An investigation of the forces behind the age-verification bills [LWN.net]

Reddit user “Ok_Lingonberry3296” has posted the
results of an extensive investigation into the companies that are
pushing US state legislatures to enact age-verification bills.

I’ve been pulling public records on the wave of “age verification”
bills moving through US state legislatures. IRS 990 filings, Senate
lobbying disclosures, state ethics databases, campaign finance
records, corporate registries, WHOIS lookups, Wayback Machine
archives. What started as curiosity about who was pushing these
bills turned into documenting a coordinated influence operation
that, from a privacy standpoint, is building surveillance
infrastructure at the operating system level while the company
behind it faces zero new requirements for its own platforms.

(See also this article for a look at the
California law.)

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