending toward less time there. I’m on Twitter/X but check in maybe once a month.
I may not be a typical user, but I’m probably not unique either.
Damogran6
Add to that, FB is no longer people...it's viewing entertainment...and I turn it off a bunch.
Threads is the new time sink and a lot of times I open it and close it shortly thereafter because it's all the same...someone with a 20 part diatribe, someone repeating the news, someone telling you to be outraged, engagement bait.
baq
I visit my facebook once a year and always regret it
ghaff
I'm very much like you. There are several apps that I use to communicate with a handful (or less) of people in the world. I see people on travel sites saying "Just use WhatsApp" and I'm more or less, yes it's installed on my phone and I use it with a couple people but it's certainly not something that most people I know use.
Probably something of a demographic (geography/age) thing.
ethagnawl
No, I don't think you're unique at all. I think this all tracks and applies to more and more of the general population.
These mainstream services no longer provide what people signed up for: life updates, pictures of kids and dogs, etc. These value-add posts are becoming less frequent because of/and are being replaced by streams of posts from people _you should follow_ or content they're pretty sure will rile you up about ... whatever. Generally, the people who are still active and whose posts slip through (because it's their only outlet) are effectively monkeys slinging shit (e.g. uncles posting AI slop memes about Barack Obama's suits).
It seems like younger generations have moved on to more silo'd experiences. I don't use TikTok but it's my understanding that it's more about connecting with people who share common interests (more akin to HN or Reddit) and not as much about connecting with your high school Spanish teacher who has gone full MAGA and whose posts you don't care to see and/or who you don't want seeing your posts and trolling you in the comments. This same cohort also seems to be spending much more time in private group chats and, for the most part, the platform doesn't seem to matter; it's just a message broker.
harel
If there is a substitute and I am not time constrained 100% i'm switching. But I've been in a situation already where a platform I'm using required me to face-up. I can't even remember which to be honest but I had no alternative or recourse to refuse. In addition, in the UK company directors are legaly required to face-up to Companies House and confirm their identity, so they have my face too. Ah, and so is every single CCTV camera around London. I don't know how to fight this particular battle.
soperj
Move from London, you have all of Europe to... nevermind.
throw1234567891
The competitors will be also regulated. It’s a slippery slope.
cortesoft
Just because the network effect is why you need them doesn’t make that need go away.
rockskon
It represents an increase in cost to use the service. Most such services have a wealth of competitors for your time and attention.
"Need" is an extremely strong word that is not appropriate for many Internet services where facial recognition is being pushed for.
munk-a
I don't disagree. I still use facebook once a year for contact with relatives but if the only thing keeping you is the network effect then hopefully people will migrate off - maybe you can help them do so!
ekall
I think this kind of comment where you share the sentiment that you will ultimately admit defeat emboldens the factions that are hoping for people to be like you. I also think these kinds of comments may also bring doubt to people considering resisting these kinds of concessions.
In other words I think the people pushing these kinds of "identification" methods would love you for spreading their silent message of this being unavoidable knowingly or unknowingly.
Even if what you say is correct let's not make it easier for people wanting to enshittify the future, yeah?
MobiusHorizons
Are you really advocating for suppressing rational assessments for the likelihood of success because you think the analysis is too discouraging?
If you already agree the resistance will ultimately lead nowhere, why not focus that energy on something with a better chance of success? Best guess would be partnering with someone like the EFF for a solution through lobbying And the courts.
rockskon
Cynicism isn't knowledge. Cynicism isn't an assessment.
Cynicism is an assumption. Cynicism is emotional armor because the thought of caring again and the risk of it not panning out is more painful than not caring at all.
The only rational aspect of cynicism is that it makes you feel better. It isn't relevant about one's actual ability to change the world.
If efforts in the past didn't work to affect political change? Change what you do. Change your tactics. Clearly many groups - including ones with little-to-no-money - can and do succeed to influence policy on a regular basis.
The worst thing you can do is to convince others not to do anything about it. And right after that is to do nothing about it yourself.
zelphirkalt
Is it all that rational?
If everyone thinks so, then surely yes, but if people realize, that change starts in the small and they can be part of the change, perhaps at some personal cost, but that it might be worth it, then suddenly change is possible.
inigyou
How have the EFF and the courts worked so far? We do need an EFF, but they're clearly not all that effective. And the courts just won't do anything unless someone does something illegal.
mockerell
I just wanted to tell you that I wholeheartedly agree with your statement and that you shouldn’t be discouraged by some of the nay-sayers in the replies. I feel that HN has many users who are techno-optimist, but are very pessimistic of the role of individuals and the possibilities of the society overall.
Even in the replies someone tries to appeal to some ideal of „rationalism“ which is nothing but defeatism to the status quo. They see any kind of passion, emotion or values as „irrational“ and categorically as something lesser.
But what is reason without values? Logic without axioms? Just treading in the trivial waters.
skinfaxi
There is a term for what you describe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot
harel
If I have no choice, and no alternative, what can I do? I will never use an OS that require it on the OS level, and nobody can mandate it, not to a Linux user as myself - there will always be "another distro". But as a company director I have a legal requirement to verify my identity with my face. That's one. Every CCTV camera I pass by London, I assume is likely to have some soft of potential face recognition. Every transfer type transaction I do with my bank app requires me to face-up. So fine, I will skip Facebook or Instagram, but where will I get my cat-video dopamine fix?
I don't see myself as admitting defeat here. I'm choosing my battles. The gov here will drive this through as we're stuck with them until 2029. I'm considering (with a heavy heart) to leave the UK and this is just one nail in a coffin full of nails.
nemomarx
Leaving is unfortunately kind of the only option, but I worry other countries are just going to follow this process too.
nerdsniper
Where else to go? AFAIK most developed countries are increasing surveillance efforts. I’m not aware of many that aren’t involved in pushing some kind of anti-E2EE or facial recognition at airports or VPN regulation or most any other issue de jour.
Regardless, no matter where you are (besides China or Russia) you’re at least partially subject to USA jurisdiction as demonstrated by their Executive Order 14203 which implemented asset freezes and travel bans on ICC officials, judges, and prosecutors — effectively unilaterally “de-banking” EU bureaucrats over the objections of the EU.
https://courthousenews.com/cut-off-by-their-banks-and-even-i...
cortesoft
They won’t be emboldened by this comment, they will be emboldened when their internal data shows they aren’t losing users at a rate high enough to change their behavior.
inigyou
Which will be partly because of this comment.
brandensilva
I find it strange for these people to accept such a defeatist attitude because I'm the opposite.
I mean I will just not use the service and I'll seek out alternatives that are open source or create my own. I'll do anything possible until I'm the last one standing if that's what it comes down too.
I tried to sign up to Telnyx and they had the same crap from an unreliable data-breach and being-litigated persona identifier. I passed on that.
I've already been going down this road as I've abandoned Google and some of the big cloud providers in favor of smaller companies who aren't pushing these policies.
It isn't hard to click cancel. It's just people favor convenience over their own freedom because they have never experienced not having freedom like our founder's did 250 years ago. The problem is once freedom is gone, getting it back requires blood spilled and political reforms and revolutions based on what history teaches us.
bflesch
The British crown never gave away the control, it is just obfuscated through the British-owned offshore financial networks. The Epstein files make this abundantly clear.
We are currently ruled by the third generation of post-WW2 five eyes nepo kids, with all problems this entails. The feel-good narrative about US was spun by Hollywood, but the old money of British aristocracy never went away. All the "self-made billionaires" who receive a Lordship title from the King just so the commoners work even more because they think they have a fair shot.
If someone like Ghislaine Maxwell applies for a visa in their colony USA, she receives a vanity social security number "Leet Babe" (1337 84883).
augment_me
Most people use social media such as discord or whatsapp in order to make social activities and communities simple with the majority of their friends. A majority of people do not give a shit about integrity. The only group I have ever managed to convince and actually use Signal for messaging out of all my groups of friends and peers is the Computer Science Dept PhD students.
For most people, it's not realistic to give up their social bonds, they are too far in. If you are hoping for some revolution or change in this aspect is way too late. You can have small fringe groups engaging in this, but at the end of the day you are overestimating how many people actually give a shit.
tokioyoyo
Smart and driven people wasting time on ideas that have been tested time and time through to be ineffective is not net good for society.
augment_me
Bitter truth :(
lenerdenator
A better idea would be to regulate their corporate behavior and outlaw their current system of corporate governance. It's insane that we keep passing off these companies with a majority shareholder on the board and in the C-suite as capable of being rational actors in the market. They aren't, and can't be made to be. You have to pass laws and enforce them.
You don't need 50 million people to do that.
dfxm12
and If I need to use a service now, I will give them whatever they want to get past the hurdle and use the service.
Need or want? We need very few of the services looking for our government ID. Also, this should not be the only way of pushing back. We can support the EFF and politicians who are actively fighting against this or candidates who vow to. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/03/rep-finke-was-right-ag...
harel
Yes we can support the people who fight it, and also at the same time admit that I, personally, cannot fight it. Some people are driven by the fight. I am not. And want or need, what is the difference? I'm there, I need or want X, I am also busy.
Also, as a company director, I'm required by law now to verify my identity plus my face.
inigyou
They arguably don't need any users as long as they can maintain the delusion of being important and especially present that delusion to politicians.
TeMPOraL
s/politicians/the stock market/, yes.
tinfoilhatter
> I will give them whatever they want to get past the hurdle and use the service.
Why? Why not just hold firm to your principles and sacrifice convenience for your personal sovereignty. When you don't, you make the situation worse for everyone else as well by normalizing this bullshit.
shevy-java
It has never been about those platforms though. I could not care less if CIAbook or Instaspam or any of these other anti-social slop sites exist.
They want to force all operating systems to require age sniffing. That's the main angle right now. I am curiously watching how systemd will add more implementation details to this; probably as a first step only for commercial linux distributions.
fl4regun
This is a little bit of a tangent compared to the post, but can someone explain to me why it's NOW that we have multiple countries (USA, Canada, UK, Australia, and probably others that I am not aware of) all looking at age verification for a technology (the internet and all the things it lets you access) has existed for over 2 decades, and has been mature for at least 10 years? You could buy illicit drugs and watch porn on the internet since the 2000s, but it's NOW that we're legislating things (in incomprehensibly stupid and hopelessly unenforceable ways)?
The worst part is these are all stupid poorly thought out band-aid solutions to "protect the kids" from platforms that are also detrimental to adults.
supriyo-biswas
It's all caused by a Meta lobbying initiative across multiple countries as documented in https://tboteproject.com/ (sadly, the website is down right now), but you can find references e.g. https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/03/the-tbote-project/
cormorant
> ...jwz.org...
Holy fuck, man, visiting that with a HN referer serves up a rather NSFW rude image, and evidently sets a cookie to make sure it happens next time too.
replacement link: https://web.archive.org/web/20260401175031/https://www.jwz.o...
GaryBluto
Jamie Zawinski is a perfect example of intellectual intelligence unfortunately not translating to emotional intelligence.
https://groups.google.com/g/linux.debian.bugs.dist/c/ItL6xJm...
jjgreen
Not that NSFW, could do with a trim though ...
btbuildem
Oh neat, it's just for redirects from here. Fair enough!
q3k
Art.
groan
Based jwz novice
shikshake
Archive of first link: https://web.archive.org/web/20260429210901/https://tboteproj...
dredmorbius
NB: don't link jwz.org directly from HN. It plays poorly from both ends.
cormorant
I feel like HN should ban linking to the domain. After all, no good-faith commenter intends the result that happens.
groan
[flagged]
Aurornis
Trying to put this all on Meta with a look at their 2025 lobbying spend is missing the point. The “think of the children” panic about the internet pre-dates this by years. Remember the debate around the TikTok ban? The states instituting laws about porn age checks pre-dates all of this too. I think trying to blame Meta is convenient because it’s easy to think there is just one villain coordinating everything, but the debate about children and the internet has been a spreading moral panic for years.
btown
While the panic is indeed nothing new, Meta could have chosen a path of solidarity across the tech industry, lobbying for the ways age/identity verification makes people of all ages less safe, especially in the context of phishing and data harvesting.
Instead, its strategy has become to advocate for increasing the net levels of tracking and regulatory burden, so long as it is positioned to burden other parts of the technology stack (namely, app stores and operating systems) rather than their social networks.
From the link from a sibling commenter: https://web.archive.org/web/20260429210901/https://tboteproj...
> Meta spent a record $26.3 million on federal lobbying in 2025, deployed 86+ lobbyists across 45 states, and covertly funded a group called the Digital Childhood Alliance (DCA) to advocate for the App Store Accountability Act (ASAA).
The irony that their namesake Metaverse was meant to be, itself, an operating system and app distribution platform is palpable. When ambitions shift to regulatory capture, a shark has arguably been jumped.
urbnspacecowboy
> It's all caused by a Meta lobbying initiative...
Is it really, though? As commenters on JWZ's blog pointed out (once you get around his HN link blocker, hah), the project contains very questionable LLM work.
frm88
Yes, it is. There are other sources that trace the evolution of age-verification, with Meta quitting all lobbying groups that advertise against it and forming new ones with Spotify and Match Group as well as actively financing Digital Childhood Alliance. Meta wants the verification to happen on a non-app level (read Playstores or eveb OS level) to avoid all cost and liability: https://techoversight.org/2025/07/29/bloomberg-meta-google-l...
This one-size fits all approach is built to solve problems social media platforms have with their systems while making our members, small tech companies and app developers, collateral damage,” said App Association spokesperson Jack Fleming.
Also: article in Reuters https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48630804
shevy-java
It's not only Meta though. People need to stop assuming Meta controls everything via its CIAbook. You see several actors behind that; which one contributes the most is an interesting detail, but ultimately it can be simplified to them planning Evil against The People.
dredmorbius
Successful propaganda, and political and policy intervention, as with all forms of control and intervention, rely on applying additional pressure where there's a latent interest and potential.
There's a wonderful line from a different context which I find applies quite broadly:
"The Art of ship handling involves the effective use of forces under control to overcome the effect of forces not under control."
-- Charles H. Cotter
Meta, one of the wealthiest corporations and indeed institutions on the Planet, is exploiting a long-extant tendency and proclivity in technological policy. It's doing so against long-standing traditions within the tech community, largely to serve its own interests. Meta aren't the only actor seeking greater surveillance and forced identification, but the are among the very most powerful. Culpability devolves from that, and violation of tech-community norms, alone.
brandensilva
Exactly, it's far bigger than Meta when the government's are pushing a larger agenda here.
The assumption is you have to control people to enforce laws. They keep pushing this notion that is a requirement to keep people safe. That somehow if we have big brother AI surveillance everyone will be on their best behavior.
Oracle, Palantir, Meta, and other mega billionaires push this agenda because who is going to stop them from controlling society and getting absurdly powerful and wealthy from it?
Aurornis
This has all been brewing for years. Remember the TikTok ban and all of the debates around it? We’ve been hearing news headlines about social media and kids for many years. The state level laws around porn site ID checks have been rolling in gradually for years, too.
There are always claims that is a shadowy cabal of world leaders coordinating in secret or that a specific corporation is lobbying to do it all, but the fact is that ID checking is oddly popular in theory to a lot of people who haven’t thought through the consequences. Check any thread on this topic on Hacker News where the idea is discussed in a way that makes it feel like it’s only for kids or only for Facebook and there’s a huge outpouring of support for the idea.
The topic only becomes unpopular when the actual consequences become apparent. For the Hacker News audience the popularity of these ideas does a complete U-turn as soon as the concept of ID checking extends to platforms we might use, like Reddit, Discord, or YouTube. When commenters think it’s only going to impact Facebook and TikTok they welcome ID checking laws with enthusiastic support.
reaperducer
This has all been brewing for years. Remember the TikTok ban and all of the debates around it?
Tiktok? I remember when people were freaking out about porn games on the Atari 2600.
jancsika
Now I'm curious-- if I do an image capture of my face on an Atari 2600, can AI recreate a recognizable image of my face from that data?
Edit: by "data" I mean only the screencapture of the Atari 2600 output at some point in time.
outime
Global meetings (whether secret or not) where select people decide what to do next to minimize potential threats to their power. There isn't much more to it, really.
btilly
Not just minimize threats, but often to maximize their power.
Lobbyists do not just try to convince a politician that X is a good idea. Lobbyists give the politician money to introduce already drafted legislation, and then give other politicians money to support it. And if they can get the legislation passed in one place, they'll try it again.
The result is that suspiciously similar legislation appears in many places close in time, due to it being pushed by particular interests.
outime
I'm not convinced this is about money as much as it is about blackmail, given how centralized data collection has become and how many intelligence agencies appear to have access to numerous 0-days for routinely gathering additional information. It could be both things as well.
What bothers me most isn't their corruption, but their apparent belief that it won't eventually affect them or their families - perhaps sooner than they think.
MattDamonSpace
Nefarious actors will always attempt to institute these programs via well-meaning stooges
AI coming along is another “great opportunity” to try and force these programs
neponeko
Rich people are panicking because they’ve seen a capital-poor country win a war with cheap drones and want to lock down as many technologies as they can, lest the ruled realize they can actually do something about their rulers.
tavavex
I don't know if they have that level of coordination. To me it seems that they just want to grab as much money and power for themselves while it's possible before considering any interests of their social class.
I don't know if the ruled can really do anything. All these countries, even if they are poorer on paper, are still nation-level actors with power that regular people can't even dream of matching.
numpad0
I agree that "they" are panicking, but I think it's more towards that they mashed pay-to-skip-classes button only to realize that they ended up being without skills or connections, rather than that it has to do with Ukraine at all, frankly
thisoneworks
Imo it definitely has to do with politicians and governments trying to appear strong on the topic of protecting kids from the harms of social media. I also believe a lot of it is well intentioned, albeit poorly executed
andrewla
I'm with you on the well-intentioned aspect.
But it's not a question of poor execution -- there is simply no way to execute this. There is no way to achieve the goal (age-restricting websites) without identity verification. There are any number of half solutions that will solve 80% of the problem, but to move the needle past that requires identity verification. Even then, as the article points out, we only move to 90%.
__MatrixMan__
What has changed is that there's now a market for data that maps addresses to apparent ethnicities (for use by palantir to sell to governments, in support of ethnic cleansing programmes).
dzdt
I think you are right on the big picture : what has changed is Big Tech has recognized that comprehensive data on individuals is valuable. I think the biggest value category however is in the area of highly-targeted opinion manipulation. Build a model of what are the current beliefs of each individual, get paid by marketing or political candidates or whoever to generate an optimized media feed to manipulate that person's beliefs to match some target set of beliefs.
froidpink
It's because of Jonathan Haidt's book
pc86
By all means don't provide any additional information on what you mean, what book, what it's about, what it has to do with this, or anything else.
echelon_musk
It took me 30s to Google this guy's name and find his latest book on Wikipedia.
fl4regun
I don't know who that is or which book you are talking about, because he has written many, it seems.
pseudalopex
But 1 since 8 years. The Anxious Generation.
jupr
Im sure a lot of people know about tor on this site...but let me remind everyone.
Tor is not for criminals. It's for you and me. And happens to be good enough that criminals use it too. This is the two sided nature of technology.
Tor is a networks of peers across the globe volunteering their network bandwidth to support people under oppression by their government.
The amount of privacy that can be gained from tor is proportional to the amount of people using it. The more that people utilize the technology, the more that everyone looks the same, and protects the people that need it the most.
Tor enables me to say no to these things and carry on, without permission.
bronlund
I think you overestimates the protection Tor provides. We have seen multiple cases of people getting caught on there, and CIA probably owns half the exit nodes anyways.
filup
Maybe provide sources, or point out a specific claim on the Tor project website that you feel overestimates the capabilities or protections.
BGP attacks are largely defeated by onionservices.
And while governments have the ability to create exit nodes, so does anybody.
bronlund
My guess my point is that it's not foolproof, and this is known. You can get unlucky and even if it's based on a side channel, and not Tor itself, it can still get serious if you though you were 100% safe.
john_strinlai
>We have seen multiple cases of people getting caught on there
as far as i am aware, no one has been caught due to something technical in relation to tor.
it's always something dumb like logging into an email that has the person's real name in it, using a credit card, leaving javascript on, or otherwise making some opsec failure.
zahlman
It's increasingly difficult to accomplish much on the Internet without JavaScript, though. This is an era where literal image hosting sites won't show you an image without it; where it's used to reinvent <details> tags, forms, even ordinary hyperlinks.
j0ej0ej0e
There is another angle not a lot of people consider. There was a Defcon video I recall watching from 10-15 years ago where the speaker referenced a case where police managed to arrest someone because the Tor traffic on the network (maybe a university) was so unusual as a one time event at a specific location, the police managed to tie the individual to specific Tor activity. The speaker's conclusion was essentially we should all be using Tor to create and normalise a higher volume of Tor traffic which can in turn help protect other Tor user's anonymity.
pseudalopex
This could be true. But law enforcers lied how they found evidence in other cases.[1] They could have lied in Tor cases.
judge2020
iCloud private relay has done more in just a few years than Tor ever has, by being opt-out for iOS users instead of opt-in like Tor. Now platforms can’t rely on IP based reputation, instead relying on either a computational challenge (Cloudflare, Anubis) or de-anonymization (recaptcha relying on being signed into a Google account more than anything, especially when using private relay).
jupr
That wasn't meant to be an argument against other privacy protecting technologies. I'll take them all. Although you can't just compare apples to apples when you speak of close sources technology. I applaud apple for the long held stance of privacy protections.
And to be fair, tor comes at the price of speed. But convince isn't the only thing in the math equation here. Privacy basically boils down to a three part equation these days with the variables being Speed/Convenience.
A lot of that speed and convince can be made up for with being familiar with the tools and adapting to a new norm. The actual network speed isn't really that bad comparatively.
inigyou
I'm using Tor right now! Everyone should. It's too bad that many websites block it, but most of those websites are slop anyway.
jupr
Everyone should study the basics on a server backend and full stack web.
If you can master what it takes to design and run your site on localhost....you are literally one step away from sharing it with anyone on the planet who has internet access for zero dollars because of the power of tor, and the global network that supports it.
The reality is, there is no gate there, just the knowledge of how to do it.
Tor is first and foremost a router.
Sites that block tor IP's do happen, this is because of the dual use nature of the technology. Its also well suited for abuse.
esseph
Tor is very much for US overseas intelligence operatives, among other things.
btilly
Tor is not for criminals. It's for you and me.
No. Tor is for the CIA. It won't work for them unless we use it as well. Criminals also find it useful.
It's easy to verify this. Tor was originally written by Paul Syverson, Michael G. Reed, and David Goldschlag. While all three were working at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory.
jupr
These are the origins of Tor yes. The same technology that protects the spy, protects the journalist, or the citizen whose government blocked them, or placed a wall of ID verification checks.
I encourage everyone to learn about the origins. Even study these people and what they have said in the past. Don't for get https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Mathewson.
mghackerlady
Yes, that's what it was created for. The internet was created by DARPA and happened to be useful for other things
bflesch
Nah, those people use plaintext Gmail as Epstein demonstrated.
AdmiralAsshat
I have yet to receive my federal tax refund because I submitted my taxes through a preparation service and, thinking that physical checks were still an option (the tax software didn't tell me otherwise), I did not give the federal government an ACH account number for direct deposit. The IRS then told me I'd have to open an account to update/provide direct deposit info, which in turn requires me to register with ID.me to create an account. ID.me has an obnoxious signup policy which includes sending them a boatload of documentation, and a headshot. I'm not doing it. So to date, I have yet to receive my federal refund.
Somewhere on the IRS website I had found buried in an article that if they can't submit my refund via direct deposit after some period of time, they are supposed to mail me a physical check. Yet so far, nada.
sailfast
While I agree that this is annoying, you're trying to interact with the federal government which actually does require IDENTITY verification and not age verification in order to perform its duties. That id.me account allows you to take actions on behalf of a citizen, so they need to confirm some things first.
It's not great, but it's not what the original poster is against.
AdmiralAsshat
The frustration, I suppose, is that the government doesn't seem to demand this level of scrutiny to take my money, in the event that I owed on my tax returns for that year. But when they have money to give to me, suddenly it's 12 interviews and a colonoscopy to get approved.
sufficientsoup
My issue with it is that it's a vendor. The need for identification is fair, and I'm not worried about the govt having it. I'm worried about _id.me_ having it.
ooterness
I was in a similar situation this year. Miapplied a rule, overpaid slightly, IRS owed a refund on the difference. It took a while, but they did eventually send me a physical check.
sufficientsoup
Just went through this myself. I gave in and made the account, only to then find out I was too late to give them my direct deposit info anyway. (If it's any peace of mind, I did eventually get that check.)
jofla_net
A few years ago I tried the old cheque method to get a refund and it took well into September to arrive...
Cabal
When given the option (like this case), I recommend Login.gov over ID.me.
tencentshill
A lot of them got fired by Trump, it likely did get lost. Depending on how much it is, it might be worth dedicating an hour a month to following up.
tsoukase
Let's describe it simply: in the name of children protection, pushed by govs and parents, the companies found the chance to pass full identification of all. They use the former as a Trojan horse for the latter.
The sollution is simply to decouple the two processes. Now it'seasy as it's still early. The first step is for the people to realise the sneaky link and for the govs to stop any lobbying.
codedokode
There is actually a way to prove the age anonymously. Yubikey-like devices support attestation - they can have a private key proving authenticity of a device.
So some organization could release Yubikeys with a certain private key and distribute them in stores that allow only adult customers - like liquor stores or sex shops. Owning a key proves that one is adult without disclosing identity. Keys support USB and bluetooth and can be easily supported on any device.
Also, OS developers should implement simple parent mode - such that parents only need to flip a switch and set a password, and do not have to whitelist apps or websites - the OS should use government-provided lists. You might not like the government, but 99% of parents do not want to bother compiling white lists manually.
nedt
I can already generate a QR code that proofs my age anonymously. It's signed by the goverment. There are libraries to check the QR code. No extra device needed.
codedokode
How can you be sure that it is anonymous? And why it is not used instead of selfies?
panny
The problem with that is, parents be like:
>Here kid, take my key, go get me some beer.
Everyone everywhere gets forced to deal with bullshit, then the people it is supposed to be protecting circumvent it directly.
jjgreen
When I was 8 or 9, my Father would often give me 50p to go down to the nearby pub to get him 20 cigarettes and a half-pound bar of chocolate, which came to 48p. Always "and where's my change then?" when I returned. Tight git.
stephbook
Sounds like your father would have noticed a missing cigarette.
danillonunes
Also, let's be honest, outside of some loud privacy concerned voices, most people don't care and they will prefer to scan their faces with the phone they have at home which is an action they are already used to do than to spend money to buy some nerdy device.
yolo3000
The same can happen with any type of authentication, unless you are ok with someone pointing a webcam and authenticating you non stop.
andrewla
This is underselling it -- an adult can sell these yubikeys untraceably, pocket the cash, and never think about it again in their life.
If we tie the person's identity to the token (THIS IS A BAD IDEA) then if underage use is detected, the adult who sold the token can be prosecuted for selling adult tokens to minors.
panny
No, I think there are parents who would find a long enough webcam cable to point the cam at themselves while Jeff Epstein is grooming their kids in roblox.
The core point is that it isn't my responsiblity to take care of your children. When less than half of millennials (40% men, 55% women) have children, the "think of the children" catchphrase really starts to fall flat. Why should I think of the children? I don't even have children. It's the parents' problem, not mine. Stop making it my problem.
edg5000
You're missing the point. The complaints are consistently that age/children is just an excuse for control. Your comment is ironically, "offtopic". The rage is about forced identification.
Although, pointing out how actual age verification would work won't hurt. It helps to make it more clear that these pending laws are draconian.
moffkalast
That's just one of dozens of ways it could be done, hundreds probably. But ultimately proving that you're an adult is not the point, the point has always been profiling people with the excuse of that. Most of these verifications are done by Palantir shell corps even.
RankingMember
I agree 100% with the message and think we should strive to reject this kind of gathering wherever possible, but it feels like the horse is already out of the barn insofar as each and every one of our faces being out there. Hell, we have entire states where people can't watch porn without uploading their ID. The inertia is such that (I'm in the U.S.) we really need a constitutional amendment at this point to stop this.
jkestner
New privacy legislation is about 20 years overdue. Between age verification, privately owned national camera networks, and above all else, data brokers, citizens need to reassert their right to anonymity.
In the face of government hostility, at least we here can make more tools like Signal or at least choose not to feed customer data to the beast.
greentea23
New people are born every day whose faces necessarily are not out there.
kyledrake
> We run background checks on people who want to buy a gun, but we do not background check everyone at all times just in case.
And the other thing is, you can use a gun to murder people. If you try to use a porn site to murder someone, you're fundamentally hitting them with a laptop.
A major reason nobody can think clearly about this anymore is that there are people out there that genuinely believe porn sites and social media are as dangerous to human health as assault rifles and cigarettes. I'm almost as disturbed that people can't differentiate between harm risks as I am about horrible internet age checking laws.
hennell
> Name the places now demanding "age verification," and see how many will accept a plain government document that says only that you are over eighteen — and nothing else. Almost none will. Because age was never the point.
Name the physical places that would accept a plain government document that says only that you are over eighteen and nothing else? None will, not because 'age was never the point', or because every bar or casino is stealing your face - but because a plain document doesn't offer any proof you are it's owner. Photo ID has been standard as age verification because it's the best way to prove the official ID actually links to the person holding it.
There are more concerns in a digital world with giving your ID / face, but the idea that the demand for photo ID proves it's all a big data grab not remotely about age is a conclusion looking for evidence.
(Plus they acknowledge some sites have done age verification where all they want is your face to confirm you look over 18 - which they then ignore, claiming it's all really a ploy to get your documents. So why isn't the site 'Never give them your documents'?)
inigyou
Age assurance is the law in California and age verification is illegal in California. We should push more jurisdictions to adopt this model. While many age verification laws are malicious mass surveillance, some are because politicians didn't see a better option.
pseudalopex
< age verification is illegal in California
What law?
inigyou
AB1043. Age signals shall not contain more data than required.
pseudalopex
The law will take effect next year. And it would not cover web sites. Another bill would expand the law.
Get the top HN stories in your inbox every day.
Can't we even write a short text like this without LLMs anymore, not even when it's really important, when it's about humans against the inhumane?