Lawmakers who support KOSA today are choosing to trust the current administration, and future administrations, to define what youth—and to some degree, all of us—should be allowed to read online.
KOSA will not make kids safer. It will make the internet more dangerous for anyone who relies on it to learn, connect, or speak freely. Lawmakers should reject it, and fast.
I fail to see how ensuring platforms don’t algorithmically push negative content on children, or how enforcing better default privacy options for children, is remotely a bad thing. As with most of what the Electronic Farce Foundation publishes today, this article was a word salad of excuses without reasoning.
Also find it pretty ironic and hypocritical that there’s a sudden outcry against “censorship” but just a couple years ago, it was apparently a tHrEaT to oUr dEmOcRaCy if anybody expressed any sort of skepticism over the narrative because tRuSt the sCiEnCe.
Because that’s not what this is. It’s just like the porn site laws
How does a site comply? Maybe they use AI to look at your face, maybe they have you send in your license. The law isn’t clear what’s enough to prove it.
How long until third parties step up? Nice convenient orgs that can sell the collected data that can guarantee compliance, because they sell the data to the government directly. Or even first parties… Facebook and Google are happy to sell this kind of info on their users
This isn’t about protecting kids, it’s about identifying users. What they say this is for is good, what the laws actually do is far removed from that
And I said elsewhere that I’m not okay with IDing users that way (though I’d absolutely love if we banned porn entirely). However, a lot of social media sites have specialized kids’ accounts. In cases like that, those accounts should be legally exempt from algorithm manipulation and given special privacy defaults.
As far as I can tell, THAT is what this bill is doing.
That’s what they say it does. What it really does is make sites responsible for “harmful content” shown to minors
It’s all completely vague. You say it just affects the kids mode accounts… The bill doesn’t say anything about that. It doesn’t provide any guidance on how to properly comply, just like the porn id laws.
You can’t assume the government is going to use this for what they say they will. You have to look at what this would let them do as written
Ultimately, this gives the government censorship powers over what is allowed in the “open” Internet, and to IDs users in the “adult” Internet
See, this is the propaganda part. ‘Protect the kids!’ Of course thats a good sounding thing! Let’s put good sounding thing into law and not worry about any possible downsides.
Any legislation presented as being for “protecting children” needs to be immediately met with skepticism.
It’s almost always a cover for egregious government interference in personal life, which sucks since there really is damaging content out there made on purpose… the only thing you can really do is pay more attention to your own kids
I know it’s usually an excuse to pass surveillance legislation but I don’t see how this bill even remotely promotes that. As far as I can see, it ensures platforms don’t push algorithmic manipulation on kids and it requires platforms to offer better default privacy settings for kids’ accounts.
Meanwhile the EFF and ACLU (usual suspects) are pushing a garbage narrative of baseless excuses. One has to wonder about their reasoning.
I trust the reliable and reputable experts of laws of EFF (literally founded to protect digital freedoms) and the ACLU (literally founded to protect the liberties that America tries to stop) then some random person thinking more laws is better.
The ACLU has always been a joke. As for the EFF, I used to like them but they’ve been playing partisan politics lately and no longer focus on privacy and digital rights. Much like Mozilla, they’ve become some pseudo-NGO and that makes their opinions completely worthless.
Your second paragraph is spot on, but you’ll never get those people to accept the damage they caused. Bringing it up just stirs up shit. Sucks.
It does, and it sucks even more because that’s all the Fediverse is outside of a few rare instances. Love this tech but the echo chamber makes me feel like giving up on the Fediverse at least a few times per week.
Just know that plenty of ppl agree with you. We are just tired of constantly talking about it. If you find a good instance with free thinking, free speech loving, idea sharing people please let me know haha
For sure! I’m on a Mastodon instance called Retro Gaiden and while it’s not free speech (because political discussions are banned), the owner is really laid back and there is literally a rule, “no discussing your sexual orientation”. Basically, it’s designed to be a no drama instance about discussing retro culture. I wish there were more instances like that!
Cool I joined. I haven’t used mastodon because I use X, which is fine for me and uses heavy in my industry. Will try out mastodon a bit in the eves instead of Lemmy. Ping me there for a follow, I’m
@locuester@retro-gaming.com