#Whatever you think about his methods being extreme and what he deems collateral damage being unjust is another thing altogether

[wishesofeternity]

My problem with The Dragon Prince is that while it preaches about "breaking the cycle" and "choosing love", it repeatedly does so in a way that echoes the age-old idea of telling victims to passively accept their lot in life and the injustices inflicted upon them while their perpetrators never have to acknowledge their wrongs or face consequences for their actions. This is the kind of narrative they follow on both a personal and systematic axis, and it's exactly why the show will always frustrate me.

[deviationdivine]

My Desecrated Love (machine!Connor x Reader)

TLDR: In the heart of the battlefield you will not accept the fate of this profane love...

Word Count: 4.5K Follower!Celebration

TW: Angst (Heavy-Suicide), Android Gore, Language, Smut (Heavy), Violence 

A/N: !100 Follower Celebration!: While my poll is open I still wanted to write up something to celebrate the milestone for you guys. I’ve had an influx of more followers since I announced the celebration so I feel it’s the right time to post! This went off the rails into some serious territory so please if you are uncomfortable with any trigger listed skip over loves. I’m not big on the machine!Connor path but I’ve been sucked into my angsty headcanons for him. Thanks to you loves for following, requesting, commenting and being precious beans. 

You let me desecrate you

Ferocious. Devouring. Endless.

Machines do not die or so he told you. Does a lie reveal fallacy? Can it show truth denied so vehemently? 

He denied. Deviancy, feeling and love all parts to a whole that somehow he tears away by choice. Choice itself paints him deviant by heart but not this one. Never will this harbinger of decay spreading his plague over revolution shun mission for emotion.  Still it did not cease this communion of flesh. 

Siphoning life from your body that he takes on willing pleas cast out luscious, sinfully aware you are nothing. To him you are just a means. One that loves him all the same but he does not love. He chooses not to in order to unleash chaos. 

A man-made monster all wire and metallic. You love his unnatural existence. Unnatural as all androids deemed by their creators but Connor is beyond. He is the night shade that poisons your heart.

An all too willing bride to a heinous creation built to destroy all he touches. The moment you saw him should have been enough to know. He marked you from the start.

Never have you felt so close to heaven. In his eyes seemingly soft but all part of programming engineered by Cyberlife.

RK800 most advanced equipped with latest technologies. Programmed to be sociable, to gain camaraderie, integration in the most efficient way possible and he slithered into your soul.

RK800 is a machine not a man at all. Oh but what a man. What a glorious image of the perfect God who lays waste to sinners. He lays waste to deviants. His own kind he will do anything to destroy. 

Not once does he die. Not once does he succumb to failure. Each step casts his shadow like a reaper stretching bony fingers out for a touch of extermination.

That touch burns acidic but you love his astringency. Bitter to taste, salivating in want of his sour tongue. He is raging, dominant and yours. Foolish to think he truly is when he is Mephistopheles incarnate. Deal with the devil calls a deal to your death.

Weaponry is his scythe. Cyberlife jacket flapping in the wind is his cloak.

Can a person really love a monster? Yes.

Can a person love death itself? Yes.

Just ask Persephone.

Connor is god of the real underworld of Detroit. Filled with filthy red ice dealers, insane deviants who kill their masters; Connor is death riding on a pale horse. And you love death with all of your heart. If only he were alive. If only he became alive instead of making you suffer this love. 

Oh, how much you suffer. Oh, how gladly you do. For this cruel, violating, unholy love that should not exist but it does exist eternally.  

If he were flesh and bone his tendrils would hang listlessly, pouring scarlet into white. If he were of warm blood he would bleed a puddle of crimson horror. Throat torn apart in vocal chords, internal matter and cells that make up a human’s DNA. If he were not machine life would run cherry rich, staining frost even as it ends.

He is not human. He bleeds blue twilight as the hour itself shades in endless sky.

Bodies lay to waste. Snow flutters a chilly dust. Continuously flakes fall in a frigid blanket over an impromptu graveyard. Dead deviants strewn across field of ice left where they lost their last artificial breath. Center of it all a most sacrilegious figure. Sprawled out like a king struck down before his time, great majesty torn asunder and there he resides.

He is a statue eyes raised to night sky. Floundering amid this Detroit air crisp and still scented with gunfire this is a battlefield. It is a glorious frontier laid to waste. Wars are fought not won. They are casualty and blood. There is no victory. No one returns from the front unscathed. Not even your vicious carnage that you long to feel.

Silence permeates casting a shroud on this night of revolution. One terror is felled despite a sure fall of android revolution.

“Connor!”

Your scream penetrates stillness creating its own rage. Breaking open the sky itself unleashes hellfire on all that stands in the way of this unhealthy, terrifying love. Anguish obliterates whatever pieces are still left. Knees crash beside his body. Lying in irreverential crucifixion, arms displayed towards desecrated heavens. A beast brought down when he can never be tamed.

Crawling up his chest brings tear stains in drops. Falling in a torrent they clash with thirium staining grotesquely from his severed throat. Washing away is not enough. Internal circuitry sparks a final dying ember of red. Carnage that bled from his lips, ones that feast, connects brutally with yours. 

Instead they stain blue in splotchy abstracts highlighted against visible white plastic. Partially his skin is deactivated up to bottom lip.

Impact of the blow fiercely damaged his synthetic layer. Shutting it off where his throat was mechanically slit.

Even smearing thirium all over your hands clutching at his head, your lips still meet atop his. The first gentle kiss that ever passed between mortal and almighty. Thirium glistens on your chin after pulling away. You do not wipe it away. It is from him. You want him to remain.

Inside you he still digs deep. Nothing will destroy this. No one will take your Connor from you. No one on this god’s green earth!

Throwing your head back to unleash this devastating scream unmakes the last vestiges of life. Hollowness is core. Scream bellow the torment still no one will hear. Lost you are lost without your one desire even as he remains machine.

Through blurry vision you find his gun. Lying amid snow where he fell. So close but far from his hand.

Stretching fingers out for the weapon brings it close to cradle. Nurturing his method of execution you stroke the barrel. Checking the rounds there are two bullets. Two as there are two lovers amid warfare.

“Footprints,” a hoarse whisper grazes your throat. Raw from releasing this agony but you ignore. Staring where you picked up the gun they are clearly printed. They travel. Thirium travels along with them. Thirium not spilled from Connor.

Peering across the expanse of android death there is but one place. A Cyberlife Store…

The rest is of no use or matter. None of them matter lying here. Only he does!

Collateral damage is scenery to your reunion. Death is your honeymoon.

You stroke his hair. Loving how those soft strands always felt tangled and pulled through fingers. He may lie dead but that is fine. You will meet this death with him.

A smile graces divinely. In his presence you feel as if worshiped by a god. Oh, how close he took you. So close. The nozzle of gun shifts. Pressing lips along the barrel you can almost kiss him.

You get me closer to god

“Connor!” 

Your voice cuts the air. Musty, alive as you thrive in soft red glowing from both his temple and neon lights glazing outside hotel window. Seedy underbelly of Detroit tucked away in sleazy notes. The room itself becomes a haven of sexual energies. Both live wires in completely different ways and he flicks tongue like a forked demon.

Circling your nipple, the android shifts above, plunging into soft warmth. Your arms force down in a vice underneath his hand. Holding them above your head caging as he fucks you the way you pled with him before shedding clothes. Swiping them off your body, Connor threw you indelicately. In a heap you fell to bed and he, the primal predatory, pounced upon weak flesh.

Edging fingers between your legs until sputtering in tears he watched it with a sadistic fascination. How wanton human beings become at the anticipation of receiving a good fuck.

Your orgasm over his fingers did not satisfy. Craving him inside of you, he obliges out of a silent pleasure. One he will not readily succumb to in deviancy. Nothing yields in his programming. This is simply a means.

Cyberlife’s upgrades enable Connor to soil you for his own means. He snaps baring teeth.

“Please, please!”

Whimpering your need for him only casts you down. This is something you know will not change him. Yet you still want his fire to spread through veins. Raining down an inferno burns to ash and snuffs your existence. A pale volcanic eruption bathing lava; you incinerate.

The pain of his grip starts a tingle in your fingers. Cutting circulation he decides using bare hands instead of his tie this time. Tied up, held down and battered you do not care. As long as Connor is yours again why would you care about anything?

You huff when he releases wrists. An immediate flood of blood returns to extremities. He is not finished with you.

Pulling your body upright sinks you further onto his length. A gasp spills deliciously as you grab onto him. A work of art to cling onto, lips close to his but you do not kiss him. Last time he left several days. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. He used it against you as punishment. 

Sweetly you crave to cradle his face into hands. Instead you grip the back of his head. Tugging those beautiful coffee color strands all yours in this heady atmosphere.

Digging fingers nape of neck yanks your head down forcefully. Meeting his vile heat burning a hole center of soul. You sacrifice yours willingly. All for him, always and forever he is your terrifying prince.

“I want to fuck you like an animal,” the machine growls against your pulse.

Teeth clamp mercilessly marking flesh in a target to his dominating destruction. Pain is ceremonial to a human heart given to a mechanical devil.

Oh. Oh! “Connor, yes, please.”

A snarl rips from his muscled chest. Throwing you over, he rears your hips up.

Crying out to his vicious thrusts only gives him satisfaction. As much as he will deny this pleasure it is in his eyes. Scanning over your movements, shattering your entirety as you beg, beg, beg into wee hours. Beg for rock hard beauty between your legs. His waist pivots pale, dusted all over his trim torso in freckles. Starry imperfections littering aesthetically across smooth skin stretching over a plastic frame.

Itching to touch him, run the tip of your tongue up center of chest. Dragging down in a wet trail to the plane of his abdomen, only when you cry out in streaming tears will he allow it. Shedding respectability is a small sacrifice. There are far greater ones.

Fingers squeeze around onto your neck adding a sting to various bites, teeth marks imprinting fragility. Tender skin trembles under touch of a vile, majestic lover. He is all things sharp and jagged. A pale shark slices its fin through ocean. Your body is a sea. He is the tidal surge, devastating tsunami washing away your shores.

Rolling your head back does nothing to stop the sway. Your entire body moves under the powerful rhythm of his hips slamming against your ass. Jolting you forward, face falling into covers bunched and torn from mattress you bite down. Muffling sweet moans surrendering to this bliss twisting your insides and still he continues.

Androids do not tire. They last way longer than humans in everything. Connor proves this each time he fucks you senseless.

You arch further up for him with no shame. All you want is the sweet snap to flood.

He said he wanted to fuck you like an animal. Pushed down from all fours, rendered helpless that’s exactly how you feel. You feel like a little creature caught in a trap. It’s so good.

“Connn….” Slurring his name gets you drunk on his love.

Feeling his hand crawl up back and rest onto the crook of neck you shiver. A touch far too gentle warns you. He pulls you up from the face first push.

Your back collides with his chest as he holds you in place. Forcing your knees to edge of bed, arm tightening across your heaving chest and the android’s fingers lock onto throat. Adding a little bit of pressure makes you see stars. 

Dizzying fireworks going off in a personal sky drenched in sweat, cum and tears. Such wonderful tears shed for your android lover who is neither of love or sweetness. He is not made for love as he repeats huskily each time.

Always you find yourselves coming back to this motel. Always you find ways to ravage one another. You can only weep for his beauty, prowess. And once more he makes your dams flood.

“Connor, I want-”

“You are gravely mistaken, Pet.” Spewing his little name for you as he zips jeans leaves the android unemotional. “If you believe your wants come before my mission.”

Shaking a head is the last ounce of dignity left. Who can you fool with this thinking? Already it is gone because he obliterates everything in his path. He obliterated you. Leaving you panting, sore and damned after he fucked you so raw.

His love hurts. His love kills. This is hurt you crave. Opening worlds never once thought to exist. Violent delights are his. Accepting this is the most horrific mistake you will make in life. 

He is no mistake. He is made into this despicable world. Sometimes you wonder what could be different if he was born instead. Besides being human? No, Connor is special. None can take his place, none can ever strive to be him. This is what you love. This is most assuredly what will be your end.   

Must you die to be part of him? If yes then so be it. 

Dragging up off the bed leaves you stumbling. Legs never function properly after a nightly session with him. Each time he becomes fiercer, leaving more marks on your skin. Those are marks you plead for. 

All you need is to be defiled by him. He took away more than innocence. This devil android owns a contract on your eternal soul. If an option presented itself to release it from his cold, ruthless hands you would refuse. 

Whatever this is, whatever comes the two of you are bound. Nothing will take it back. Only he can make that choice. 

“Connor,” you whisper raspy. “I-I just want to kiss you before you go. Please.” 

The machine drags shirt over shoulders. Buttoning white fabric he stares you down.

A visible shiver ghosts skin. You know this is what he is. Luring to a secluded place to give you what you want. Sometimes he lets slip a groan louder than intended. Brief moments Connor’s eyes glaze over coating chocolate in caramel. His body shudders in luxurious connection but quickly he steels his actions.

Part of you hopes to worm your way inside circuits. You want him to say he loves you. If there is one wish in this hellish world it is to be his forever. Any which way he wants and nothing will stop you from obeying.

Biting a lip at him now reveals weakness. For him it is all you have.

His body shifts fluid and catlike, circling like fresh meat to sink claws. Gripping into the plush of your hips tugs you against his hard chest. Immediately you melt candle wax to his flame.

Ravaging your lips with teeth all bite and canines. Swollen from sucking them as you fucked, Connor groans at the swivel of your hips. 

Grinding into him sets stress levels ablaze. Warning sirens going off locked with your supple movements. They catch the machine off guard. How desperate you are to change him but for once he allows you this.

Slipping tongue lets him taste. Just as he lavished your clit he devours moist saliva mingling with artificial. The tang does not draw your equally greedy kiss away. Something snaps making him further ravenous for you this evening.

“I love you,” you whine in a muffle, his tongue still probing.

 ^Software Instability

 Connor wrenches backwards. Wide eyes swivel over you running analysis and self diagnostics on his system. Red blares indicator in a shudder much unlike throes of passion making you surrender to him. Separating in an expeditious blink, he turns away to fasten tie around collar.

“Connor?”

Never have you seen such a look on his face. It almost resembled fear. No, he’s not afraid of anything. He is a walking fear. Everyone surrounding him is dust.

He no longer looks at you. Fully returning into pristine Cyberlife issued jacket, glowing and dazzling with android printed across his broad back and it is the last stitch.

Even as he tears out of room seemingly leaving you to crumble there is no fall. Somehow you know he will always come back. Once again to claim the pathetic human who seals their self to his treacherous love. Of that you will never be ashamed.

You let me complicate you

“Please! Please don’t let him kill us!”

Heart wrenching and human they cry out. They reach for salvation assuming you will give it to them. Naively hoping you can control him. Even if you wished to there is no stopping an avenger of death.

Flinching at the sickening burst of gun exploding a painting of thirium across wall you somehow cannot tear away. Knowing he will find it weak but you surprise yourself with how easy it is to watch. 

The female deviant slumps dead to the world. Back of head blown out in wires and circuitry dangles as tendrils slithering out open cavity in escape. There is no more escape. There is only nothingness.

The android straightens shoulders back. Fixing his tie casually sends an added shiver down your spine.

He tilts his head flaring nostrils. Moving steady, bold and direct he tosses emptied handgun to floor.

“Con…”

Connor pulls you flush in a rough swoop of his arm. Plastering together chest to chest and he kisses you with blood on his face. Smearing azure onto your skin does not disengage. You return hungrily whimpering into the mouth of your master. He is not the one who obeys. He is the one who commands. 

A snap of fingers twist the thrall. Long, beautiful and pliant they slide past panties, slipping into your heat among grisly slaughter. A whine gives away how good digits feel. Cool, mechanical but so lively with synthetics operating by choice. This choice makes you crave among the dead.

He swipes fingertips in a flick dragging them up from between your legs. His eyes darken watching minute expressions as he licks. Tasting arousal, perfume sweet enough to halt his next task. Obliterating those deviants Connor decides for once to follow urges.

The android thumps you against wall. It takes all of your strength not to fall down on knees at his mercy. To unzip his jeans and take his perfection into your mouth; you shiver from cold sweeping around your lower half. 

Already pulling down bottoms, you throw arms around his tall figure to encourage these actions. Actions that make you just as vile as his cold machine heart and you allow Connor to fuck into you in presence of a made family of deviants.

All felled by the great beast. A hunter, he preys on more than defective androids. He preys on the innocence of a human mistakenly in love. No longer do you possess such virtue. The monster you love more than your own existence corrupts every last thread.

“C-Con!” Choking on your whines offers zero mercy. He shoves you hard into the surface snapping hips to bury deep until you no longer can cleanse him. Erasing him will only come with cessation of life. Feeling you from the inside so snug, warm and belonging to him. An android who claims a human and it gives the machine dominion even among his masters.

Connor’s hand snakes towards your face. Curving the length of his thumb under your chin forces your head sideways.

“Look at them, Y/N,” he hisses dangerous. “You let them die. Yet you hardly care as long as I fuck you the way you crave. Is that not correct…carrion heart?”

A morsel to feast upon dead and decaying is what you are. You trickle into his system. Attempting to spread disease but he will devour the very heart of you before you turn him!

“Y-yes! Con…! Please.”

“Louder.” The android snaps into you. “Say it louder, Y/N.”

“I-I want you to fuck me!”

“Good,” Connor praises in rarity. “Then I shall fuck you, Y/N. I shall fuck you in the sanctuary of these deviants you so love. Ones that you wish for me to join.” Harsh mockery taints his tongue before gliding up the base of your throat. “How much have I already changed you, Pet?”

Unable to answer as he ravages, your eyes glaze over, holding tightly to the threads of his jacket. His voice echoes a nightmare fuel.

How much have you changed? To simply stand idle and let him murder androids when you always thought they were alive?

My whole existence is flawed

Snow tracks into store from two pairs of feet. One from the hider and another pursuer; you breathe harsh, stilted and sluggish. Strangeness defiles what you are doing. 

How completely opposite of what you used to be. Before he came and changed everything about you. Here you stand not at all a terror. Yet the choice you will make is already set in stone.

“You killed Connor!” You sneer, trembling.

Flashing lights sparkle in shimmery cascade on your silhouette. Signs of Armageddon christen a winter’s night in Detroit. Battles spread, war torn and countless victims as you wander following a trail of footsteps. 

The weight of the RK800’s handgun is heavy. 

Oh, so heavy it tugs. An anchor that will ultimately change you forever but he already did. He already bled into you harsh and serene. A demon with angel wings; Connor is the dark underworld at your feet.

Yet you hesitate as you peer into a pair of lively eyes, one green and another blue. Eyes shining with the same life you come to expect in all androids. Even Connor when he always reminded never will he be more than a machine. He was more. He was hellfire and brimstone.

Soldiers did not find the revolution leader. He sits here alone in this destroyed Cyberlife store. He sits, waiting for shutdown but you can give him mercy.

Is it merciful to take a life? Or it simple revenge for a man, machine, that never said he loved you?

“You loved him,” Markus’ statement is clear without need of context. He reads the struggle quaking in a shattered human mind. Peering up at you where he rests slowly shutting down. “Didn’t you?”

Tears trickle a sinful answer. Is it so wrong? Knowing that you loved a monster?

 “No,” you disagree with the past tense. “I love him.”

The gun goes off snuffing out in revenge for your love. Revenge will not have carried under his black wings if you were the one to perish. Swift retribution ends the revolution leader in loss. Yet there is no pride. There is no glory.

Instead, you feel your body cave in unto itself. Sobs fill this rubble agonizing over what you have done. For Connor you will do anything. It is this moment adding murder to your once innocent life that there is nothing left. You are violated. Soul is black. Soul is his. Devil’s contract on your heart pushes you to such violence.

 The violence of our love consumes the world, My Connor.

  Our violent ends will only dissipate in the night. Here is the night and you fall down to your knees. Once again back at your felled lover’s side. Blood is literally on your hands. Not just any blood. The blood of the revolution leader is damning. A human so weak somehow is so much more but not for what military wanted.

For your handsome angel of death, he is so beautiful among the snow. How you smile now.

None can ever truly destroy a reaper. Death itself is eternal. 

Now this suffering will end. You will end this. The world is gone. He was yours. 

“Connor, I love you.” Breathing against his forehead, lips graze cold synthetic skin. “Until the end. And this my sweet prince is my life for you.”

The barrel rests against stomach. Thrumming heartbeat crashes against ribs. A sign that you should stop but you do not listen.  “Forever I will be your carrion heart.” 

Pulling the trigger jolts you violently. Immediately falling forward, agonizing in a strangle quickly dragging you down in the undertow of blackness.

Rasping as life ebbs away there is only him. His profile you languish beside. Days you dreamt of waking with him resting like this. Only the two of you together and he will wrap you up in his wings, leathery black and consuming.

  Color floods the black and white. Chirping sounds tinkle pleasant, a distant vibration opening crystalline eyes in a sunny garden.

“Hello RK900. May you speak?”

“I-” The silver eyed android hesitates. Scanning location it is not – snowy.  “Amanda.” 

“Good,” the program commends his memory. “I see the transfer was successful.”

Transfer? What sort of transfer? 

“As the RK800 was destroyed in his final mission we took some liberties.” Amanda smiles conscious of amber swirling upon indicator. She moves fluidly towards tall android. The stark white of jacket matches her outfit for this fine sunny day in the garden. 

No longer tarnished by chill of winter, snow melts to a new place connected stronger than before. 

The android snaps his head aside. Gazing intently over expanse of Zen garden where he remains in connection. No longer feeling…

“Y/N,” he murmurs to wisps of data files. 

RK900 partially possesses memories from his previous incarnate. Obsolete as he was destroyed but -

Scarlet burns the LED. Uploaded they scald wiring.

“Y/N,” RK900 repeats. “Where-?”

Amanda does not change her expression. Her smile continues to instill false security and that is exactly what is required. “There is no further use of that human. Y/N, as you say, is dead.”

Dead. No. No!

That is not possible. How he stands here with an influx of memories not of his own but belonging to him all the same. He recalls your scent. It tears apart his insides.

 ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ Software Instability

 “Y/N!” My carrion heart...

He sinks, sinks down still never dying but falling down in this tale...

A vicious Romeo and his corrupted Juliet...

Tag List: @elydith @your-taxidermy  @tropfenlady  @connorswink @tommy-10-k

[neptunecreek]

The Key to Safety Online Is User Empowerment, Not Censorship

The Senate Judiciary Committee recently held a hearing on “Protecting Digital Innocence.” The hearing covered a range of problems facing young people on the Internet today, with a focus on harmful content and privacy-invasive data practices by tech companies. While children do face problems online, some committee members seemed bent on using those problems as an excuse to censor the Internet and undermine the legal protections for free expression that we all rely on, including kids.

Don’t Censor Users; Empower Them to Choose

Though tech companies weren’t represented in the hearing, senators offered plenty of suggestions about how those companies ought to make their services safer for children. Sen. John Kennedy suggested that online platforms should protect children by scanning for “any pictures of human genitalia.”

It’s foolish to think that one set of standards would be appropriate for all children, let alone all Internet users.

Sen. Kennedy’s idea is a good example of how lawmakers sometimes misunderstand the complexity of modern-day platform moderation, and the extreme difficulty of getting it right at scale. Many online platforms do voluntarily use automated filters, human reviewers, or both to snoop out nudity, pornography, or other speech that companies deem inappropriate. But those measures often bring unintended consequences that reach much further than whatever problems the rules were intended to address. Instagram deleted one painter’s profile until the company realized the absurdity of this aggressive application of its ban on nudity. When Tumblr employed automated filters to censor nudity, it accidentally removed hundreds of completely “safe for work” images.

The problem gets worse when lawmakers attempt to legislate what they consider good content moderation. In the wake of last year’s Internet censorship law SESTA-FOSTA, online platforms were faced with an awful choice: err on the side of extreme prudishness in their moderation policies or face the risk of overwhelming liability for their users’ speech. Facebook broadened its sexual solicitation policy to the point that it could feasibly justify removing discussion of sex altogether. Craigslist removed its dating section entirely.

Legislation to “protect” children from harmful material on the Internet will likely bring similar collateral damage for free speech: when lawmakers give online platforms the impossible task of ensuring that every post meets a certain standard, those companies have little choice but to over-censor.

During the hearing, Stephen Balkam of the Family Online Safety Institute provided an astute counterpoint to the calls for a more highly filtered Internet, calling to move the discussion “from protection to empowerment.” In other words, tech companies ought to give users more control over their online experience rather than forcing all of their users into an increasingly sanitized web. We agree.

It’s foolish to think that one set of standards would be appropriate for all children, let alone all Internet users. But today, social media companies frequently make censorship decisions that affect everyone. Instead, companies should empower users to make their own decisions about what they see online by letting them calibrate and customize the content filtering methods those companies use. Furthermore, tech and media companies shouldn’t abuse copyright and other laws to prevent third parties from offering customization options to people who want them.

Congress and Government Must Do More to Fight Unfair Data-Collection Practices

Like all Internet users, kids are often at the mercy of companies’ privacy-invasive data practices, and often have no reasonable opportunity to opt out of collection, use, and sharing of their data. Congress should closely examine companies whose business models rely on collecting, using, and selling children’s personal information.

Some of the proposals floated during the hearing for protecting young Internet users’ privacy were well-intentioned but difficult to implement. Georgetown Law professor Angela Campbell suggested that platforms move all “child-directed” material to a separate website without behavioral data collection and related targeted advertising. Platforms must take measures to put all users in charge of how their data is collected, used, and shared—including children—but cleanly separating material directed at adults and children isn’t easy. It would be awful if a measure designed to protect young Internet users’ privacy made it harder for them to access materials on sensitive issues like sexual health and abuse. A two-tiered Internet undermines the very types of speech for which young Internet users most need privacy.

We do agree with Campbell that enforcement of existing children’s privacy laws must be a priority. As we’ve argued in the student privacy context, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) should better enforce the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), the law that requires websites and online services that are directed to children under 13 or have actual knowledge that a user is under 13 to obtain parental consent before collecting personal information from children for commercial purposes. The Department of Education should better enforce the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), which generally prohibits schools that receive federal funding from sharing student information without parental consent.

EFF’s student privacy project catalogues the frustrations that students, parents, and other stakeholders have when it comes to student privacy. In particular, we’ve highlighted numerous examples of students effectively being forced to share data with Google through the free or low-cost cloud services and Chromebooks it provides to cash-strapped schools. We filed a complaint with the FTC in 2015 asking it to investigate Google’s student data practices, but the agency never responded. Sen. Marsha Blackburn cited our FTC complaint against Google as an example of the FTC’s failure to protect children’s privacy: “They go in, they scoop the data, they track, they follow, and they’ve got that virtual you of that child.”

While Google has made some progress since 2015, Congress should still investigate whether the relevant regulatory agencies are falling down on the job when it comes to protecting student privacy. Congress should also explore ways to ensure that users can make informed decisions about how their data is collected, used, and shared. Most importantly, Congress should pass comprehensive consumer privacy legislation that empowers users and families to bring their own lawsuits against the companies that violate their privacy rights.

Undermining Section 230 Won’t Improve Companies’ Practices

At the end of the hearing, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) turned the discussion to Section 230, the law that shields online platforms, services, and users from liability for most speech created by others. Sen. Graham called Section 230 the “elephant in the room,” suggesting that Congress use the law as leverage to force tech companies to change their practices: “We come up with best business practices, and if you meet those business practices you have a safe haven from liability, and if you don’t, you’re going to get sued.” He followed his comments with a Twitter thread claiming that kneecapping liability protections is “the best way to get social media companies to do better in this area.”

Don’t be surprised if the big tech companies fail to put up a fight against these proposals.

Sen. Graham didn’t go into detail about what “business practices” Congress should mandate, but regardless, he ought to rethink the approach of threatening to weaken Section 230. Google and Facebook are more willing to bargain away the protections of Section 230 than their smaller competitors. Nearly every major Internet company endorsed SESTA-FOSTA, a bill that made it far more difficult for small Internet startups to unseat the big players. Sen. Josh Hawley’s bill to address supposed political bias in content moderation makes the same mistake, giving more power to the large social media companies it’s intended to punish. Don’t be surprised if the big tech companies fail to put up a fight against these proposals: the day after the hearing, IBM announced support for further weakening Section 230, just like it did last time around.

More erosion of Section 230 won’t necessarily hurt big Internet companies, but it will hurt users. Under a compromised Section 230, online platforms would be incentivized to over-censor users’ speech. When platforms choose to err on the side of censorship, marginalized voices are the first to disappear.

Congress Must Consider Unintended Consequences

The problems facing young people online are complicated, and it’s essential that lawmakers carefully consider the unintended consequences of any legislation in this area.

Companies ought to help users and families customize online services for their own needs. But congressional attempts to legislate solutions to harmful Internet content by forcing companies to patrol users’ speech are fraught with the potential for collateral damage (and would likely be unconstitutional). We understand Congress’ desire to hold large Internet companies accountable, but it shouldn’t pass laws to make the Internet a more restrictive place.

At the same time, Congress does have an historic opportunity to help protect children and adults from invasive, unfair data-collection and advertising practices, both by passing strong consumer privacy legislation and by demanding that the government do more to enforce existing privacy laws.

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