The U.S. Government Wants To Control Online Speech to “Protect Kids”
The U.S. Government Wants To Control Online Speech to “Protect Kids”
The Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), a bill that allows for a wide range of government penalties for online speech, could soon be passed by Congress. If that happens, the access we have to information may be forever changed. KOSA will make state prosecutors and federal bureaucrats the final arbiters.....
Not the US government, republicans and one random house dem that seems to hate technology.
The bill has 21 Democrats as cosponsors (22 Republicans). Source: https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/1409/cosponsors
oMg boTh sIdeS aRe nOt tHe sAmE.... except for when it comes to eroding freedoms
its always "protect children" or "terrorism"/"national security"
And then they lower the age that kids can get married to 14/15 (pedos!), and change labor laws so pre-teens can work in dangerous jobs or serve alcohol.
If they want to protect "children", we need Xtra restrictive gun laws, and child abuse laws. Who protects children from abuse at home?
Not conservatives, they are the ones behind all this.Except when it's guns
Exactly right.
It is absolutely always one of those two, and they try this shit every session. Better solution? Kick any politician who signs off on these bills out of office and make it crystal clear that they've been booted because they're anti-speech and anti-privacy.
Somehow it never crossed their minds to stop selling firearms to teens, but vendor Internet in the name of protecting kids? Sign us up. Fuck that.
Pretty much any bill, worldwide, that includes the phrase "project kids" is always about pushing censorship, government surveillance and other forms of oppression on everyone. And guess what: zero actual benefit to kids.
This is quite scary. I don't know if it being on the calendar means they're guaranteed to vote on it but the text of the bill would completely fuck the Fediverse. You literally need paid personnel to comply with these regulations.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/3663/all-actions?overview=closed#tabs
Host somewhere else. They're not the world police.
I guess we'll just become criminals and host our servers in countries that actually respect freedom.
Why old men are so obsessed with kids? Are they pedo or something?
It's never about kids. If they gave half a fuck about kids, we'd have free school lunches and teachers would be paid a fair salary.
So long as the internet is around to distribute fact-checks and officer-involved homicide videos they have no plausible lies by which the 80% of us in poverty or precarity should tolerate the abuse of plutocrats and capitalists.
So this is a first amendment issue: it's about suppression of political speech. It always was 🌍 👩🚀 🔫 👨🚀 🌑
They're a convenient scapegoat. You can accuse the other side of not caring about/endangering children for political points, and children don't have politically-relevant opinions, or votes, so you're never going to have children speaking up and going "that's not correct", or protesting against you for a law you've passed. If they do end up protesting, you can point fingers at the parents and say that they're indoctrinating the children.
every time they say it's to "protect the children" or "protect freedom" it is invariably neither.
So true.
Fine, so who will be judging if there's a depressive content on the internet, a psychologist? Also how about non-US sites, will they be banned or something?
Perhaps politicians should concentrate on making it so there's less depressing stuff in the world for anyone to see and hear, and not creating more of it with things like this rubbish bill. 🤷♀️
Culturally we're going back to the Middle Ages...
Specifically the Dark Ages.
I like how two of ya'll had the very same idea and posted the same comic within a minute of each other. If you aren't the same person, that is impressive.
Isn't this also the bill that could screw up encryption too?
woah no way
in other news, every sixty seconds in Africa, a minute passes.
it has nothing to do with protecting children and everything to do with destroying privacy
Knowing Biden he's all in on this, he signed off on the Patriot Act too so f*** him
neoliberals are just as bad as Republicans
Neoliberals are conservatives. They go on the same smoldering pile.
Not even close, but try again. They just look the same when you're so far left you need to squint to see anyone to the right of you. There is a massive gap between "neoliberals" as you call them, and the modern conservative electorate. Those "neoliberals" also represent the majority of voters on the left, hence the guy who is president being one of them. Stay mad though.
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why is it always the worst laws proposed under the guise of protecting children
Because you can't argue that. Any other ground reason for policy can be challenged or counterargued or relies on values which are arguable.
No one is going to plainly argue "ok but how about we do not protect children?". And if someone tries a different angle such as "this law is not really going to protect anyone and will bring a lot of problems for children and adults alike" it will be easily dismissed as "you insidious snake, why do you want to hurt children?! Don't sabotage child protection!". Which autokills conversation.
Isn't it something that China has been doing for a while? In their version, it's called 'spreading positive energy'.
It's almost like everything the US said about China was just a projection of their own insecurities.
It might get to a point where China actually is relatively more liberating than "stable democracies" in internet access.
What else is new?
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Protect kids from guns would be better.
Jack O'Neil's son would still be alive today if he didn't get a hold of his father's gun. But then we wouldn't have Stargate. It's sort of a toss up to me.
This headline could have been written 20 years ago.
This doesn't seem different from what many if not most major platforms are already doing voluntarily. Just replace the word "depressing" with the word "toxic" and suddenly everyone will support this.
Good luck with that. They can't even stop child abuse online and that's an actual problem that should be solved.
Dunno why you're being downvoted
Why take a principled stand against those who are pushing this when you can just say "government" and leave everyone thinking this is a bipartisan problem?
Because it is a bipartisan problem.
Maybe the Internet was a mistake ?
Maybe leaving the trees was a mistake.
Good, we need to protect the Children, we shouldn't be allowing people to go around grooming kids freely, there needs to be limits on this bullshit.
Children
._.