In a particularly scummy move, the Kids Online Safety Act is going to be put into the must pass end of year spending bill: www.axios.com/…
The two laws best positioned to get rolled into big year-end legislative packages, according to advocates and lawmakers, are:
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The Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), which would require platforms to guard kids from harmful content using new features and safeguards and to make privacy settings "on" by default for children. The law also mandates privacy audits and more transparency about privacy policies.
Now at first glance, that doesn’t sound so bad, since it’s supposedly about helping protect children online. Except the problem is that it has MANY similarities to the dangerously flawed and pro-censorship EARN IT Act (I covered this in a previous post here and here), which was not only pushed by the same people (Senator Richard Blumenthal and Marsha Blackburn), but also has many of the same flaws, such as pro-censorship, anti LGBT resources and content, and pro-mass surveillance. Like every “protect the children” type law, this would censor the internet of anything “harmful” to children aka any LGBT, NSFW, or whatever the Right doesn’t like, force everyone to upload their govt ID’s to even access anything online, and surveil everyone else. Gutting everyone’s privacy in an era where we see massive state violence and encroaching fascism globally.
But the biggest problem, as Mike Stabile has pointed out, is HOW the mechanism to which this works: The State Attorney General.
This addition would allow states like Texas and Florida to sue companies for having LGBTQ+ content, along with sex education resources, incentivizing these platforms to ban that content. To be more specific, the bill allows the state attorney general to sue if they believe that platforms do not protect minors from a list of harms that includes politicized terms like "grooming" which, as we've seen can include any sort of LGBTQ information, entertainment or literature.
RuPaul on TikTok?
A clip on transgender youth on Facebook?
A gay character in a Disney movie?
A story some teenager uploaded on Wattpad?
Suicide hotlines for gay youth?
Cue a suit from Texas or Florida targeting the entire web.
And the problem is that given the current political climate and the insanity of a number of GOP aligned political groups in positions of power, this only ends up making things RIPE for abuse and mass censorship (since companies will probably end up choosing to acquiesce to their demands rather than risk being subject to liability) not to mention the damage this would cause to children who might need resources regarding LGBT or sex education.
This article by Mike Masnick on Techdirt also goes further into KOSA and its adjacent bills.
To make matters even worse, on top of the usual suspects of NCOSE (a far right group disguised as an anti sex trafficking org, who are infamous for being religious nutjobs who HATE anything to do with sex or LGBT. They used to be called Morality in Media) supporting this travesty of a bill, it’s been revealed that the Senate leader is claiming there’s no opposition.
So we voted to save democracy, and Blumenthal and Blackburn have chosen to stab us in the back by literally giving the fascists a dangerous tool to abuse and use, all for the sake of political brownie points against Big Tech. A tool that far right groups like the Heritage Foundation have OPENLY stated attorneys aligned with them and other far right types will abuse to silence LGBTQ+ or sex ed content for youth if it passes.
The ONLY way this works is by making sure who is and isn’t a minor is to have some form of age-verification scheme. And the only way to do that is through a third party like ID.me which has recently come under scrutiny for, you guessed it, data leaks. So everyone who accesses anything online will be forced to upload their govt IDs. How is this protecting anyone’s privacy?
The excerpt below comes from a collaborative letter me and several others worked on that further expands on the above:
KOSA’s being framed as a bill intended to improve protections and privacy for children online by a) giving platforms the power to prevent and mitigate potentially harmful content such as promotion of self-harm, substance abuse, sexual exploitation, and other matters that have a risk of “physical or mental harm to a minor”, and b) forcing platforms to create accessible, user-friendly safeguards and parental controls. However, the writing of the bill is unclear at best on depth and nuance of what constitutes as “harmful” while giving enforcement power to state attorney generals.
The intention of the bill is not the issue, but rather the undefined “harms” of the bill and the mechanism of enforcement is what is so dangerous. By giving enforcement power to attorney generals across the country, they empower bad actors like Texas’s Ken Paxton to target any website for having “harmful” content. Any and all LGBTQ+ and sexual content will be removed and censored offline, including information on abortion, sexual wellness, anything mentioning sexuality, and resources on dealing healthily with any of the “harmful” content mentioned in the text of the bill. One Twitter user mentioned how Tumblr blocked their account for “inappropriate behavior” for posting a link of LGBT suicide hotlines after Tumblr was forced to censor all NSFW content. In fact, the Far Right wing affiliated Heritage Foundation has openly stated that KOSA would be abused by far right extremists to attack LGBTQ content and sex education for youth.
Over the past year, we have seen terms like “grooming” and “sexualization of children'' politicized to attack the LGBTQ+ community by banning books, removing LGBTQ+ teachers from school, and attacking parents of trans children. We have seen the LGBTQ+ community be reduced to sexual perverts and abusers. This rhetoric has led to children’s hospitals receiving bomb threats, and just recently has led to a fatal mass shooting at a gay club in Colorado Springs. This comes on the back of a year where terms like “Critical Race Theory '' were weaponized to systematically and successfully erase and ban books on black history.
If KOSA passes, it would be a global book ban on anything an attorney general would decide is “harmful” based on their own politics, not based on actual evidence of harm. Vague language like this would force platforms to censor a wide swath of legal, harmless content to avoid liability for potential harm to a minor. Even then, an attorney general could sue them for content that they personally deem harmful, and force them through expensive litigation that would bankrupt websites. Smaller sites would get shut down, and more power and influence would go to Big Tech who can afford constant lawsuits.
This bill also poses a massive security and privacy risk, despite claims it prevents them. The only plausible way that the system created by KOSA works is by creating an elaborate age-verification system, that would require children and adults alike to hand over even more of their private data to unreliable and under-scrutinized third party companies with vast databases. In other words, people would be forced to upload their government IDs to access the internet. This is not only the exact opposite of protecting children’s privacy and data, but would also create the risk of exposing our identities if they are ever compromised, which they will be. No one wants their personal documents scanned to third-party databases just to access the web. What would happen to trans people, those in abusive situations, the undocumented, and activists? Anonymity online is something that we NEVER should want to take away from people.
The bill’s advocates continue to dismiss the wide amount of resources websites give to their Trust & Safety divisions to protect all users, including minors. Advocates claim that KOSA puts a “duty of care” on platforms, a saying that sounds good to people who have no idea how that works. Put frankly, it is a friendly sounding way to threaten free speech and innovation. Under that term, a covered platform has a duty to act in the best interests of a minor. How is a website going to know what works in a minor’s “best interest”? That varies drastically from kid to kid. Some might benefit from learning about these “controversial” topics while others might be harmed. It is a very context-specific situation, and platforms will not be able to differentiate between someone talking about their history with eating disorders while another encourages it. Platforms would ban all mention of it instead, which has been shown to backfire and make the situation worse. What helps people overcome the harm is nuanced discussions, not censorship.
Topics such as self-harm, suicide, eating disorders, and substance abuse are all highly sensitive and controversial topics that have existed for decades. But there are children who suffer from them who seek help through the internet. By removing any mention of said content, children and adults alike actually suffer more and feel more alone, thus driving those rates of suicide and self-harm up. KOSA actively would harm children. This bill follows the logic of book bans. How can a website decide whether something is “harmful” to all people, when the reality is that there will be others who would massively benefit from it.
This bill also bans sexual exploitation material and CSAM, which US law 18 USC 2258A already holds websites liable for. Tech companies already report material to the DOJ regularly, most of which the DOJ refuses to investigate. There is no protection under any US law, and nothing under section 230, that allows a website to host said content. Furthermore, the definition of “sexually exploitative material”, “grooming”, and “child porn” has been used in the past year to target transgender people, drag queens, and the wider LGBTQ+ community by likening their very existence as sexually violent. Yet another way this bill’s language will be used to target a community that is already facing violence. Every night, Fox News blasts a story on “sexualization of children '' to fear-monger around the LGBT community. One needs to not look any further than the right-wing ecosystem to see how KOSA would easily be weaponized.
The “parental tools” that KOSA would give parents ignores the authoritarian parents who abuse their children and would use this surveillance tool to hurt them further. What would a parent that denies their child’s sexuality do with the ability to monitor their children, for example? The Trevor Project reports that less than 1 in 3 transgender youth have unwelcoming homes. More than that, this ignores the fact that the needs of a parent of a 6 year old differ from those of a 17 year old, and treats all minors the same. Wired came out with an article about how parental surveillance of children being encouraged by Big Tech is dangerous. This bill just makes it worse by expanding it to every website. All that information on children, their ages, their locations, is collected by third parties and then made available to parents. How is data collection by unknown third-party sites on children something that anyone wants? This is then sold to other companies. How is this “less” surveillance by Big Tech?
From Wired:
A University of Central Florida study of 200 teen/parent pairs found that parents who used monitoring apps were more likely to be authoritarian, and that teens who were monitored were not just equally but more likely to be exposed to unwanted explicit content and to bullying. Another study, from the Netherlands, found that monitored teens were more secretive and less likely to ask for help. It’s no surprise that most teens, when you bother to ask them, feel that monitoring poisons a relationship. And there are very real situations, especially for queer and trans teens, where their safety may depend on being able to explore without exposing all the details to their family.
KOSA acts on the assumption that the internet is to blame for any bad thing that happens to a child, rather than larger societal trends. Let’s not forget that all of society just underwent very traumatic years under COVID-19’s restrictions from 2020-21 that led to higher rates of substance abuse, suicide, eating disorders, and other forms of harm that were caused by that breakdown of society. Even then, substance abuse and eating disorders have been around before social media and will continue to be a problem.
There are much more nuanced solutions to harm online that don’t end up censoring content that would help others, such as funding for mental health programs and after school programs, teaching online safety again in schools and homes, and improving the overall quality of life so parents can spend more time with their children. The underlying problem of the youth mental health crisis will not be solved by surveilling and censoring the internet. KOSA will not prevent suicides nor make these problems go away. It will cause more harm in the meantime by ramping up surveillance, limiting the ability of websites to innovate, and making it much more difficult for young people to find and connect with actual support and friends, all things that lead to more isolation and suicide rates skyrocketing.
Bills such as these need much more discussion from multiple different perspectives. Any type of law that will affect how the internet works can and will hurt people. We all want children to be protected from harm, but rushing a bill such as KOSA is not the solution, and will cause more harm than good to not only children but all internet users. We shouldn’t let our emotions override logic and make us push through legislation that will cause more pain and suffering for parents such as the ones who lost their children.
With all that said, what can we do?
Well, the same thing we did for the EARN IT Act; we make a LOT of noise, and get the word out.
Right now, the only major publications pushing this bill are mostly neutral to pro, with very few highlighting the flaws of this bill. Getting the word out on how bad this bill is for children might be enough to sway them against putting this bill into the spending package, thus ensuring that it won’t be pushed into law by the end of the year.
And PLEASE call your Senators at (202-224-3121). There is a call script with phone numbers here. Fax them, email them. Tell them they MUST oppose this bill. CONTACT any major human rights, LGBT, and cybersecurity related organizations aligned and let them know about this bill, and the harm it can cause to LGBT rights and children!
EMPHASIS ON THE HARM TO CHILDREN, SINCE THEY’RE TRYING TO CLAIM THAT THIS WILL HELP PROTECT CHILDREN’S PRIVACY, WHEN IT DOES THE EXACT OPPOSITE.
There’s also a Petition by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and from Fight For the Future.
Poll
39
votes
Show Results
How Will You Act Against KOSA?
39
votes
Vote Now!
How Will You Act Against KOSA?
I Will Let Everyone I Know About This Horrible Act
I Will Contact My Senators, Telling Them To Oppose This Act
I Will Spread Awareness of this Act on Social Media, like Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, etc.
I Will Contact YouTubers Who Can Cover This
I Will Contact Human Rights, LGBT, and Cybersecurity Organizations to get them against this
I will add my name to the sign in letter provided in the link
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