- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
- usa@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
- usa@lemmy.ml
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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More of them “freedoms” that you yanks are always going on about?
No, no, it’s “free dumbs”. As in, they were giving away stupidity for free, so we each took as much as we could carry.
Experiencing a protracted regression of sanity, similar to Brexit.
Pretty much. Just don’t post how much oil your home country has.
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!”It isn’t so much parents shirking responsibility as folks in power doing what they want and just saying parents demanded it. When actual parents want something there’s a lot more hue and cry, hearings, and suchlike. When there isn’t, dig a bit and you find convenient lies and excuses.
Ah yes, children security. Of course.
We can’t have them looking at gay shit, they might get bullied and have to stay home and not get shot.
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
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.
And suddenly everyone was born on Jan 1st, 2000
I’m not doing maths to keep it at 18 each year.
I do 1900 lol
You still live in 2018?
People born in 2000 are 23
I didn’t say I was going to do maths for you either ;)
It has more the implication that there are either an incredible amount of +120 year olds, or their system sucks.
I’m well over 18 and I give the year field a good scroll down to be like 80y/o because it’s such a bother to click 3 sliders. F that.
This is how it works on YouTube now, the rules for kids content are draconic and you risk your account, so everybody just says “this is not for kids” on all videos.
YouTube music will not let you put a “for kids” marked song on a playlist! It kind of sucks for putting my KID’s favorite goofy songs on my KID’s playlist. The kid’s playlist that is composed entirely of content not marked “for kids” because that’s all that is possible.
This is the adult tour, it’s not FOR kids
Which you will need to prove by sending your personal identification to a commercial third party provider. Who will eventually get hacked and your data will be leaked.
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.
Why would you oppose this? Don’t you want children to be safe online? Won’t anybody please think of the children? /s
“Why would you oppose this? What are you a pedo???” /sarcasm
I don’t know how American voters can stand for this, how can you reelect 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 lot of them are really stupid hateful racists. They are figuratively and literally shooting themselves in the foot.
Fuck /u/spez
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.
Our votes don’t actually matter in the grand scheme of things.
by design
We don’t, enough of the US is gerrymandered as fuck and we use first past the post voting so most of us are voting to get a plurality for the guy other than the one we hate more, and that’s if your even interested in politics here. The whole system is fucked and corrupt.
Edit: oh yea and the electoral college fucks us too.
Propaganda from people who make a profit out of those opinions.
Freedumb
Because Americans are hateful racists who care more about taking away from you than helping their community. Own the libs!
that’s just generalization, a racist’s most powerful tool.
You owned those hateful Americans so hard by being hateful and stereotyping them.
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.
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.
These people make money through investments in oil and broad ranges of stocks. They’re not going bankrupt and the people voting for them won’t hold them accountable. Even if they do go broke, their corporate friends will help them out of the hole. In fact, they can use their position to short internet company stock ahead of expected action and get rich off their own dickishness.
They’ll be in office until they’re dead or dying and they still have got plenty of time. They want you to be tired of resisting, that’s how they win. Don’t let them!
They’ll be in office until they’re dead or dying
Only if they die of old age. If they are found dead before then, the wait could be much, much shorter. After all, aren’t the conservatives (like Matt “child-fucker” Gaetz) openly calling for wide-spread violence now?
I wish the “Dark Web” hadn’t turned into shit show, Just looking into it now gets you onto some fuckin watch list but it would have been a perfectly viable place to set up a proper censorship-free web. It also takes care of the user-quality issue by being slightly harder to use than a button that says “INSTALL APP NOW!”
It’s gotten so the “dark web” is any website that doesn’t show up on page 1 of a Google search result.
It’s all bullshit and they’ll keep shoveling it as long as they have arms to shovel with
“would give the attorney general of every state, including red states, the right to sue”
What a weird distinction to make. I know they’re getting squirrelly, but they still technically count in the “every state” column.
How do I check if my senator has signed? Or is that not public information
here’s the list of cosponsors … if they’re there, then they’re certainly supporting it. It’s worth contacting them in any case; they’ll often send you a form reply saying their position on the bill.
They are, damn
That’s disappointing … but, enough pressure can get them to change their position (or, almost as good, ask Schumer not to bring the bill to the floor so that they don’t have to take a politically costly vote). In the Senate Commerce Committee hearing, both Cantwell and Markey voted yes but said they had gotten a lot of calls and email from constituents who were concerned about the impact on LGBTQ+ teens so there was work to do before bringing the bill to the floor … so the pressure is definitely getting noticed!
Somehow neither of my senators customers cosponsored, but I’m guessing they’ll both sign. We passed someone similar in my state recently, so I’m not expecting much.
I’ll contact them though. I guess it can’t hurt.
Very surprised Bobert isn’t on that list. Maybe she just hasn’t capitulated yet
Because she’s not a senator, she’s a representative.
It’s just a list of Senators, I don’t think there’s an equivalent bill yet in the House.
Damn had to call both my senators. I always hate calling because I have no doubt that it wont do anything.
God in a campaign defined by hilarious self inflicted pratt falls I can’t believe they slapped Tim Karnes dumbass into Hillary vp slot.
And then tried to whitewash him as “your boring uncle (please don’t look into any of his actual policy positions)”
Does this page clear things up? I’m seeing 43 cosponsors listed there.
It’s gotta be public info.
Right?
Make sure you vote!!!
For fucking what? This is bipartisan!
don’t worry, they’re making fun of liberals who claim voting will cure all societal ills
If someone without a website in their name and who has pronouns displayed says some weird shit 95/100 times it’s ironic
I keep voting and things keep getting worse anyway.
You’re not voting hard enough
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.
Screw both parties and Joe Biden in particular. I’ll be asking my senators to oppose this, though I highly doubt it’ll matter.
Biden’s going to veto it for sure, lol.
Then why is he urging lawmakers to pass it? Just do he can veto it? That doesn’t make any sense.
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.
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:
- Not be Trump - he’s still an embarrassment, but it’s because he’s old, not because he’s toxic
- 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
