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."
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.
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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
The sounds of people screaming would probably be reasonable grounds for an attorney general to enjoin that practice via a civil action. Screaming and other scary noises could reasonably be identified as content that induces anxiety.
Once the fascists gain control of all sources of information, they move on to dividing the populace into demonized minorities groups. And that’s through public identification, such as symbols on id cards or clothing. It’s unlikely anyone is going to say “oops we made a mistake” and if they do, we won’t be allowed to hear it. Angry retirees will be too busy digging their own mass graves.
This bill is one of those small steps mentioned in that quote about fascism. What proceeds from it is dominos falling. Corporations either have to restrict the internet content of red states or more likely, as it will be easier, restrict the internet content of all states. Republicans will most definitely not try to fix this, but instead run away with our freedoms. That’s why it’s so frustrating Democrats in the Senate and Biden are supporting this bill, if they don’t have the wherewithal to oppose it we are likely to be stuck with it.