5 ms·

Senate Poised to Pass Kids Online Safety Act KOSA

43 points by tempestn 3y ago

spondylosaurus 3y ago
https://archive.is/rbge3 https://archive.is/rbge3 > The updated version seeks to head off concerns [about targeting young LGBT users] by stripping key enforcement powers from state attorneys general and giving regulators at the Federal Trade Commission a more central role in overseeing its protections. > [LGBT advocacy groups] said the adjustments lawmakers made to KOSA “significantly mitigate the risk of it being misused to suppress LGBTQ+ resources or stifle young people’s access to online communities.” Am I just not understanding the implications of the updates, or is this an incredibly vague "assurance"?
- nilptr 3y ago
  Incredibly vague, but what it means is that state AG's in incredibly conservative states will not be as easily able to target LGBTQ+ resources. The federal bureaucracy is often marginally more sane than the state ones because the politics are less localized.
  - jjjjj55555 3y ago
    I read it as the LGBTQ+ group got whatever concession or pay off they were demanding and now they're giving their blessing to an otherwise awful bill.
    - leotravis10 3y ago
      I guarantee that they got paid off, there's no other way to describe it.
      - jrflowers 3y ago
        Exactly. The LGBTQ Group LLC has once again accepted a pile of cash at their headquarters (the UN building)
        jjjjj55555 3y ago
        They're probably not an LLC but some other kind of entity. Their HQ is probably in DC. The payoff probably comes in some form other than a bag full of cash. Other than that it's as absurd as you make it sound. Why does a group no one knows about have any say in what happens in the senate?
        jrflowers 3y ago
        > Why does a group no one knows about have any say in what happens in the senate? This is a great question. All we know about them is that the LGBTQ Group may or may not be an LLC, they have a physical headquarters in DC, and accept money (maybe cash or crypto?) in exchange for either making or not making laws. This is not a fabrication because on Facebook my uncl
    - wolverine876 3y ago
      Do you have evidence of that? I mean, the article says they got a concession, if you mean it this way: the bill was changed to meet their needs. That's how democracy is supposed to work.
      - jjjjj55555 3y ago
        Bills are supposed to be modified to meet the demands of interest groups? If we didn't have interest groups we couldn't have a democracy (actually a republic)? Why does this particular interest group get to decide the fate of a bill and not, for instance some group that you and I create?
        tzs 3y ago
        > Why does this particular interest group get to decide the fate of a bill and not, for instance some group that you and I create? Because your group didn't provide any feedback on the draft bills?
        jjjjj55555 3y ago
        My group is the congresspeople who I'm able to elect and who are supposed to be held accountable. I don't see any reason to add an extra layer that's even less transparent and less accountable.
        wolverine876 3y ago
        > Bills are supposed to be modified to meet the demands of interest groups? Yes! Who else's interests should they serve? I know interest groups are demonized - by powerful people who want to grab power unimpeded, but those powerful people are really tiny (but wealthy!) interests groups themselves. Basically, interest groups represent the interests of a group of citizens. The senators can't know nearly everything themselves; they must ask people on the ground or even with the best intentions they will clumsily hurt lots of people. Who else in the population should representatives listen to? They should listen to individuals but that only represents one person. Think of veterans groups. How does the senator understand how a bill would affect veterans? Asking one veteran helps, but not a lot. Asking someone whose career involves speaking to veterans and veterans groups nationwide for years, knows tens of thousands of them, knows their concerns inside and out, and whom they pay to represent their interests in Washington - that seems like a good step. It's not everything, but it seems really valuable. With any interest group, there is a legitimacy question. I could start the Atlantic Deep-Sea Fishing group and claim to represent such people, but I don't know a thing about them. The legitimacy question is solved by seeing who has influence - whose voice do LGBTQ or veterans or deep-sea Atlantic fisherpeople listen to? Who do they show up for? That's the person they respect and the person with influence. > Why does this particular interest group get to decide the fate of a bill and not, for instance some group that you and I create? On a bill with a close support margin, lots of groups have influence and lots had influence here. Our group could too, if we represented enough people. That's a good thing. Our government should carefull craft bills to meet everyone's interests - that's by design.
  - spondylosaurus 3y ago
    That's roughly what I assumed about the state/federal split, although hedging our bets on federal bureaucracy's long-term sanity certainly seems... risky, lol. Especially now.
  - wolverine876 3y ago
    > The federal bureaucracy is often marginally more sane than the state ones because the politics are less localized. The feds are much more sane on LGBTQ issues, where some states are now maximize oppression. If Trump wins, however, he has a detailed plan to replace functionaries with political activists loyal to him. In that case, at least some states could be safe using the original idea.
- giantg2 3y ago
  It's impossible to say from the article. There's no mention of what mechanisms remain, or what the protections are.
  - wolverine876 3y ago
    Doesn't the GP's quote mention the mechanisms?
    - giantg2 3y ago
      Not that I could see. They just mention mitigations by moving some powers from states to feds. It mentions nothing about the remaining powers or what the actual protections are.
advael 3y ago
I have learned over the last few decades that bills with synonyms for "child" in their names are almost guaranteed to be authoritarian power grabs
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
adventured 3y ago
In that article, the Washington Post has this marketing text (pushing a newsletter): "Tech is not your friend. We are. Sign up for The Tech Friend newsletter." Wtf is going on. As usual it's not tech bringing on the dystopian, it's the supposed do-gooders on the peripheral of tech and railing against it, including in the government. They're the new temperance movement people and this is another one of their mistargeted, misguided 'moral' crusades.
- tempestn 3y ago
  There's also an embedded editorial video singing the praises of the bill.
- hindsightbias 3y ago
  Jerry Falwell won, he just never realized progressives would be the ones to cement his legacy.
  - cvalka 3y ago
    100℅. They converge on porn, prostitution, etc.
    - wolverine876 3y ago
      How do progressives and the religious right agree on prostitution?
      - hindsightbias 3y ago
        You mean human trafficking.
        wolverine876 3y ago
        Progressives generally protect sex workers, IME, and argue against their prosecution.
superkuh 3y ago
SOPA COPA KOSA. Eventually if they keep trying to push the same authoritarian bill through the response will fall low enough. People just can't maintain the same level of outrage and action each time. For example, I called my senators about SOPA and COPA... I haven't about KOSA. Also annoying and probably illegal is that now all US legislation is hidden behind a computational paywall. You cannot read the bills unless you first execute code from Cloudflare. re: https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/1409 https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/140... . I cannot access it at all since my browser is not new enough to successfully execute the cloudflare javascript program.
- geor9e 3y ago
  >I cannot access it at all since my browser is not new enough to successfully execute the cloudflare javascript program. May I ask why your browser is so ancient?
giantg2 3y ago
"Lawmakers in 2018 passed a law to open tech companies up to greater liability if they facilitated sex trafficking online, but have failed to convert on countless other legislative efforts on tech." I'm curious, have there been any impact reports on how this law has affected sex trafficing? I haven't heard of any numbers. The only thing I know is that Craigslist took down their personal ads.
- advael 3y ago
  As many who study it have noted, this issue is fraught with misinformation, as for example police engaging in prostitution stings like to claim that people they're arresting are "victims of sex trafficking" because it gets better press
- spondylosaurus 3y ago
  Not an impact report, but This American Life ran a story about SESTA-FOSTA's impact on one woman: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/740/there-i-fixed-it/act-one-19 https://www.thisamericanlife.org/740/there-i-fixed-it/act-on... (For a transcript version, scroll down to "Act One": https://www.thisamericanlife.org/740/transcript https://www.thisamericanlife.org/740/transcript) > Kara: Let me make it very clear, I was still an independent sex worker for a while after SESTA-FOSTA, so it didn't work. SESTA-FOSTA didn't stop me. It hindered me a few times. > Kara: It got less safer. I wasn't able to be able to screen my calls the way that I should have. It became a headache, but it never stopped me. > Lina Misitzis: It was always Kara's plan to stop doing sex work. She wanted to finish school, get a different job, try starting a family. But when the law passed, it threw a wrench in her plan. She made a lot less money at sex work, which slowed down her progress and her ability to reach her goals. So the law didn't push her out of sex work, she says. If anything, it kept her in it for longer.
wolverine876 3y ago
Here's the EFF's position: https://act.eff.org/action/tell-congress-kosa-will-censor-the-internet-but-won-t-help-kids https://act.eff.org/action/tell-congress-kosa-will-censor-th... The Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) would censor the internet and would make government officials the arbiters of what young people can see online. It will likely lead to age verification, handing more power, and private data, to third-party identity verification companies like Clear or ID.me. The government should not have the power to decide what topics are "safe" online for young people, and to force services to remove and block access to anything that might be considered unsafe for children. This isn’t safety—it’s censorship.
pyuser583 3y ago
The worst experience of my life was when my daughter was target by online predators. The tech community does not care. Ok it cares a bit. But not when it has to actually weigh protesting kids against anything else. Everything else is more important. The worst product ever creates is Google Classroom. Because it forces you to allow Google through your home firewall at the cost of killing your child grade. Reddit has a weird system that detects when blocking software is employed and tricks the software into recording a dummy website. So when my children visit Reddit I don’t know if it’s /r/politics, or /r/nsfw. I guess they’re worried about parents finding out their kids are visiting /r/lgbtq. But the fact that it’s impossible to known which subreddits my kids are trying to get at is fucking insane. I doubt this bill will help. They usually don’t. Using Microsoft’s parent monitoring software forces you to use Bing. Fucking Bing! Because of course it does. I wish tech companies cared.
hornetsnest 3y ago
[dead]
tempestn 3y ago
What I'd like to see instead is sites required to report in some standard format various aspects of their content related to age appropriateness. Browsers could then implement parental controls where parents could control what sorts of content they allow their children to consume. No need for anyone to prove identity or age. No censorship or privacy violations, but the (purported) goals of the bill are met.

43 points by tempestn 3y ago

https://archive.is/rbge3 https://archive.is/rbge3 > The updated version seeks to head off concerns [about targeting young LGBT users] by stripping key enforcement powers from state attorneys general and giving regulators at the Federal Trade Commission a more central role in overseeing its protections. > [LGBT advocacy groups] said the adjustments lawmakers made to KOSA “significantly mitigate the risk of it being misused to suppress LGBTQ+ resources or stifle young people’s access to online communities.” Am I just not understanding the implications of the updates, or is this an incredibly vague "assurance"?

nilptr 3y ago
Incredibly vague, but what it means is that state AG's in incredibly conservative states will not be as easily able to target LGBTQ+ resources. The federal bureaucracy is often marginally more sane than the state ones because the politics are less localized.
- jjjjj55555 3y ago
  I read it as the LGBTQ+ group got whatever concession or pay off they were demanding and now they're giving their blessing to an otherwise awful bill.
  - leotravis10 3y ago
    I guarantee that they got paid off, there's no other way to describe it.
    - jrflowers 3y ago
      Exactly. The LGBTQ Group LLC has once again accepted a pile of cash at their headquarters (the UN building)
      - jjjjj55555 3y ago
        They're probably not an LLC but some other kind of entity. Their HQ is probably in DC. The payoff probably comes in some form other than a bag full of cash. Other than that it's as absurd as you make it sound. Why does a group no one knows about have any say in what happens in the senate?
        jrflowers 3y ago
        > Why does a group no one knows about have any say in what happens in the senate? This is a great question. All we know about them is that the LGBTQ Group may or may not be an LLC, they have a physical headquarters in DC, and accept money (maybe cash or crypto?) in exchange for either making or not making laws. This is not a fabrication because on Facebook my uncl
  - wolverine876 3y ago
    Do you have evidence of that? I mean, the article says they got a concession, if you mean it this way: the bill was changed to meet their needs. That's how democracy is supposed to work.
    - jjjjj55555 3y ago
      Bills are supposed to be modified to meet the demands of interest groups? If we didn't have interest groups we couldn't have a democracy (actually a republic)? Why does this particular interest group get to decide the fate of a bill and not, for instance some group that you and I create?
      - tzs 3y ago
        > Why does this particular interest group get to decide the fate of a bill and not, for instance some group that you and I create? Because your group didn't provide any feedback on the draft bills?
        jjjjj55555 3y ago
        My group is the congresspeople who I'm able to elect and who are supposed to be held accountable. I don't see any reason to add an extra layer that's even less transparent and less accountable.
      - wolverine876 3y ago
        > Bills are supposed to be modified to meet the demands of interest groups? Yes! Who else's interests should they serve? I know interest groups are demonized - by powerful people who want to grab power unimpeded, but those powerful people are really tiny (but wealthy!) interests groups themselves. Basically, interest groups represent the interests of a group of citizens. The senators can't know nearly everything themselves; they must ask people on the ground or even with the best intentions they will clumsily hurt lots of people. Who else in the population should representatives listen to? They should listen to individuals but that only represents one person. Think of veterans groups. How does the senator understand how a bill would affect veterans? Asking one veteran helps, but not a lot. Asking someone whose career involves speaking to veterans and veterans groups nationwide for years, knows tens of thousands of them, knows their concerns inside and out, and whom they pay to represent their interests in Washington - that seems like a good step. It's not everything, but it seems really valuable. With any interest group, there is a legitimacy question. I could start the Atlantic Deep-Sea Fishing group and claim to represent such people, but I don't know a thing about them. The legitimacy question is solved by seeing who has influence - whose voice do LGBTQ or veterans or deep-sea Atlantic fisherpeople listen to? Who do they show up for? That's the person they respect and the person with influence. > Why does this particular interest group get to decide the fate of a bill and not, for instance some group that you and I create? On a bill with a close support margin, lots of groups have influence and lots had influence here. Our group could too, if we represented enough people. That's a good thing. Our government should carefull craft bills to meet everyone's interests - that's by design.
- spondylosaurus 3y ago
  That's roughly what I assumed about the state/federal split, although hedging our bets on federal bureaucracy's long-term sanity certainly seems... risky, lol. Especially now.
- wolverine876 3y ago
  > The federal bureaucracy is often marginally more sane than the state ones because the politics are less localized. The feds are much more sane on LGBTQ issues, where some states are now maximize oppression. If Trump wins, however, he has a detailed plan to replace functionaries with political activists loyal to him. In that case, at least some states could be safe using the original idea.
giantg2 3y ago
It's impossible to say from the article. There's no mention of what mechanisms remain, or what the protections are.
- wolverine876 3y ago
  Doesn't the GP's quote mention the mechanisms?
  - giantg2 3y ago
    Not that I could see. They just mention mitigations by moving some powers from states to feds. It mentions nothing about the remaining powers or what the actual protections are.

advael 3y ago

I have learned over the last few decades that bills with synonyms for "child" in their names are almost guaranteed to be authoritarian power grabs

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

adventured 3y ago

In that article, the Washington Post has this marketing text (pushing a newsletter): "Tech is not your friend. We are. Sign up for The Tech Friend newsletter." Wtf is going on. As usual it's not tech bringing on the dystopian, it's the supposed do-gooders on the peripheral of tech and railing against it, including in the government. They're the new temperance movement people and this is another one of their mistargeted, misguided 'moral' crusades.

tempestn 3y ago
There's also an embedded editorial video singing the praises of the bill.
hindsightbias 3y ago
Jerry Falwell won, he just never realized progressives would be the ones to cement his legacy.
- cvalka 3y ago
  100℅. They converge on porn, prostitution, etc.
  - wolverine876 3y ago
    How do progressives and the religious right agree on prostitution?
    - hindsightbias 3y ago
      You mean human trafficking.
      - wolverine876 3y ago
        Progressives generally protect sex workers, IME, and argue against their prosecution.

superkuh 3y ago

SOPA COPA KOSA. Eventually if they keep trying to push the same authoritarian bill through the response will fall low enough. People just can't maintain the same level of outrage and action each time. For example, I called my senators about SOPA and COPA... I haven't about KOSA. Also annoying and probably illegal is that now all US legislation is hidden behind a computational paywall. You cannot read the bills unless you first execute code from Cloudflare. re: https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/1409 https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/140... . I cannot access it at all since my browser is not new enough to successfully execute the cloudflare javascript program.

geor9e 3y ago
>I cannot access it at all since my browser is not new enough to successfully execute the cloudflare javascript program. May I ask why your browser is so ancient?

giantg2 3y ago

"Lawmakers in 2018 passed a law to open tech companies up to greater liability if they facilitated sex trafficking online, but have failed to convert on countless other legislative efforts on tech." I'm curious, have there been any impact reports on how this law has affected sex trafficing? I haven't heard of any numbers. The only thing I know is that Craigslist took down their personal ads.

advael 3y ago
As many who study it have noted, this issue is fraught with misinformation, as for example police engaging in prostitution stings like to claim that people they're arresting are "victims of sex trafficking" because it gets better press
spondylosaurus 3y ago
Not an impact report, but This American Life ran a story about SESTA-FOSTA's impact on one woman: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/740/there-i-fixed-it/act-one-19 https://www.thisamericanlife.org/740/there-i-fixed-it/act-on... (For a transcript version, scroll down to "Act One": https://www.thisamericanlife.org/740/transcript https://www.thisamericanlife.org/740/transcript) > Kara: Let me make it very clear, I was still an independent sex worker for a while after SESTA-FOSTA, so it didn't work. SESTA-FOSTA didn't stop me. It hindered me a few times. > Kara: It got less safer. I wasn't able to be able to screen my calls the way that I should have. It became a headache, but it never stopped me. > Lina Misitzis: It was always Kara's plan to stop doing sex work. She wanted to finish school, get a different job, try starting a family. But when the law passed, it threw a wrench in her plan. She made a lot less money at sex work, which slowed down her progress and her ability to reach her goals. So the law didn't push her out of sex work, she says. If anything, it kept her in it for longer.

wolverine876 3y ago

Here's the EFF's position: https://act.eff.org/action/tell-congress-kosa-will-censor-the-internet-but-won-t-help-kids https://act.eff.org/action/tell-congress-kosa-will-censor-th... The Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) would censor the internet and would make government officials the arbiters of what young people can see online. It will likely lead to age verification, handing more power, and private data, to third-party identity verification companies like Clear or ID.me. The government should not have the power to decide what topics are "safe" online for young people, and to force services to remove and block access to anything that might be considered unsafe for children. This isn’t safety—it’s censorship.

pyuser583 3y ago

The worst experience of my life was when my daughter was target by online predators. The tech community does not care. Ok it cares a bit. But not when it has to actually weigh protesting kids against anything else. Everything else is more important. The worst product ever creates is Google Classroom. Because it forces you to allow Google through your home firewall at the cost of killing your child grade. Reddit has a weird system that detects when blocking software is employed and tricks the software into recording a dummy website. So when my children visit Reddit I don’t know if it’s /r/politics, or /r/nsfw. I guess they’re worried about parents finding out their kids are visiting /r/lgbtq. But the fact that it’s impossible to known which subreddits my kids are trying to get at is fucking insane. I doubt this bill will help. They usually don’t. Using Microsoft’s parent monitoring software forces you to use Bing. Fucking Bing! Because of course it does. I wish tech companies cared.

hornetsnest 3y ago

[dead]

tempestn 3y ago

What I'd like to see instead is sites required to report in some standard format various aspects of their content related to age appropriateness. Browsers could then implement parental controls where parents could control what sorts of content they allow their children to consume. No need for anyone to prove identity or age. No censorship or privacy violations, but the (purported) goals of the bill are met.