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."

    • cantsurf@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      54
      arrow-down
      4
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      No, no, it’s “free dumbs”. As in, they were giving away stupidity for free, so we each took as much as we could carry.

      • IDontHavePantsOn@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        1 year ago

        Hey now, American kids love oil and it’s good for them. They should rewrite the bill to remove all content that isn’t about oil. Not avocado oil or malarkey like that though. That stuff is bad news, unlike petroleum oil. They may call it crude but we gotta make sure the kids know crude means good. The more crude the healthier the babies, that’s what I always say.

  • Dubious_Fart@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    112
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    Ah yes… forever and again, the siren song of children being used as an excuse for draconian, rights eroding legislation… its amazing how much responsibility parents have shirked to the state as they replace babysitters with cellphones and tablets.

    • The Doctor@beehaw.org
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      8
      ·
      1 year ago

      It isn’t so much parents shirking responsibility as folks in power doing what they want and just saying parents demanded it. When actual parents want something there’s a lot more hue and cry, hearings, and suchlike. When there isn’t, dig a bit and you find convenient lies and excuses.

    • JoumanaKayrouz@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      32
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      We can’t have them looking at gay shit, they might get bullied and have to stay home and not get shot.

  • SlopppyEngineer@discuss.tchncs.de
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    79
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    And then everybody slaps a “Only for 18+, fill in your birth day” on their site and nobody can legally claim it’s harming children.

    • lemmyvore@feddit.nl
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      32
      ·
      1 year ago

      This is how it works on YouTube now, the rules for kids content are draconic and you risk your account, so everybody just says “this is not for kids” on all videos.

      • Zink@programming.dev
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        16
        ·
        1 year ago

        YouTube music will not let you put a “for kids” marked song on a playlist! It kind of sucks for putting my KID’s favorite goofy songs on my KID’s playlist. The kid’s playlist that is composed entirely of content not marked “for kids” because that’s all that is possible.

    • wagoner@infosec.pub
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      29
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      Which you will need to prove by sending your personal identification to a commercial third party provider. Who will eventually get hacked and your data will be leaked.

  • Madison_rogue@kbin.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    77
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    I’m shocked that the first openly gay senator Tammy Baldwin is a co-sponsor for the bill. You bet I’m writing her.

    • theneverfox@pawb.social
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      Not really surprising to me. Gay (and now trans) people have long been accused of grooming and/or queerifying children

      The first openly gay senator is probably hyper-aware of this, and I’d guess is probably very hawkish on anything protecting children

      The other aspect is congressmen don’t understand shit outside (sometimes) politics or the law. On its surface, this has a very compelling description - hold websites responsible if they let children access NSFW content.

      It’s not until you ask how (interpreted by the community as providing identifiable information to “prove” your age) that the first flaw comes up - this provides a way to collect data on online use, as social media is considered potentially NSFW by the nature of user submission

      Then you get to the things most people without a technical background wouldn’t see

      The second flaw - companies are terrible at securing data. Get ready for every scammer under the sun to be able to find your ID numbers.

      The third, this won’t work. As a young teen, I blazed past parental controls, because there’s a ton of porn out there and there’s no way to hold back someone determined to find it. If you want this to work, we need to make a child Internet of known safe content and parental controls to keep you there… But just like finding or stealing a Playboy, the fact it exists means kids are going to be stealing passwords or IDs and probably sharing them. If we instead had sites declare content ratings and locked down at the device level, they need to go through a lot of work or get a secret device - it would give parents powerful tools to actually enforce this through Apple, Google, or Microsoft accounts

      And finally, this won’t work because it’s inconvenient. Make password requirements too strict, and users write them down. Make content moderation too strict, and people will find shortcuts. People will find ways around this that will likely both end up in the hands of children, but also probably make everyone less safe

  • anon232@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    62
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    The internet is about to move to the rest of the world if this passes, no one will host a web server in the US after this.

    • gsa4555@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      26
      arrow-down
      4
      ·
      1 year ago

      The problem is where? The EU is trying to apply similar censorship via the DSA, Russia we all know is LGBTphobic and not truly for free speech, Canada is a joke, and China is lol. Not even sure if Japan is viable.

      • Daft_ish@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        7
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        I’m sure tech company’s could just stick their servers in the Virgin Islands or some other fucking tax haven.

      • kennismigrant@feddit.nl
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        1 year ago

        There’s some wisdom in the old soviet anecdote

        There’s freedom of speech in the USSR: In the USA, you can stand in front of the White House in Washington, DC, and yell, “Down with Ronald Reagan,” and you will not be punished. Equally, you can also stand in Red Square in Moscow and yell, “Down with Ronald Reagan,” and you will not be punished.

        The Internet is still mostly connected, the law enforcement is not as much. Many businesses exist only because of this. You are free to host (produce, store, distribute) your content where it is legal and access it from where it is not. Access to foreign resources may eventually be outlawed or the access itself restricted. This is already the case in EU, Russia, China, etc. - but for now Internet is mostly connected.

      • dangblingus@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        6
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        In what way is Canada a joke? Like, I’m not saying it isn’t, but our online freedom is pretty good. We don’t actually have a state sponsored censorship campaign, VPNs are legal, TOR is legal, all we legislate is that you aren’t inciting violence or calling for the extermination of a protected group of people or doing shady dark web shit. Pretty much everything else is good to go.

        • Daft_ish@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          In the way that there are MAGAs up north. Like, come on bois, there’s no need for that shit.

  • spez@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    59
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    I don’t know how American voters can stand for this, how can you re-elect people who cause your children to get shot in schools and believe the same people have set out to protect them with things like these?

    • ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      24
      ·
      1 year ago

      A lot of them are really stupid hateful racists. They are figuratively and literally shooting themselves in the foot.

    • Dion Starfire@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      22
      ·
      1 year ago

      Because the way voting works in the US is based on assumptions from the days when getting all the votes together to tally them would have been a logistical nightmare. Instead of counting everyone’s vote individually, the map is divided into regions. Each region tallies up their votes, and then one single vote is counted for that entire region based on the majority vote from that region. Those regional votes are tallied, and the majority winner of the regions gets the win. By drawing the regions correctly (a process called gerrymandering), you can put the majority of one party’s voters into a small handful of regions, so all of them only count as a handful of regional votes while making sure the rest of the regions are drawn to give the other party a 51%+ majority. As a result, it’s possible to have a candidate that would garner less than 50% of the individual votes win a landslide of over 75% of the regional votes.

    • this@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      11
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      We don’t, enough of the US is gerrymandered as fuck and we use first past the post voting so most of us are voting to get a plurality for the guy other than the one we hate more, and that’s if your even interested in politics here. The whole system is fucked and corrupt.

      Edit: oh yea and the electoral college fucks us too.

    • MrTulip@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      1 year ago

      A third or so of the country believes the right wing propaganda machine that has been churning for decades.

      For everyone else, we’re constantly offered a choice between a center-right neoliberal, or an outright fascist. We’re just voting for how fast the country falls.

    • Coreidan@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      6
      arrow-down
      13
      ·
      1 year ago

      Because Americans are hateful racists who care more about taking away from you than helping their community. Own the libs!

  • silentdon@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    49
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    Why would you oppose this? Don’t you want children to be safe online? Won’t anybody please think of the children? /s

  • Daft_ish@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    45
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    This is exactly the bullshit policy Biden sticks his dick into everytime. I really don’t want to hate the guy but what a fucking idiot.

    Biden being anything but conservative lite is just the fucking truth.

      • optissima@possumpat.io
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        12
        ·
        1 year ago

        Oh it’s pretty obvious with an internal perspective too as long as you don’t fall for their propaganda about being to the left and instead look at their policies

    • DeanFogg@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      8
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      It’s because of what they named the bill I reckon but it’s still bullshit like “citizens united” or “the patriot act” aka not what the bills intent is

    • CaptFeather@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      This is what gets me about conservatives trying to shit on Biden and expecting a rise out of us. Motherfuckers, we know he’s mid lmao. Better than the alternative though

      • Daft_ish@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        Some of my last days on reddit every bad thing I said about Biden triggered some dem true believer to tell me how actually Biden is the most progressive president in history. I get they don’t want to acknowledge bidens conservative leaning in fear it might hurt him at the polls. What they dont realize for every one person you’re telling don’t believe your own eyes you’re maybe only keeping one person from straying from party line. But that person you just showed the dems true colors to, for them, you’ve tainted the party forever.

    • Krauerking@lemy.lol
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      He’s a corporate piece of shit. I have to vote for him every time but he’s absolutely on the wrong side and if America burns I will consider him like Nero having done nothing but played his fiddle to the tune of the screams of his constituents as he refuses to change things that might upset his benefactors.

      Truly a waste of a presidency and a failure of those in power to try and make things better instead of hiding and playing passive line holders to fascists at the gate.

  • RagingRobot@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    34
    ·
    1 year ago

    Why would a state attorney generally have any oversight over the content of the internet? That seems way out of scope for their job

  • Crozekiel@lemmy.zip
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    34
    ·
    1 year ago

    Unfortunately I live in a backwards, ignorant red state represented by complete idiots. The last time I wrote to my representatives asking them to oppose something like this they wrote back saying “the agree fully” and then went on to explain that they would definitely support it and thanked me for backing them… Then went on to show a complete lack of understanding of the bill in question.

    And I’ve been on his email list ever since despite clicking unsubscribe probably 30 times. The crusty sock puppet probably thinks that means “show me more” based on how he responded to my initial email.

    • boatswain@infosec.pub
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      If your unsubscribe isn’t working, report them to the FTC: https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/#/ If you take want to go the extra mile, report them to their email provider as well. You might be able to get their email shut down, and if their email provider is also their web host provider, maybe their website as well. Providers take CAN-SOAM violations seriously.

  • Zink@programming.dev
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    33
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    American here, and I am totally OK with a tiny bit of extra latency if people & companies want to move their servers to some place in Europe that actually respects freedom and people.

    Though I suspect that if you’re a US company with servers located abroad, they will still make the law apply to you since you control it.

    • gsa4555@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      10
      arrow-down
      4
      ·
      1 year ago

      if people & companies want to move their servers to some place in Europe that actually respects freedom and people.

      implying the EU respects freedom

      • eldavi@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        arrow-down
        4
        ·
        1 year ago

        I was going to say something about giving it to gypsies and you could probably literally see European fervor to ban something. Lol

  • Bizarroland@kbin.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    37
    arrow-down
    7
    ·
    1 year ago

    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.

      • Burn_The_Right@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        9
        ·
        1 year ago

        They’ll be in office until they’re dead or dying

        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?

    • nik282000@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      1 year ago

      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!”

      • Bizarroland@kbin.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        1 year ago

        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