this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2024
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Kids Online Safety Act gains enough supporters to pass the Senate::The bill would create a duty of care for tech platforms to protect child and teen users.

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[–] [email protected] 147 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)
[–] [email protected] 77 points 10 months ago (1 children)

That's RIGHT! There's NOTHING we can do about Guns because Laws don't Work but also we NEED to CONTROL the Internet and make sure only POSITIVE THINGS about the US Government are said so we can Protect The Children!

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago

...Or maybe they're constitutional violations and we shouldn't do either through legislation or through force of law?

[–] [email protected] 66 points 10 months ago

How to protect children in the US

  • Enable school shootings so kids can get shot
  • Ban sex education to make teen moms and increase rape
  • Ban abortion to increase poverty
  • Mandate ID uploads for certain websites so kids have to ask older siblings (or even sketchier websites) to get porn

Land of the free, unless it's not profitable, I guess?

[–] CosmoNova 50 points 10 months ago

Yeah right. Because senators who rally against gun safety laws and are generally OK with kids being shot at school are so concerned about safety.

[–] [email protected] 48 points 10 months ago (2 children)

How about we get parents to actually give a shit about what their kids do online.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 10 months ago (1 children)

If a parent would give their kids blank plane tickets to anywhere in the world, and the kids get hurt in another country. Would we blame the plane pilot, the airship company or the parents? Cause sending your kids on the internet alone is the exact same ! It should always be the parents who care for their kids to control and limit their exposure to internet not society as a whole.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 10 months ago

That was a very good analogy.

[–] roertel 4 points 10 months ago

I think you're saying that we should be giving parents the tools to parent their kids and the accountability to take responsibility when their parenting affects others negatively.

I've been saying this for years.

[–] K1nsey6 35 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Say goodbye to the small remaining amount of privacy we have. This will be the catalyst to shove LGBTQ+ back into the closets and it will be praised by voters as progress for protecting children and having no clue what the bill actually does

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago

“Protect the children” is seemingly only used to encroach more and more in our personal lives. The last time it was used honestly was when we stopped making kids work in the mines.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 10 months ago

"Land of the free"

"But not that. Or that. Actually here's a list"

[–] [email protected] 31 points 10 months ago
[–] malibu43 30 points 10 months ago (3 children)

How will this age verify actually work? Sure the big sites like Facebook might have to follow this law. But won't this just push kids to use less reputable sites or sites based outside of the US that don't have to follow US law?

[–] [email protected] 20 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Data brokers. That’s how this is going to work. Any “privacy” law that empowers, incentivizes and encourages data brokers has fundamentally failed out of the gate

[–] militaryintelligence 21 points 10 months ago

We must erode your privacy in order to protect it. You know, for the children.

[–] General_Effort 12 points 10 months ago

In the current draft, age verification is not required. The bill would require a study on the subject to be submitted with 1 year. The study would evaluate the most technologically feasible methods and options for developing systems to verify age at the device or operating system level. Definitely something to be fought every step of the way.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Probably you have to upload image of your ID... which stops absolutely nothing because you can just AI generate one. All the while it actually hurts normal people since when facebook gets hacked next, the hacker now has all your ID information alongside the other stuff they stole.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Not yet you can't. Legitimate verification sites automatically scan the uploaded picture for authenticity and I haven't seen any ai yet that would manage to circumvent it.

Now if websites are all left to their own about age verification, they'll be able to toe the line and just have shit verification. If the government gets involved and sets up something that must be used it would be different. Either way it presents huge security risks and problems.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

There are fake IDs out there, preportedly AI generated, that can literally pass its barcode being scanned. My assumption is this is only in cases the ID is being checked for accurate data and verification bits, and not cross checking to a centralized database.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

But they couldn't pass the scan check that shows it was a picture taken of a physical ID card, and not a digitized copy, screen grab, or picture of an ID on another phone or computer screen.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

You don’t own a printer?..

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

You know that shiny reflective bit on your ID? That part shows up through a camera very differently than on a printed piece of paper.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I’ve taken photos of my id before, for verification purposes. I am 100% certain you are vastly overestimating the difficulty to create a workable fake.

If the concern is a reflection effect, just replicate that effect pre-printing. If you can’t because they want different angles, just use some holographic tape that mimics the effect.

But keep in mind, the fakes I’m talking about pass scrutiny by cops who have the literal fake in their hands. I doubt a still photo or even video is going to be a huge hurdle.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

You don't understand that there's not a shiny reflective ink option in your printer?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

… You don’t understand that stickers exist? Or that you can replicate the reflection for a specific angle before printing?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Ok. Kudos to you if you find a 16 year old kid that has a good color printer, photoshops out all the reflective portions of an ID, finds and purchases illegally sold transparent reflective stickers that matches up to the ones specifically to his state, and takes a picture of it so he can go back to doomscrolling tiktok vids.

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

My friend, you can just order a fake online. It gets delivered to your door, and would pass any KYC or verification out there unless it cross references actual government databases.

If you want to go cheap, you can generate it, and print at a local library, or a print shop.

I don’t understand why you think “having a color printer” and “knows how to edit images” is a high bar for entry. Especially when you just need one kid in a school to enable the whole school to get access.

This isn’t complicated.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 10 months ago

They were able to fuck up the web partially with SESTA/FOSTA.

Of course they're going to keep doing it. The internet is too much of a threat to the plutocracy by leaking when they do evil shit for their ill gotten gains.

They want to make the internet nothing but Amazon and Hulu.

[–] Thcdenton 15 points 10 months ago

I can't believe how many people I've seen on here advocate for this kind of horse shit.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago (1 children)

So does this apply to the fediverse as well ? If so, so long lemmings.

[–] General_Effort 10 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I believe, having just CTRL-Fed through the text, as it is now, that the Fediverse would be exempt. Two caveats: 1) I may have missed something while skimming through and there are some other clauses that apply. 2) This may have a special legal meaning of which I am not aware. And, of course, this is not final.

A) IN GENERAL.—The term “covered platform” means an online platform, online video game, messaging application, or video streaming service that connects to the internet and that is used, or is reasonably likely to be used, by a minor.

(B) EXCEPTIONS.—The term “covered platform” does not include—

[...]

(ii) an organization not organized to carry on business for its own profit or that of its members;

Source

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:


Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), also announced new changes to the text of the legislation, which seem aimed at addressing concerns that the bill would allow politicians and law enforcement to censor content online.

Vance (R-OH), Michael Bennet (D-CO), Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), Laphonza Butler (D-CA), Thom Tillis (R-NC), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Angus King (I-ME), Ted Cruz (R-TX), Jack Reed (D-RI), and Kevin Cramer (R-ND).

The office pointed to a letter dated Thursday from groups including GLAAD, Human Rights Campaign, and The Trevor Project stating they would not oppose the new version of the bill if it moves forward.

“The considerable changes that you have proposed to KOSA in the draft released on February 15th, 2024, significantly mitigate the risk of it being misused to suppress LGBTQ+ resources or stifle young people’s access to online communities,” the groups wrote.

The latest version of the text includes new language to make clear that video games don’t need to abruptly interrupt natural gameplay in order to implement the required safeguards, among other assurances for the industry.

Fight for the Future was “glad to see the attorney general enforcement narrowed” and agrees the change “will somewhat reduce the immediate likelihood of KOSA being weaponized by politically motivated AGs to target content that they don’t like.”


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