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KOSA is dead! (US) (www.fightforthefuture.org)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/technology

55 comments fedilink hide all child comments

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/20332183

Fight for the Future writes:

"The controversial and unconstitutional Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) is officially dead in the House of Representatives. Reporting indicates that there was significant opposition to the bill within the Republican caucus, and it faced vocal opposition from prominent progressives like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Rep Maxwell Frost (D-FL)."

Evan Greer:

"KOSA was a poorly written bill that would have made kids less safe. I am so proud of the LGBTQ youth and frontlines advocates who have led the opposition to this dangerous and misguided legislation. It’s good that this unconstitutional censorship bill is dead for now, but I am not breathing a sigh of relief. It’s infuriating that Congress wasted so much time and energy on a deeply flawed and controversial bill while failing to advance real measures to address the harms of Big Tech like privacy, antitrust and algorithmic justice legislation. "

Thanks to everybody who took action ove the last year to stop this bill!

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 3 months ago (1 children)

[+] [email protected] -45 points 3 months ago (4 children)

Yeh tbh not sure why users here are opposed to KOSA.

[–] [email protected] 49 points 3 months ago (2 children)

The condensed version is that it creates a lot of avenues for a very loose definition of "keeping kids safe" that could easily include "information about dealing with bigoted family" being called "dangerous" at the discretion of an executive branch appointee who thinks that lgbtq identity is "unsafe".

It also provides more avenues for the government to remove otherwise legal speech from the Internet entirely on the grounds that they have asserted that it's "bad for children".
This is literally the long running joke about how you pass draconian laws, and would only be made more on the nose if it was "keeping patriotic kids online safe for the future tax cuts of American freedom"

In general, the government should not be able to silence speech that isn't immediately and unambiguously harmful.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 3 months ago

It also is written vaguely enough to justify attempts to block VPN access and other forms of anonymous media consumption. Basically under the guise that an anonymous user -could- be a child, so they need to be deanonymized and tracked.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 3 months ago

Well the text does very specifically state it would trigger investigation of things that have caused harm, but yeah it's not worth the risk if the FTC decides what harm is.

[–] samus12345 25 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

The members of Congress who vote for this bill should remember—they do not, and will not, control who will be in charge of punishing bad internet speech. The Federal Trade Commission, majority-controlled by the President’s party, will be able to decide what kind of content “harms” minors, then investigate or file lawsuits against websites that host that content.

Ripe, ripe, RIPE for abuse.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Because I think the government should fundamentally not be in the business of telling us on the Internet what we can talk about, how we have to design our websites, etc etc.

https://www.eff.org/cyberspace-independence

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Alright but if an entity, for example, teaches children about self harm for pleasure or gambling then that entity should be punishable, imo.

But another user makes a great argument that the FTC could decide anything they want is the definition of harm, which could include LGBT+ and therefor KOSA isn't worth the risks.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago

Read the article