Meta has spent $2B on verification lobbying. Very successfully it seems.
In 1-2 years, you won't be able to browse the internet without scanning a body part and providing a ID for your ass.
https://www.gadgetreview.com/reddit-user-uncovers-who-is-beh...
While your post is joking in tone, depending on how much we push back now is the exact level of delta between actual future and 'drink verification' copypasta[1].
[1]https://www.reddit.com/r/copypasta/comments/1dfea32/drink_ve...
That is funny, sad & scary at the same time.
I guarantee you that there are real people out there in tech who think getting to a "Drink verification can" world would be great for corporate profit, and are actively doing things that bring us closer to that world rather than farther away.
>You've been blocked by network security. To continue, log in to your Reddit account or use your developer token
....
My mother tried to buy something on Amazon yesterday. It wouldn't let her check-out until she'd entered a code sent via WhatsApp. Which she doesn't have and doesn't want. She'll be buying her tat on eBay in future.
I dream that Amazon will lose lots of sales and backtrack, but I don't suppose they will.
Which country was this? I’ve never known Amazon requiring WhatsApp. It uses SMS a lot.
The only service I’ve used which does offer WhatsApp as a form of identification is PayPal. But even that is just one of many different authorisation options.
I don’t have WhatsApp either and never once found that to be a limiting. So I wonder if the experience your relative was having is more nuanced than suggested.
Are you sure it was actually via whatsapp, and not just a six digit code sent via regular SMS to the phone number on record for her account? It's possible whatsapp on her phone has simply hijacked the SMS client functionality and set itself as the default.
> "WhatsApp on her phone"
GP clearly said she doesn't have WhatsApp.
If I had a dollar for every time I've seen an older person that doesn't even know what application they're running, or can't tell the difference between the content of a website inside a browser window and an application that runs natively on their computer. I read what the GP wrote, I'm saying there's a non zero possibility she's misunderstanding something.
It seems like something you have to specifically choose, on the amazon account side.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeI...
I choose to not call a GP a liar or too thick for being unable to differentiate between apps :)
I also chose their presumed first hand statement than your unrelated experience with unrelated third parties.
Your point re: having to subscribe to WhatsApp notifications, if we're staying in the realm of "what ifs" and looking for the awkward but possible ways to discredit the claims, I can believe that she was enrolled without being asked. I've seen at least one person complaining about that exact scenario.
Cheers!
but then amazon would not tell her that she should find the code in whatsapp, because amazon would still be sending send an sms. it should not have any awareness of whatsapp hijacking the sms function, and therefore the amazon message should reference the SMS. if it references whatsapp then it means amazon wants to send to whatsapp directly.
No, my Microsoft Azure 2FA sends codes to WhatsApp, not SMS.
UK, where WhatsApp is absolutely mandatory.
“which she doesn’t have and doesn’t want”
Sure it was Amazon? Sounds like a scam
The frustrating part is that since so many companies collect PII under the guise of security (and then use it for advertising) it's harder to tell if this is a legal scam or illegal scam.
>if this is a legal scam or illegal scam.
the fact this is something to be distinguished says a lot about where we are now and none of what it says is good
Yes. I'd gone round to see her and I checked her history to ensure it wasn't dodgy.
What is a tat?
“Tat” means miscellaneous junk.
That said, the anecdote is made up or important details have been elided to make it sound more interesting than it is. Amazon doesn’t depend on whatsapp for 2fa. You can configure amazon 2fa to send an SMS and it’s possible that the poster’s mother has misconfigured her phone to claim that it needs whatsapp to read the sms 2fa message but I highly doubt even that. When I look on amazon it allows passkeys, regular TOTP like with DUO authenticator or google authenticator or whatever or SMS with a backup of sending the TOTP code to the registered email on the account. Whatsapp isn’t even an option.
Perhaps the options vary by region?
How does "tat" differ from "grot"?
tat n.
People buy it all the time when they practice retail therapy.Sure it was Amazon? Sounds like a scam
(13 years ago)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/632877-halo-4/66477630
I really wish there was a way for the electorate to preempt the votes of their representatives, so this kind of lobbying would be less effective. Sure, they might try carpet bombing the airwaves with PSA campaigns, but if the people really really don’t want what the lobbyist is selling, they would still be able to rip the ballot out of their congress critter’s hands and change the vote.
I would settle for representatives that actually represented the interests of the people rather than those of the wealthiest and their corporations.
Ballot initiative. Californians tried that to stop "gay marriage" (Prop 8) so the courts just told the people to fuck themselves and overturned it. Again in South Dakota for legalizing marijuana, the voters voted in favor by special initiative so the state just overturned it.
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Meta has not spent $2 billion on ID lobbying.
That bogus number came from a complete AI slop Reddit post that was later removed.
That’s why the only references you can find to it are from sites like your gadgetreview.com link that repost clickbait without fact checking anything.
It doesn't matter what they spent excatly but it's in their direct interest to raise legal moats for competitors. Kind of like what Allegedly Open AI tried with the "AI will kill us all" threats.
> It doesn't matter what they spent excatly
If the number didn’t matter then the comment above wouldn’t have led with it to make their point.
The flaw in the original study was that someone started with a premise that Meta was at the heart of this and all spending could be traced back to Meta. They made Claude generate a report but they didn’t read any details, so they didn’t notice that Claude couldn’t access the actual documents. So it started guessing and hallucinating until it came up with the scary number that Meta was spending $2B on lobbying.
The entire premise that Meta is driving this with $2B of lobbying is an AI hallucination.
Reddit obviously is adding login gates to combat AI scrapers.
> he entire premise that Meta is driving this with $2B of lobbying is an AI hallucination.
I guess the $2B is hallucination. But it makes sense for them to do the "think of the children" lobby.
>But it makes sense for them to do the "think of the children" lobby.
Why? It seems more like that’s baseless speculation with an agenda.
I disagree a little bit, but only for this reason: the amount matters because it is invariably very, very small compared to the revenue/profit of the company and the impact the lobbying has.
It is shocking what politicians will do for just five or six figure donations to their campaigns.
"excatly"????wtf?
Meta hasn't corrected it and there's absolutely no way I give Meta the benefit of a doubt.
And ~20 years ago computer riddled with porn malware was kinda normal.
Times change, so does certain expectations.
I would view a website that requires users to go through a lengthy verification process.
Given all the astroturfing from companies and governments, this would give a bit of trust.
Would it? Or would it just open up another revenue stream for websites? Verified corporate accounts sure, but with prices set per number of usernames per account, billed monthly.
Wasn't twitter/x meant to be that? Pay and verify to enter members club. Didn't quite take off all while destroying goodwill that blue badge used to have.