The idea that it might cost "someone" $2 every time a user opens and app AND it sends a bunch of private data to a 3rd party is completely dystopian, let alone everything else.
And a serious question: with deepest respect to the author for their extraordinarily impressive time and effort in this investigation... Why was this not already flagged by political reporters or investigative journalists? I'm not American so maybe I don't understand the media structure over there but it feels like SOMEONE should have been all over this way before it's gotten to the point described in this post.
When a megacorp funds a network of non-profits to lobby a bunch of politicians, draft legislation, and tell them to take it to committee, that can happen without much visibility, especially when it's been orchestrated at the state level, as this has. Where does any of this show up until there's a vote called on it? There's no open debate. No working "across the aisle" to address concerns. There's nothing left of the legislative process that started this country, or, indeed, any Western representative democracy. So someone has to be watching, see something on an agenda that raises the hairs on their necks, figure out what it is, and if there's a story there, and they're not going to get any help from anyone because everyone involved knows how the public is going to feel about it. And then, as the article indicates, even a place like Reddit is going to astroturf the effort to get the story out. (Which I've been trying to point out for YEARS, but which -- surprise, surprise! -- gets supressed.)
Mainstream media is largely captured by the same monied interests as discussed in the reddit post. Although the poster does mention an article from Bloomberg as evidence, most of their sources are local outlets or tech-focused. https://github.com/upper-up/meta-lobbying-and-other-findings...