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).
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They now can identify who is human and who is AI slop machine, or enough to appease the advertisement goons
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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
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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.
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Couldn’t they just implement id verification without a requirement from the law? That way they wouldn’t need to wait for the governments to one by one pass laws
Going with the post’s idea for a moment, by making it law, the companies prevent any new social media from popping up and not requiring ID verification and stealing away all their users. “They can’t say no, it’s out of their hands because it’s law”.
Not to mention, if everyone has to do it in one country because of the law, it makes it easier to push it in other places because now it’s a collective movement.
I think it’s probably not being pushed because of those things (though they are certainly possible outcomes), and more about the fact that they can just… scrape up a bunch of data about you in general.
Now they know your name, age, race, birthday, and can correlate that all with data brokers if they want more. Ad targeting becomes easier, thus making them more money. Simple as that.
I don’t like this theory because they have already had access to this information with social media. Individuals willingly volunteer this information about themselves and their friends, and data brokers would collect and centralize it from multiple sources. This is why some platforms were trying out AI age verification in countries that hadn’t officially mandated ID verification yet. They were confident enough, with all the info they had already collected, to assume someone’s age. They would hope that the people who fail the check would be few enough to not cause an immediate uproar(“just verify with ID, what’s the big deal?”)
This is most certainly more of an authoritarian power grab to prevent any anonymous criticism what so ever. Id verification will allow them to target any application that does not comply and preserves user privacy. Anyone who does not comply will be implied to be a criminal or enemy of the state. They want to make a system where corporate surveillance cannot be avoided.
The corporations lobbying for this want to benefit from being a part of the fascist state, but don’t want to handle any legal obligation or public scrutiny from the obvious damages that will come from collecting this information. That’s why you have different companies lobbying for different “solutions”; whatever keeps them from facing repercussions but still makes them money for being a part of the surveillance state is what they will support.
“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.
Advertising to children is significantly more tightly regulated, for the very reason that they’re so damn thirsty for it.
I grew up in the 90s and there were some absolutely unhinged ads during saturday morning cartoons. This spoof is only slightly crazier than an actual capri sun liquid cool commercial.
Not saying it’s right, but only appropriate things can be advertised to children, so in the UK that’s no junk food for example - https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/mar/10/uk-junk-food-ad-ban-so-diluted-it-may-be-largely-ineffective-experts-say
In the US, the govt allows cigarettes to be advertised to children.
The US doesn’t allow cigarettes to be advertised to children or anywhere where they might see it. This was a Clinton administration thing. That’s why the Winston Cup became the Nextel Cup in NASCAR as just one for instance.
And so JUUL, which is made from all the main ingredients of a cigarette, is not a cigarette? And it’s not advertised heavily on social media like Snapchat, where most youth are? Instead of the fucking nascar?
I think you make a fair point here, partially. However, Marlboro could also advertise on snapchat if they wanted. Now there’s no doubt something like that would catch massive eyes, landing them in hot enough water to probably change the law around it. If Marlboro leadership saw Juul as a threat, that would make sense to do. They lose a pittance in advertising and court fees, and cut off a competitor from an advertising stream.
But they’re not a threat, they’re an asset. Altria, the parent company of Philip Morris and NJOY, has a 35% stake in Juul. Altria is incentivized to keep their piles of shit separate.
Vaping has the potential to be healthier than cigarettes, socially and physically. But not when it’s almost entirely controlled by companies that have a history of marketing to children. It’s physically healthier sure, but only 107 countries have laws regulating the age for vaping, vs 188 for cigarettes. The e-waste factor is also huge, something that a lot of people who vape choose to ignore and I wish they couldn’t. I vape myself, have for years, and it’s a shit state of affairs with how popular disposables are. But I don’t know what the realistic solution is. People are going to use tobacco products in a dystopia.
Unfortunately we live in a time when if the law doesn’t specifically call out something then it doesn’t apply. So no, as far as US law is concerned, Juuls are not cigarettes just like Uber isn’t a taxi service and YouTube isn’t a broadcaster.
But we as common sense people can say that Juul is a cigarette and the govt hasn’t done enough to kill its advertising to children.
Yes and no. Juuls and the like contain nicotine salts that degrade the heating element. There is mounting evidence to suggest that these will need their own awareness campaign as they have very different health risks to original tobacco use. However, there are other kinds of vape pens that don’t contain nicotine salts or that use solids instead of liquids that have already been grouped in with Juuls in legislation. Simply applying common sense is often not enough to cover the whole situation which is why industries like this rely on legislation being too slow to stop them.
What? Tobacco is like, the one thing that actually has extremely stringent advertising regulations in the US. When vaping products like Juul came around, they were able to exploit loopholes in those laws, but I think those have pretty much been patched up by now.
What, dear friend, are the ingredients of Juul?
Didn’t they close up the loopholes in advertising regulations that Juul exploited?
Sure, they did. But that just means some ad-exec and lawyers are working to figure out the next loophole.
I feel like that’s pretty meaningfully different from the original claim that the US government allows cigarettes to be advertised to children.
Not saying it’s right, but only appropriate things can be advertised to children, so in the UK that’s no junk food for example
When was the last time any company got prosecuted for violating that? And was the fine less than the profit they made by violating the law?
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.
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
The main reason for all the censorship and end of privacy is because the world is heading to a major war and free flow of information goes against the interests of those behind the war. See the case with Gaza
Not that the other reasons don’t exist, but advertisers are not the main one
That actually makes sense.
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.
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I mean AI goons are destroying the internet and open source, that much is true.
The bad news for the AI goons is that the capitalists have squeezed us so hard that we no longer have any money to spend on the products we’re programmed to lust after. Not sure what the end game is.
I like how they call everything conspiracy theories these days. Yeah, nothing to see here, just wanna protect children… :)
I believe the cat
Posted on Twitter lmfao
It is the third option. For a schizo conspiracy it makes a lot of sense.
“schizo internet theory.” i’m not surprised this was posted on Twitter this guy is far gone
I don’t love the word schizo, but otherwise I am on board
Agree because it’s a real mental illness that some people are tornented with, and that word should not be thrown around playfully.
The word I didn’t love from OOP was “unironically.” I truly don’t love that word.
what’s your problem with the word “unironically” ?
I bet they write a 10 paragraph essay on why the word “unironically” is pretentious.
what’s your problem with the word schizo?
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.
Lol, I bet removed is gonna be a slur someday.
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”.
Schizophrenia is a real, serious disease. It means a specific diagnosis that isn’t just 🤪
Plausible considering it’s been shown that meta is the one responsible for lobbying this shit
