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The Internet Is About to Get a Lot Worse (US focused) (buttondown.email)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

138 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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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[–] obinice 22 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

[–] BangersAndMash 16 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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 :(

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Can you elaborate how this act could affect me in Germany?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] psivchaz 4 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] obinice 2 points 1 year ago

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 😅