It's fascinating to see this in things as life-or-death-to-millions-important like global politics, and the you-know-who. And his team of this kind of people...
Fascinating in the sense of "How did you get here!? And can't you see this move will blow up in your face in the near future!?".
I guess if you have 50-60 years of adulthood where you made dumb moves but got away with it...
We have laws to combat the disinformation, its just we just stopped enforcing it because it was the political's best interests. Like we actually have fined (X for 120M).
So solution is gate it behind age? It doesnt fix disinformation problem, i refuse to belive that they cant just run transcription via AI and spot disinformation to delete. If EU thinks AI is good enough to invade our privacy via chat control. Why not use this to combat disinformation? or even easier just find repeating messages and block that (since lots campaigns work like this)
Theres so many solutions before having to resort age gate, the worst is. Putting it behind gate doesnt protect from people who can vote, so what they are even trying fix there?
People also seem forget, on household, we share devices with children. So user can share +18 flag easy as parents are lending tablet for them play games. Im referring the OS level age verification system which is happening around US.
My guess is they own accounts which show the ads, so they get paid for showing ads. This is similar how those "get free money" apps work, they own Ad account and get paid when you view/click that ad.
Another theory is since lots free games have where you can earn in-game currency for viewing ads, the bot farms might be abusing this method.
Its resource allocation problem, same happened with .com bubble, lots investors put tons of money into dark fibers. Were they useless? No its very useful.
If you want check a example company from the .com days check cisco, their stock peaked at 75 then crashed hard and only managed hit that again thanks for the AI bubble.
> at worst someone could make some mean anonymous comments
No, at worst they could conduct an astroturf campaign and manipulate the overton window. I suspect that Noam Chomsky attains correctness by volume and by forgetting the times he was wrong, but the whole "manufactured consent" concept looks prescient.
Governments aren't clearly willing to regulate the companies. They just let them do whatever they want once they're too big to regulate. Internet Companies has 20 years of history of datamining for sake advertising. Still nothing is done about, why even allow them obtain even more leverage?
