Post is awaiting moderator approval.

Looks like it wasn't, earlier. Wonder what happened. In old.reddit.com it just says "[removed]". I'm not sure whether I should find that alarming.

Ninja edit: Wayback's got it!

Not-so-ninja edit: Reading it now. Holy crap, it's a bombshell.

What happened

The original version of this investigation was posted to r/linux, where it was mass reported and pulled down pending moderator review (150 upvotes, roughly 15k views before being pulled down some 40 minutes after being posted)

The content that was suppressed names Meta lobbying firms, traces documented payments, cites Senate LD-2 filings, and links to IRS records. It identifies Hilltop Public Solutions as the first confirmed entity bridging Meta's $45M super PAC and the DCA astroturf campaign. This is the kind of content that a well-resourced actor would have reason to suppress.

I cannot prove the mass reports were coordinated rather than organic. That is the point of the tactic: Reddit's infrastructure makes it impossible to distinguish genuine community objections from manufactured ones, and it rewards the behavior either way by automatically removing the content.

I mean, not be all conspiratorial, but the fact that it happened again with this post is pretty damning. Hope this gets Streisanded.

Not going to suggest that this is immediately wrong or anything – Meta being behind this push is a perfectly believable idea, and the extensive source list is hard to argue with, at least at a glance – but for those interest it's worth noting that the author(s) of this used AI as part of their research. From the repository:

This investigation used Claude Code (Anthropic's CLI tool, running Claude Opus) was used as a research assistant for:

• Bulk data processing: parsing 4,433 IRS Schedule I grant records, 59,736 DAF recipients, 132MB of Colorado TRACER campaign finance data, and IRS Business Master File extracts covering all US tax-exempt organizations
• Cross-referencing findings across 24 analysis files and identifying patterns that span multiple research threads
• Drafting intermediate working documents and structured data summaries
  Web searches against public databases (OpenSecrets, ProPublica, state lobbying portals, WHOIS/DNS, Wayback Machine)

Claude Code did not independently choose what to investigate, decide what constitutes a finding, or determine what to publish. Every factual claim in this repository cites a primary source (IRS filing, Senate disclosure, state database, legislative record, or published reporting) that can be independently verified. The tool does not change whether Meta's LD-2 filing lists H.R. 3149, whether DCA has an EIN, or whether Stefanski admitted tech funding under oath. The records exist or they don't.

If you want to verify any finding, the source URLs and database identifiers are provided throughout. Start with the primary records, not with this repository.

Hopefully Claude usage hasn't managed to severely damage this research effort and ruin it all, but between this and the other "bombshells" I've seen posted on Reddit that later turned out to be bunk, I think I'll take this with a grain of salt.

Still, regardless of if this particular post is real, these bills are still awful. On that topic, by the way: Does anyone have a list of the age gating bills that've been introduced? Would be useful for getting the word out.

This was making the rounds in my group chats this morning, it's a really thorough breakdown of the whole thing and I appreciate the effort that went into it. I hope something comes of it and it doesn't get lost in the fray.

I’ve seen so many negative comments about her on Reddit and I don’t really get it, but maybe I’m missing something. I haven’t looked into her significantly, but whenever she popped up on my YouTube last year I watched it and liked what she had to say as a progressive candidate.

Maybe the negativity is just a large astroturfing campaign if this is true.