Age Verification Lobbying: Dark Money, Model Legislation, Institutional Capture (tboteproject.com)

by mefengl 13 comments 74 points
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13 comments

[−] inkysigma 63d ago
I think this is the third time this has effectively been posted see:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47362528

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47365597

[−] spondyl 63d ago
This is a "productionisation" of the same content discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47362528

I would caution readers to do their due dilligence as the presentation may be fancy but that should not immediately translate into a signal of quality in itself given the author has disclosed using Claude Code for a chunk of this work.

While I won't outright discount the findings (as there is "too much" to reasonably verify), there are a few oddities around the source repo such as errors where Claude has tried to access sources, been denied and then noted as much or where it has seemingly fetched incorrect files and tried to interpret them (https://github.com/upper-up/meta-lobbying-and-other-findings...)

I am not under the immediate impression that the author has done thorough due diligence rather than just offloading that to readers by saying "You can just check the sources yourself"

[−] Springtime 63d ago
Also not really a fan of the 'what they're hiding from you' tone it takes (even if that's the subject), like saying that because a website was made less than 100 days before a bill was signed it was a '77-day pipeline' to the bill (which jumped out as a dramatized rephrasing and not present in the original Reddit post).

It also doesn't inline link sources, like the Bloomberg article it mentions (this[1]). A more impartial voice and linked citations to allow quick reference would raise fewer red flags, even if the goal is worthwhile.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-07-25/meta-clas...