cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/1835889

Evan Greer of Fight for the Future:

"If KOSA were actually a privacy bill as its supporters claim, we would be all about it," Greer told Ars. "We support cracking down on tech companies harvesting of data, we support an end to manipulative business practices like autoplay, infinite scroll, intrusive notifications, and algorithmic recommendations powered by commercial surveillance. What we don't support is a bill that gives state attorneys general the power to dictate what content younger people can see on social media. That's where KOSA goes off the rails and becomes a censorship bill, rather than a privacy bill."

If you're in the US, you can contact Congress using https://www.stopkosa.com/

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/1146007

If you're on kbin, Mastodon, Firefish, or some other fediverse platform that lets you follow people, here's some relevant accounts for this campaign -- and for other digitial rights issues.

The reply has suggestions for European advocates and organizations.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/1138165

Coverage of the week of action in Common Dreams, with quotes from @evangreer@mastodon.online of Fight for the Future.

If you want to help, here are four easy ways:

1. If you live in the US, contact your legislators using Fight for the Future’s https://www.badinternetbills.com/
2. Upvote and boost posts in !bad_internet_bills@lemmy.sdf.org -- and cross-post them to other communities and magazines where they're on-topic
3. On Mastodon, boost posts on the #BadInternetBills and #KOSA hashtags
4. Get the word out on other social networks too

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/1101954

The "Kids Online Safety Act" (KOSA) is one of the Bad Internet Bills EFF is asking for help trying to stop. KOSA sounds like a good bill. Who doesn't want kids to be safe online? But KOSA wouldn't actually make kids safer -- and the way it's written would be especially harmful to LGBTQIA2S+ people.

As over 90 Human Rights and LGBTQ groups said in this letter the sent to Congress last year opposing KOSA:

"KOSA establishes a burdensome, vague “duty of care” to prevent harms to minors for a broad range of online services that are reasonably likely to be used by a person under the age of 17. While KOSA’s aims of preventing harassment, exploitation, and mental health trauma for minors are laudable, the legislation is unfortunately likely to have damaging unintended consequences for young people.

KOSA would require online services to “prevent” a set of harms to minors, which is effectively an instruction to employ broad content filtering to limit minors’ access to certain online content. Content filtering is notoriously imprecise; filtering used by schools and libraries in response to the Children’s Internet Protection Act has curtailed access to critical information such as sex education or resources for LGBTQ+ youth. Online services would face substantial pressure to over-moderate, including from state Attorneys General seeking to make political points about what kind of information is appropriate for young people.

At a time when books with LGBTQ+ themes are being banned from school libraries and people providing healthcare to trans children are being falsely accused of “grooming,” KOSA would cut off another vital avenue of access to information for vulnerable youth."

KOSA has.a markup session in the Senate next week, so now's a critical time to be telling Congress that we don't want this bad internet bill. So please help get the word out -- and if you're in the US, EFF's KOSA action page makes it easy to contact Congress

#BadInternetBills #KOSA #privacy

Red alert! For the last six months, EFF, our supporters, and dozens of other groups have been sounding the alarm about several #BadInternetBills that have been put forward in Congress. We’ve made it clear that these bills are terrible ideas, but Congress is now considering packaging them together—possibly into must-pass legislation. I’m asking you to join us, ACLU, Fight for the Future, and other digital rights defenders in a week of action to protect the internet. Will you take a few minutes to join us in telling Congress that these bills must not become law?

The EFF page has links to actions you can quickly take to contact your lawmaker

#BadInternetBills

All of the bad internet bills. One website.