Young People Should Oppose the Kids Online Safety Act (US-specific)
Young People Should Oppose the Kids Online Safety Act (US-specific)
Next week, Congress plans to move a bill forward that is opposed by dozens of organizations, digital rights protectors, LGBTQ+ activists, and human rights defenders: the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA). As we’ve written before, KOSA would lead to censorship and privacy invasions for all social media.....
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/1163015
EFF writes:
KOSA has laudable goals, but it also presents significant unintended consequences that threaten the privacy, safety, and access to information rights of young people and adults alike. Teenagers already understand that this sweeping legislation is more about censorship than safety. Now we just need to make sure Congress does, as well.
Take action! If you're in the US, Use EFF's page to Tell Congress: KOSA Will Censor the Internet But Won't Help Kids
And please help get the word out! Four ways to hep:
- Cross-post this link to communities and magazines where it's on-topic
- Upvote and share the other links in !bad_internet_bills@lemmy.sdf.org
- If you're on Mastodon, check out the #KOSA hashtag and boost the posts you see there
- Tell your friends on other social networks as well.
Any time I hear "kids online" or "kids safety act" I immediately know it's vile ass shit being pushed through.
Yeah really. Think of the children!!!!
No doubt - these bill names are chosen deliberately to not only deceive the public about the intentions, but also elicit an emotional reaction by those who read it. It's absolutely sickening.
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It's all true. WTF indeed. Here's a letter from over 90 LGBTQ and human rights organizations with more detail. EFF's article from in May, which is the one they linked to in the original article, has good info to.
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This is already the case access adult content in the State of Louisiana and a few other states.
Adult entertainment group sues Louisiana over age-verification law for porn - AP News 2023
I get that the EFF has to say this bill has "laudable goals" for political reasons, but that couldn't be further from the truth. Protecting children is a typical excuse for broad expansion of State power, and this is no different. Don't be fooled, and remember it's the democrats who are trying to push this through. Both major political parties in the US are enemies to personal autonomy, one is just more subtle about it. Liberation will never come from within the ruling power structure.
Mostly, the “laudable goals” language is to shut down the think of the children argument because everyone knows this isn’t really about that.
If they started off denigrating the bill without acknowledging the stated intent, you end up with the nonsense of my favorite radio commercial of the moment. I don’t even remember what it’s for but the following exchange cracks me up.
A: Think of the children.
B: The children aren’t what’s important right now.
A: Fine. Forget the children.
B: No. That’s worse.
….
As usual, the title of the bill has absolutely nothing to do with the contents of it.
i'd love to read an alternate proposal for solving some of the issues this is trying to address, cause doing nothing is no good either.
All the issues KOSA is aiming to address are also issues that affect the general population. I would say legal age teenagers and young adults are affected just as much.
If the issues are deemed harmful enough to require legislation, then it should be addressing the issue themselves rather than adding harm by passing insanely privacy violating bills.
And when it comes to children, parents should be responsible for what their children as exposed to on the internet. This debate is decades old and it's pretty much been settled. Despite the society being strongly against exposing children to any sexual content, porn websites don't have any age verification. Parents are responsible for what their child views on the internet.