KOSA, the “Kids Online Safety Act”, sounds good. Who doesn’t want to keep kids safe? But as over 90 LGBTQ and human rights organizations said last year, KOSA would harm LGBTQ+ youth especially, and could be weaponized by Attorneys General to censor online resources and information for queer and trans youth, people seeking reproductive healthcare, and more.
And it’s not just a hypothetical concern! This article from a couple months ago includes a screenshot of a Heritage Foundation tweet talking about how they’ll KOSA to attack trans-related content – because after all, they think that censoring trans-related content is “protecting kids”.
So if you’re in the US, please contact your Senators and ask them to oppose KOSA.
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if you prefer the phone, you can call the US Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121. The bill number is S. 1409. Your message doesn’t have to be fancy: “KOSA won’t keep kids safe” is enough if they’re Republicans; if they’re Democrats you can add “and it will harm LGBTQ+ teens”.
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or, https://resist.bot/ lets you contact your legislators by texting or using Messenger, Apple Messages, WhatsApp .
I dont know why people in congress even try to directly regulate the internet anymore, we figured this out a long time ago. For example the law that makes CP illegal is a broad law that applies generally and includes the internet. Like if we want a practice to be illegal it should he broadly illegal. KOSA is awful and 100% misguided. We need a privacy bill not KOSA
Totally agree that we need a good privacy bill – and if the proposed ADPPA consumer privacy moves forward again this year, we’ll need to get involved on that to push to strengthen it (because last year’s version had huge loopholes, including some that left LGBTQ+ people’s personal data at risk).