- cross-posted to:
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- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
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."
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Can a federal bill require state AGs to do something? Most of the bills I’ve heard of give resources to state actors if they agree to do something that the federal government requires.
this doesn’t require them to do anything, it just gives them new powers.
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What the hell?
Unfortunately this is just ONE of MANY bad internet bills currently up for consideration and with bipartisan support. Help fight all of them at https://badinternetbills.com
[email protected] is tracking all the bad internet bills … right now KOSA’s where the most action is.
Awfully bad idea
Knowing this will probably be passed like
This is how it feels like to not be American and seeing decisions like this. They affect the whole Internet since so much stuff relies on US Internet infrastructure, yet you can only watch as the citizens of Burgerland drive the 'net into the ground.
the whole Internet
It will not affect the whole Internet. American-centered English-speaking “Internet” yes, but there’s lots and lots of infrastructure and content elsewhere. Many Chinese-, Japanese-, Russian-, and German-centric resources exist almost independently from the rest of the world. Some of them are free to completely ignore the “bad internet bills”, copyright, IP, GDPR, and any other regulation you can think of.
I was exaggerating a little, but it is still a huge swath of the Internet. And the Chinese and Russian parts of the 'net have enough of their own problems.
Guess I am learning German or Japanese because Canada is also on a train to censoring the Internet piece by piece.
I hang around a bunch of artists who make money through NSFW art…or shit, they just draw it for fun. This isn’t gonna be great for them. Why should me and my friends’ thirty year old asses have to hold back so Little Timmy doesn’t see a boob or something? Shouldn’t their parents be the ones making sure that doesn’t happen?
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Unless they define ActivityPub as a platform.
How? It will just make it extremely expensive for people to host instances, and ensure that it’s hard to find content on other platforms to link to.
What makes it expensive? Thanks.
Having to meet whatever age verification steps are required. If you need intake id information and pay to have it verified, keep logs that you only allow verified users or face jail, its going to be real hard.
Donate to the EFF.
i thought you meant the Economic Freedom Fighters💀
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.
WTF indeed. But, thanks for emailing them – they track how much email they get in each direction, and if there’s enough they may rethink their position.
Can… can you please just kill me now? Just a bullet between my skull, do it while I’m playing Baldur’s Gate… don’t even wanna know you’re doing it.
Just wanna fall asleep and wake up on some kind of astral plane where things make sense
This is exactly the bullshit policy Biden sticks his dick into everytime. I really don’t want to hate the guy but what a fucking idiot.
Biden being anything but conservative lite is just the fucking truth.
It’s because of what they named the bill I reckon but it’s still bullshit like “citizens united” or “the patriot act” aka not what the bills intent is
This is what gets me about conservatives trying to shit on Biden and expecting a rise out of us. Motherfuckers, we know he’s mid lmao. Better than the alternative though
Some of my last days on reddit every bad thing I said about Biden triggered some dem true believer to tell me how actually Biden is the most progressive president in history. I get they don’t want to acknowledge bidens conservative leaning in fear it might hurt him at the polls. What they dont realize for every one person you’re telling don’t believe your own eyes you’re maybe only keeping one person from straying from party line. But that person you just showed the dems true colors to, for them, you’ve tainted the party forever.
He’s a corporate piece of shit. I have to vote for him every time but he’s absolutely on the wrong side and if America burns I will consider him like Nero having done nothing but played his fiddle to the tune of the screams of his constituents as he refuses to change things that might upset his benefactors.
Truly a waste of a presidency and a failure of those in power to try and make things better instead of hiding and playing passive line holders to fascists at the gate.
From my outside perspective the whole democratic party is conservative lite.
Oh it’s pretty obvious with an internal perspective too as long as you don’t fall for their propaganda about being to the left and instead look at their policies
Did Biden introduce this bill or vote on it?
Vocalized support in favor of it and asked for it to be passed, so it seems. About as far as he can go until it’s on his desk, so it’s understandable to expect he would sign it if it does.
Well if it becomes law then he will have. Do you have reason to think he will veto?
Biden is the President, head of the executive branch and does not have the power to introduce bills or vote on them.
He can only sign the bill into law or veto the bill.
Looks like he’s in full support
“Republicans and Democrats, Unite Against Big Tech Abuses Congress can find common ground on the protection of privacy, competition and American children.”
“By Joe Biden”
In the Wall Street journal
Welp, guess my next allocation for a gaming PC will be spent on books and camping gear.
Fuck it.
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I think they do care about kids but it’s a dumb argument to take. Kids are helpless, everything can hurt them. Unless it’s something legal that is specifically causing kids harm and can be regulated, like guns, then bringing kids into the debate is just going for easy points.
I wish they would not use kids as a shield for what they really want.
Call it the “I despise transgender people and want them dead” bill so everyone can properly pick their side.
Thank you for noting the US focus in the title <3
So often I see sweeping headlines like this that are actually only about a single country, and the country is always named (as it’s a key piece of information about the story) unless it’s the USA, at which point they just assume you must be in the USA too and so being up front about what country they’re talking about isn’t a priority xD
Unfortunately this is about the first time, I’d (almost) disagree with you. If the US bans something on, or makes a law about, the internet it almost always affects the rest of the world. The only difference is the rest of the world has no say in the matter :(
Can you elaborate how this act could affect me in Germany?
Do you visit any websites that are hosted in the United States? It doesn’t matter where you’re located, it matters where the site you’re accessing is hosted.
As an American, GDPR has affected me. Many sites have chosen, rather than deal with Europe and the rest of the world separately, to just make a version of their site that is GDPR-compliant. I’ve sent GDPR erasure requests to services and they don’t bother checking if I’m actually a European citizen, they just remove my data because it’s easier. I’d argue that GDPR was a net good even for America and other countries.
This is the same thing but in reverse. If KOSA makes Pornhub unable to operate in America, they may very well shut down due to the loss of revenue. If KOSA makes companies paranoid about allowing, for example, NSFW pictures, or LGTBQ or abortion information, or similar, then those companies may disallow it on their services altogether even if they have servers in Europe because setting up the infrastructure for, for example DailyMotion, to have totally separate databases of content in different regions is just too much.
This can affect you. Not as much as people in the US, sure. But unless you use sites and applications made only by European companies, it can absolutely affect you.
You make a good point! It’s too early in the morning for me to think about solutions to the issue, they mainly affect platforms used globally but hosted in a specific country like the USA (Facebook for example).
Though, it’s not like we have no say entirely, so there is hope :-)
For example, a major platform like Facebook banning/restricting gay/trans content would be seen as a pretty major case of discrimination and would certainly land Facebook in court over here, with their access to our market eventually closed should they not comply with our equality laws.
So sure, they could keep running in the USA, but their access to global markets would be reduced and fractured depending on how evil and draconian the USA continues to get, and how much freedom other countries have internally in their societies, to better protect from discrimination.
Which I’d say in a way is a good thing, allowing for local rivals to jump up to fill the gap and bring back some of the innovation and joy of the internet of 20 years ago! :-D
But there’s down sides too, it distances us from others, making it harder for us to connect with and understand other nations and cultures. I think having a platform that everyone can use, run by a monopoly or not, is a very beneficial thing for us all.
Anyway, just a few extra thoughts there. It’s a very complex and difficult topic, and I’m not even “armchair expert” level 😅
