The Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) easily passed the Senate today despite critics’ concerns that the bill may risk creating more harm than good for kids and perhaps censor speech for online users of all ages if it’s signed into law.
KOSA received broad bipartisan support in the Senate, passing with a 91–3 vote alongside the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Action (COPPA) 2.0. Both laws seek to control how much data can be collected from minors, as well as regulate the platform features that could harm children’s mental health.
However, while child safety advocates have heavily pressured lawmakers to pass KOSA, critics, including hundreds of kids, have continued to argue that it should be blocked.
Among them is the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which argues that “the House of Representatives must vote no on this dangerous legislation.”
If not, potential risks to kids include threats to privacy (by restricting access to encryption, for example), reduced access to vital resources, and reduced access to speech that impacts everyone online, the ACLU has alleged.
The ACLU recently staged a protest of more than 300 students on Capitol Hill to oppose KOSA’s passage. Attending the protest was 17-year-old Anjali Verma, who criticized lawmakers for ignoring kids who are genuinely concerned that the law would greatly limit their access to resources online.
“We live on the Internet, and we are afraid that important information we’ve accessed all our lives will no longer be available,” Verma said. “We need lawmakers to listen to young people when making decisions that affect us.”
Any time a lawmaker says they are doing something “for the children” you are being played. They are always up to something sh*tty.
Jesus fucking Christ we are still trying to roll this square up a fucking hill aren’t we?
Bill doesn’t pass? Try it again in a few months or years.
Rinse. Repeat.
I’m so fucking tired of the stupid shit my tax money is wasted on.
I feel gross agreeing with Rand fucking Paul about something.
Pretty sure he just votes against government doing anything. I doubt he’s much of it.
That would be a consistent position of a principled Republican, almost extinct species.
On why KOSA is an outrageous censorship bill that puts the power to control what you see online in the hands of dangerous people: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/07/kosa-internet-censorship-bill-just-passed-senate-its-our-last-chance-stop-it
On why KOSA is harmful to queer people, particularly trans youth: https://www.them.us/story/kids-online-safety-act-kosa-youth-lgbtq-content
On Marsha Blackburn’s anti-trans intentions and what she feels KOSA should protect kids from: https://www.them.us/story/kosa-senator-blackburn-censor-trans-content (see also attached video clip)
On why it’s not just queer people telling you KOSA is an absolute disaster: https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/aclu-slams-senate-passage-of-kids-online-safety-act-urges-house-to-protect-free-speech
Proof that the kids this bill purports to protect don’t want it to pass: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/03/thou
And all but 3 members of the senate voted in approval: https://apnews.com/article/senate-child-online-safety-vote-f27c329679feb2d74787fc3887aa710f
America only has bipartisan support for hurting minorities.
IMHO those pushing such things simply hate ND people. All the rest is side effects.
And the reason they hate ND people is because they blame them for the 90s and early 00s where a lot of their shady behaviors were constantly exposed. Because in their opinion ND people are the reason humanity comes up with cures to that plague, of varying efficiency.
As in - that measure of chaos which makes engineered social hierarchies fail. Destroying lives of ND people in their opinion means that there’ll be less chaos and their power will be more solid. It’s the same as why fascists hate LGBT - they want “normalcy”, predictable drones who don’t question orders.
This, of course, strongly correlates with harm to most marginalized groups, because you are more likely to be part of one of them if ND.
Particularly being autistic it’s easier to care about real good and real evil instead of your group being associated with good and some other group with evil.
If this seems an unhinged rant, it is, but it’s also true.
Like all bills with “kids” or “children” in the name, it doesn’t have anything to do with kids and everything to do with violating our rights.
I believe the way it’s presented makes it difficult to vote against—you don’t want to be labeled as someone who is enabling the pedos.
Seems like most legislation (in American in the past 40 or so years) is labeled to sound like a good thing, then you read it and it’s the exact opposite of what it pretends to be
It’s named as attack ad bait. “So-and-so voted against the Kids Online Safety Act” sounds bad to the uninformed voter, and there are a lot of uninformed voters.
