So, right now, Congress is up against a few tech leads of prominent social media platforms in an attempt to somehow coerce to them that KOSA is needed, that their attempts to curb material that is harmful to kids is "not good enough".
KOSA will not make kids safe.
KOSA will remove access to a good swath of material, including LGBT+ resources, under the guise of "protecting the kids".
It's a wolf in sheeps' clothing.
There are many ways to keep kids safe online. This is not one of them.
It is your civic and social duty to listen to Elderly statesman harang the CEOs of the social tech industry about how "tiktok is destroying Israel" oh, and some thing about kids or whatever.
Microsoft endorses anti-LGBTQ online "child safety" bill KOSA night before Big Tech hearing (US Politics)
Worth noting: Microsoft owns LinkedIn, which wouldn't be particularly affected by KOSA.
There's a hearing on Wednesday, and potentially a Senate vote soon, so if you're in the US now's a good time to contact your Senators. https://stopkosa.com and EFF's page make it easy!
British man acquitted over London-Spain flight bomb hoax | …SnapChat leaking messages to security services & supporting KOSA? Not a good combo for user privacy | HT @rebeccamkern
SnapChat must* be surveilling their non-encrypted chats (i.e. all of them, but they travel over HTTPS for privacy) & triggering on sensitive words, either on-server or on-client, reporting to law enforcement who then over-react … PLUS they announced support for the illiberal & misconceived KidsOnlineSafetyAct.
The two, combined, are not a great indicator for how they view user privacy.
A Spanish court has cleared a British man of public disorder, after he joked to friends about blowing up a flight from London Gatwick to Menorca […] A key question in the case was how the message got out, considering Snapchat is an encrypted app. One theory, raised in the trial, was that it could have been intercepted via Gatwick’s Wi-Fi network. But a spokesperson for the airport told BBC News that its network “does not have that capability”. In the judge’s resolution, cited by the Europa Press news agency, it was said that the message, “for unknown reasons, was captured by the security mechanisms of England when the plane was flying over French airspace”. The message was made “in a strictly private environment between the accused and his friends with whom he flew, through a private group to which only they have access, so the accused could not even remotely assume… that the joke he played on his friends could be intercepted or detected by the British services, nor by third parties other than his friends who received the message,” the judgement added. It was not immediately clear how UK authorities were alerted to the message, with the judge noting “they were not the subject of evidence in this trial”.
[*] if the cause is not Snap themselves then their transport security is broken and that’s an even bigger story, being either being a weakness in the app or an undocumented man-in-the-middle HTTPS backdoor implemented by authorities in airport wireless transportation
Previously
Scoop for @politico– @Snapchat is the first social media platform to support the Kids Online Safety Act. This comes as CcEO Evan Spiegel joins the heads of Meta, TikTok, X and Discord next week in a @JudiciaryDems hearing on child sexual abuse material. https://t.co/PTKLQpqtHP
This bill isn’t just bad for LGBTQ folks it’s more invasive than the patriot act and if you think it won’t be used against unions and people trying to organize to fight fascism please think more deeply.
As some pointed out, limiting #KOSA's enforcement to just the FTC doing it, wouldn't really fix the bill. Though, Blumenthal still wants AGs to be able to do so (despite them being even more prone to political grandstanding).
It's worth considering that, at best, it would likely lead to status quo, or worse, they'll be chasing every little possible moral panic (and historically, there have been quite a few involving minors), and it is very likely to be leveraged to disproportionate ends (which are in themselves harmful to many users on these platforms). There is also a possibility that it might be leveraged to political ends, and if you're a Democrat, that could take the form of another Republican president in the future.
I'm proud to say I'm a member of none of the offending organizations. I do belong to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and I recommend that people who hate this sort of abuse of both law and the meaning of words join. #EFF#KOSA
11/30/23: #KOSA is an anti-LGBTQIA+ #censorship bill. It is essential you call THIS week. Tell them you are specifically against KOSA and especially against hotlining the bill.
Call the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and ask to be connected to the Senator of your choice.
BREAKING: Politico reports that Senator Cantwell says she will delay hotlining the Kids Online Safety Act (#KOSA) because of ongoing concerns around LGBTQ rights and the need for further changes.
This is an important win for human rights. But we have so much more to do
In the last line of the piece Sen Blumenthal says he's open to a 2024 vote on #KOSA. That's more or less him admitting defeat that it's not gonna happen this year.
But there will absolutely be a hard push to advance KOSA and other bad bills early in the new year.
And it's also infuriating that we are likely going to end 2023 without ANY meaningful regulation that reins in Big Tech monopolies and addresses their harm.
#KOSA isn't that, and never was, but it's important that we don't just stop bad bills but pass good ones.
If you or your organization supported #KOSA in 2023, I am literally begging you to talk to those of us who have raised concerns about it. Not because we want to convince you that we're right and you're wrong, but because we need to find consensus, or Big Tech will keep winning.
And, just to be clear, #KOSA is not dead. They will definitely still try to pass it, and we still need to keep pushing hard for them to either make meaningful changes to address concerns, or drop the bill and start over. Do that here https://www.badinternetbills.com
US citizens: Call on your Senator to stop the Kids Online Safety Act. It's urgent; the Senate might vote on it next week. See https://u.fsf.org/41a for a sample letter. #Kosa#Encryption