Age verification is ID verification. By requiring ID site owners effectively have a monopoly on the bot armies infesting reddit, YouTube, Facebook, etc. These armies aren’t going away. They are just getting smarter and more influential with AI.

Everyone is focusing on the privacy aspect and glossing over the fact that these laws give Silicon Valley complete control over online discourse. They’ll know who exactly who you are and how best to manipulate you with their bots.

Imagine if the AI bots learn to target and prioritize content not generated by AI (if they aren’t already). Labeling your content as organic makes it so much more appetizing for bots.

Remember when Microsoft was telling shareholders that the Xbox multimedia ecosystem was going to dominate living rooms everywhere, then people stopped hanging out in their living rooms?

As much as everyone loves to shit on Facebook, it was an incredible service. When I was in the military I was able to keep up with my old friends and their lives. When I got out I was able to simply keep in touch with my old military buddies. Now it’s just dead. I’m genuinely sad that this has happened :(

I was a nuclear operator in the Navy. Here are the actual reasons:

1. The designs are classified US military assets
2. They are not refuleable
3. They only come in 2 “sizes”: aircraft carrier and submarine
4. They are not scaleable. You can just make a reactor 2x as big
5. They require as much down time as up time
6. They are outdated
7. The military won’t let you interrupt their supply chain to make civilian reactors
8. New designs over promise and underdeliver
9. They are optimized for erratic operations (combat) not steady state (normal power loads)
10. They are engineered assuming they have infinite sea water available for everything

There’s more but that’s just off the top of my head

Yeah it’s more like, hey you just bought stabilizing jacks and a water hose for a travel trailer. You must have just bought a new camper. Let’s bombard you with add for stick-up-hooks, rv-mattress sized sheets, cheap plastic dishes, etc.

If you figure each engineer costs apple $250,000 a year, that’s the equivalent of 250 engineers. Could you imagine what apple could accomplish with 5 extra engineering departments? In what world is this one guy worth that much?