Charlie Jane Anders discusses KOSA (the Kids Online Safety Act).
If you’re in the US, https://www.stopkosa.com/ makes it easy to contact your Senators and ask them to oppose KOSA.
"A new bill called the Kids Online Safety Act, or KOSA, is sailing towards passage in the Senate with bipartisa>n support. Among other things, this bill would give the attorney general of every state, including red states, the right to sue Internet platforms if they allow any content that is deemed harmful to minors. This clause is so vaguely defined that attorneys general can absolutely claim that queer content violates it — and they don’t even need to win these lawsuits in order to prevail. They might not even need to file a lawsuit, in fact. The mere threat of an expensive, grueling legal battle will be enough to make almost every Internet platform begin to scrub anything related to queer people.
The right wing Heritage Foundation has already stated publicly that the GOP will use this provision to remove any discussions of trans or queer lives from the Internet. They’re salivating over the prospect.
And yep, I did say this bill has bipartisan support. Many Democrats have already signed on as co-sponsors. And President Joe Biden has urged lawmakers to pass this bill in the strongest possible terms."
Ah yes… forever and again, the siren song of children being used as an excuse for draconian, rights eroding legislation… its amazing how much responsibility parents have shirked to the state as they replace babysitters with cellphones and tablets.
: “You REALLY want little Billy to read a tweet that makes him think he’s not perfect because he’s white!? YOU MONSTER! Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to relentlessly stalk and then bully this freak I found on KiwiFarms for the crime of not being a good normal like me!”
“The internet is about to get a lot worse (US focused)” uhh
spoiler
everyday is the same but slightly worse
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Fascists always use “protecting children” as the rationale for implementing mechanisms of social control. Their willingness to allow school shootings shows that they really don’t care about protecting children at all.
in 2014: “Stupid SJWs, my rights don’t end where your feelings begin.” now: “Stupid SJWs, your rights end where my ego begins.”‘Free Speech’ mfs really do like their blasphemy laws.
I emailed my senators, both Democrats. One wrote me back telling me how proud they were of co-sponsoring the bill. The other told me how important it is to protect kids from the dangers of social media. WTF.
Knowing this will probably be passed like
Make sure you vote!!!
I keep voting and things keep getting worse anyway.
You’re not voting hard enough
For fucking what? This is bipartisan!
don’t worry, they’re making fun of liberals who claim voting will cure all societal ills
I don’t know if I’m in the right here but I’m practically at the point where I’m just like fuck it, let them ruin the internet.
I want to hear them scream when because of their own actions they have tanked the companies that their retirements are depending on.
Let’s see how fast they can fix shit when they have 35 million angry retirees that hold 78% of the wealth in the country mad at them and telling them to fix it.
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More of them “freedoms” that you yanks are always going on about?
Experiencing a protracted regression of sanity, similar to Brexit.
I’m shocked that the first openly gay senator Tammy Baldwin is a co-sponsor for the bill. You bet I’m writing her.
Not really surprising to me. Gay (and now trans) people have long been accused of grooming and/or queerifying children
The first openly gay senator is probably hyper-aware of this, and I’d guess is probably very hawkish on anything protecting children
The other aspect is congressmen don’t understand shit outside (sometimes) politics or the law. On its surface, this has a very compelling description - hold websites responsible if they let children access NSFW content.
It’s not until you ask how (interpreted by the community as providing identifiable information to “prove” your age) that the first flaw comes up - this provides a way to collect data on online use, as social media is considered potentially NSFW by the nature of user submission
Then you get to the things most people without a technical background wouldn’t see
The second flaw - companies are terrible at securing data. Get ready for every scammer under the sun to be able to find your ID numbers.
The third, this won’t work. As a young teen, I blazed past parental controls, because there’s a ton of porn out there and there’s no way to hold back someone determined to find it. If you want this to work, we need to make a child Internet of known safe content and parental controls to keep you there… But just like finding or stealing a Playboy, the fact it exists means kids are going to be stealing passwords or IDs and probably sharing them. If we instead had sites declare content ratings and locked down at the device level, they need to go through a lot of work or get a secret device - it would give parents powerful tools to actually enforce this through Apple, Google, or Microsoft accounts
And finally, this won’t work because it’s inconvenient. Make password requirements too strict, and users write them down. Make content moderation too strict, and people will find shortcuts. People will find ways around this that will likely both end up in the hands of children, but also probably make everyone less safe
No!!! Not when porn is so easy to get these days! I need my daily dosage. If this goes through, the we won’t have access to California’s greatest stars ✨🤩 in the business. Everything will be smaller and lower quality and possibly not in English. I only watch the videos for the articles. But if the articles are all in dutch or Chinese or Japanese, how am I supposed to you know? Like do my thing. You know?
do you have brain worms
A bill like this has merit if it’s targeted at real problems, like the sources of fascist growth and propaganda that have existed on the internet for decades.
As per usual the US isn’t interested in going after the fascists though. This will absolutely be used against already marginalised people and the left, by which I mean socialists. There’s a reason it has bipartisan support.
You really can’t pick and choose. There’s really no such thing as ‘good’ government censorship of the internet, you have to block all of it or you’re getting the bad stuff.
If you learn more about political science you’ll find that there is more nuance, it’s not so simple as all or nothing.
How so?
You’ll have to go and learn to find out! Can’t do any harm.
You can also ask pi for an introduction https://pi.ai/talk
I was more prompting you in case you wanted to elaborate on your argument. If you wanted to cite relevant passages from that book to support it I would read and consider them and maybe read the rest, but as it is I can’t help but interpret your intent as being snidely condescending. Am I wrong about that? You’re citing the entire field of political science, throwing a book at me that may or may not have anything to do with the internet or the erosion of legal rights, and linking to an AI chatbot.
I keep making the mistake of commenting on things that I have no desire to dig into. Apologies if I was rude. It really is an interesting area if you find yourself curious about it one day.
And then everybody slaps a “Only for 18+, fill in your birth day” on their site and nobody can legally claim it’s harming children.
this law requires positive proof with IDs. it’s also going to be used by red states to go after online queer communities.
I’m curious how that’s going to work in international context. Everything to do with the queer community suddenly has a link to .ca or .mx domain and server park outside the country where this doesn’t apply for example. Or reddit suddenly checks with the authorities in Zimbabwe if the ID is valid.
lol the US doesn’t care about international law
There were enough American companies having an office in Ireland to avoid taxes. And soon also to avoid red state litigation.
the US controls the international money supply. the loopholes employed by those companies are very easily closed as is the ability of companies headquartered outside the US to operate within its borders. companies will fall in line. and any support granted by other countries are easily neutered by shocking the money supply.
I don’t know how American voters can stand for this, how can you re-elect people who cause your children to get shot in schools and believe the same people have set out to protect them with things like these?
A third or so of the country believes the right wing propaganda machine that has been churning for decades.
For everyone else, we’re constantly offered a choice between a center-right neoliberal, or an outright fascist. We’re just voting for how fast the country falls.
