Source: https://xcancel.com/vxunderground/status/2032600868005310638#m

Yeah, so basically the current prevailing schizo internet theory is that AI nerds have destroyed the internet and created infinite spam.

The advertisement goons are now incapable of determining who is a bot and who is an actual human. The advertisement goons no longer want to pay as much to social media networks.

Social media networks, in full blown panic of losing potential revenue, decided to lobby governments saying “we gotta protect the kids! ID everyone to protect the kids from pedophiles!”.

The social media networks know this doesn’t really protect kids. But, it does two things (and a third accidentally).

  1. They now can identify who is human and who is AI slop machine, or enough to appease the advertisement goons

  2. Advertising to children is a general no-no from politicians, or something, so with ID verification they can say with confidence they’re not advertising to children because it’s been ID verification. Basically, they can weed out the children and focus on advertising to adults

  3. The feds can now tell who is human and who is AI slop. This inadvertently helps them with tracking people and serving fresh daily dumps of propaganda, or whatever they want to do.

It’s a win-win-win for advertisers, social media networks, the government, and any business which does data collections.

It fucks over everyone else.

Chat, I’m not going to lie to you. This is an extremely good conspiracy schizo theory and I unironically believe it.

  • BeN9o@lemmy.worldEnglish
    152·
    9 days ago

    “Advertising to Children is a general no-no…”

    Uhh what? Advertising to children is like no1 priority. That’s why Kim K etc is in fortnite, happy meals are bad food aimed at kids and of course standard TV adverts can be heavily aimed at kids, even tho its the parents spending the money.

    • new_world_odor@lemmy.world
      46·
      9 days ago

      Advertising to children is significantly more tightly regulated, for the very reason that they’re so damn thirsty for it.

    • damnthefilibuster@lemmy.worldEnglish
      33·
      9 days ago

      Facebook has known since over a decade that under 13s are on their networks and instead of booting them, the CEO (whoever he is) decided to make the platforms more addictive to under 13s. Real quote from the LA court case going on right now.

      Also, the new CEO of Xbox Gaming is ex-AI Head of Microsoft and the ex-Head of under-13 policy at Facebook. So she did everything the CEO (whoever he is) asked her to do, including making the platforms more addictive and pushing back on govt intervention.

    • starblursd@lemmy.zipEnglish
      23·
      8 days ago

      Data collection* from children is a general No-No but with this they don’t have to collect the data to know they’re a child and can now specifically target them without having to collect data first. Thereby avoiding coppa fines

    • a_gee_dizzle@lemmy.ca
      29·
      8 days ago

      I never thought about it until I clicked on this link, but repositories are actually a really good format for investigative journalism. Allows you to organize all the supporting documents alongside the article in an organized way.

      • msage@programming.dev
        7·
        8 days ago

        It’s great for most written things in society.

        Laws? Oh yes, please.

        Any official communication? Thank you.

        Even mundane things like cooking guides would benefit from history and versioning. Imagine entire family sending their branches for favourite pie/turkey/whatever else.

      • kieron115@startrek.websiteEnglish
        4·
        8 days ago

        They also want to defer the costs of positively identifying users to the various governments, presumably so it doesn’t eat into their advertising revenue even further.

    • Tiresia@slrpnk.net
      4·
      8 days ago

      It’s not even a conspiracy, it’s just corporations and politicians behaving according to individual incentives and communicating about it publicly with a basic level of indirectness to avoid outrage.

  • No1@aussie.zone
    45·
    8 days ago

    This is just the beginning.

    You think it’s just about ID?

    Politicians in both the UK and Australia have spoken about banning VPNs, because VPNs have been used to avoid age verification in those countries.

    • eleitl@lemmy.zip
      2·
      8 days ago

      If you want to see where we’re going, look no farther than Russia’s Internet. Which is currently much worse than China’s.

      So be prepared for your service to be degraded to unusability.

    • Kurroth@aussie.zone
      1·
      8 days ago

      I don’t think anyone relevant in Australia has yet suggested banning VPNs. Too much gov infrastructure runs on them.

    • Earthman_Jim@lemmy.zip
      17·
      8 days ago

      Honestly, the only “schizo” part of this is the assertion that people aren’t allowed to advertise to children, otherwise this all makes perfectly sane sense.

      • redhorsejacket@lemmy.world
        27·
        8 days ago

        Hazarding a guess that they feel OP is using schizo as a shorthand reference for crazy/delusional, given the context is Internet conspiracy theories. They possibly feel that it is being used as a perjorative which disrespects folks who struggle with schizophrenia. In essence, calling something you find crazy “schizo” is the same as calling something you find dumb “retarded”.

        I don’t have a dog in the fight one way or the other, but, in the absence of their reply, that’s my assumption.

        • ayyy@sh.itjust.works
          3·
          8 days ago

          This is a great answer. It is worth noting that the word “dumb” used to literally mean what we now say is “non-verbal”. Funny how language changes.

          See also: “lame”.

      • ayyy@sh.itjust.works
        10·
        8 days ago

        Schizophrenia is a real, serious disease. It means a specific diagnosis that isn’t just 🤪

  • ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml
    22·
    8 days ago

    How is this a theory? This is literally what’s happening lol

    Even if it’s not advertising itself pushing it, the rest of what was said is true.

  • FukOui@lemmy.zip
    21·
    8 days ago

    Plausible considering it’s been shown that meta is the one responsible for lobbying this shit

  • IratePirate@feddit.org
    21·
    8 days ago

    The advertisement goons are now incapable of determining who is a bot and who is an actual human.

    Bullshit. Social networks track the living shit out of everyone and know exactly what’s human traffic and what isn’t. Device identifiers (user agent, IP ranges, browser fingerprint, (lack of) ad id, etc.) and behavioral patterns (including purchase history) differ wildly.

    Advertising to children is a general no-no from politicians, or something,

    Bullshit. Even advertising to kids were outlawed (it isn’t), politicians could be just bought off by advertisers to turn a blind eye. This is particularly true for the land of their formerly free and home of the formerly brave where corruption is now an above-the-counter item, practiced out in the open by the president himself.

    • kieron115@startrek.websiteEnglish
      2·
      7 days ago

      Bullshit. Social networks track the living shit out of everyone and know exactly what’s human traffic and what isn’t. Device identifiers (user agent, IP ranges, browser fingerprint, (lack of) ad id, etc.) and behavioral patterns (including purchase history) differ wildly.

      https://github.com/xvzc/SpoofDPI plus a browser fingerprinting blocker.

  • eli@lemmy.world
    20·
    8 days ago

    Want a real schizo theory?

    People are going to use the ID verification thing to see which accounts are child accounts, pull all details for those accounts and make a database of children’s accounts, and then sell that information to bad actors who plan to traffic children.

  • kablez@lemmy.world
    19·
    8 days ago

    Advertising doesn’t seem like a large enough lever to drive something this globally coordinated.

    My read is that governments and large institutions are preparing for the kind of systemic instability climate change is going to produce.

    Across the world we’re already seeing laws and policies that quietly restrict the ability to organise, protest, or remain anonymous online, while surveillance capabilities expand at the same time. None of this is particularly popular, yet it keeps happening.

    Why?

    Because the next few decades are likely to involve continuous pressure from climate-driven problems: migration, water shortages, falling crop yields, energy instability, and the political conflict that follows when resources get tighter.

    From that perspective, universal ID verification online isn’t mainly about ads or “protecting the kids”. It’s about mapping who is who, who talks to who, and how information spreads.

    If you expect future mass unrest, protest movements, or large-scale political instability, that kind of data becomes extremely valuable.

    And historically, elites often choose to invest more effort in managing the consequences of systemic problems than in solving the underlying causes.

    So instead of “AI spam broke advertising”, the bigger story might be that institutions are building the infrastructure to monitor and manage populations during a much messier future.

  • metermatic26@lemmy.world
    18·
    7 days ago

    Conspiracy theory? It’s not, it’s absolutely true. But they left out the bit about the quasi-alliance between big tech and right-wing extremists.

    Tech bro’s want to keep their revenue streams, techno-fascists want to remove privacy barriers that stop them from training AI with your personal data and actual fascists want to crack down on public speech and dissidents.

    The political right in both the US and EU are continuously working to remove privacy and surveillance restrictions under the auspices of free markets and innovation.