The Internet Is About to Get a Lot Worse
buttondown.email
We've all watched in horror as red states have banned books in schools and libraries. We've seen teachers fired merely for reading a book about gender...

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."

  • DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe
    21·
    1 year ago

    Maybe I’m being more optimistic about how much the average voter pays attention than I should be, but if the Senate passes it and he’s braindead enough to sign it after how the Heritage Foundation bragged they’ll use it he deserves the 2024 apathy that puts a felon in his chair.

    • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
      3·
      1 year ago

      Biden seems to actually like the bill. Here’s a quote from the source in the article:

      Later this week, senators will debate legislation to protect kids’ privacy online, which I’ve been calling for for two years. It matters. Pass it, pass it, pass it, pass it, pass it.

      I really mean it. Think about it. Do you ever get a chance to look at what your kids are looking at online?

      He’s been actively campaigning for it for two years.

      I don’t regret voting for him because he did the two things I wanted:

      1. Not be Trump - he’s still an embarrassment, but it’s because he’s old, not because he’s toxic
      2. Get us out of Afghanistan

      I’ve disliked most of the rest of what he did, but he accomplished my two top priorities. I will probably go back to voting independent/third party this election unless Trump gets the nomination, in which case I might vote for Biden again because of priority #1. I live in a red state, so it probably doesn’t matter regardless, but I think it would be funny if the GOP candidate lost here.

      • RaoulDook@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        Biden has always been anti-freedom. He wrote a bill while in congress that he later claimed the Patriot Act was ripped off from, basically doing a lot of similar stuff to shit on Americans’ freedom like the Patriot Act did but it was not passed. I was worried about him being VP while Obama was in office due to his bad record. He’s one of the crappiest options America had in 2020, but still is better than Trump obviously.

        • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
          1·
          1 year ago

          I 100% agree. In my list of preferred Democratic candidates in 2020, Biden was second only to Kamala Harris in terms of worst candidate (to me). Basically, I would’ve preferred literally anyone else to the pair we got.

          Yet I still voted for him over Trump because Trump was just that bad. It was my first time voting Democrat for President ever, and it was the hardest Presidential vote I’ve ever cast. I voted for Gary Johnson in 2016 because I thought that Trump surely wouldn’t have a realistic shot, yet the stars aligned and we elected a lunatic.

      • DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe
        1·
        1 year ago

        I live in Tennessee so that’s, uh, not ever going to happen again unless the entire Republican party gets caught assassinating Trump, in drag, while holding Korans and admitting climate change is real.