Not surprisingly, Meta is possibly the worst "offender" behind funding of these campaigns.
Which is strange, because it is widely known a large amount of their advertising revenue comes from fake accounts.
This doesn’t make sense, how do these fake accounts bring revenue ? I thought the end goal is to improve conversion rate by removing the “bots” and this would therefore lead to higher ad spend and more money to Facebook direct
I work in marketing and not nearly as much effort as you think goes into removing bots. They go after the lowest hanging fruit, the most obvious bots like scrapers and crawlers but most bots impersonating real people easily make it through. Traffic is traffic.
The advertisers still pay, they just don't get conversions.
AI companies are also donating tens of millions to these PACs and others that are promoting age verification laws, it lets them sell AI content rating systems using their models.
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I’m curious why Meta would benefit. Meta seems wholly unnecessary, the verification can be done at the OS level, completely in the hands of Apple/Alphabet and maybe Microsoft.
If anything, Meta’s utility would seem to shrink if the OS handles proof of being a real person.
Regulatory capture through a higher barrier to entry. Any social media platform that wants to compete with Meta's portfolio will now also need to have an age-verification system in place (which is guaranteed to introduce higher costs). Meta can likely afford to eat the costs here as a tradeoff for the higher impact on smaller players.
It also gives them more information on users as a bonus. Further, verification with a real ID is also a quite effective barrier against excessive bots.
I would think the barrier to entry gets lower because Apple/Alphabet handle age verification, and they let apps/websites use that verification.
Look beyond the CA law, states have already passed laws that put the liability on app and website developers to ensure users aren't kids, there's no passing the buck to Apple or Google.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/12/congresss-crusade-age-...
Meta's entire business model lives on ad deals that are not on the frontend. They are in the data business and this campaign is to get access to more data without an option to opt out. Who takes the data doesn't really matter.
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Meta get to impose verified ID on everyone and link it to their advertisers, AND kill competing networks.
Liability and they probably want whatever blob of bits they use to identify you from the OS.
because upstart competitors cant afford the verification process / lobbying efforts
next instagram wont be bought out, it cant even begin to exist
1. It deflects any obligation that would have landed on Meta itself to do age verification (which is what the regulators have long asked for).
2. It gives Instagram/Facebook/Messenger the ability to deliver the right ads to the right audience. It's free targeting data.