#kosa law

[silly-little-noodlee]

Many people have recently been discussing the KOSA law that is most likely going into effect in 2 days. If it does pass, I will no longer be active here or on main. I just want to say that this community is the safest I've felt in a long time, and I made so many amazing friends that I may never see again after Sunday. I've been able to be myself with very little fear, and I don't think I'd get the same safety in most other communities.

Rant below (CW: Slight mentions of suicide, skip to the other red text to avoid it)

I remember when I made my first real friend online back in October 2020. I was playing Human Fall Flat on a random server and I met 2 people, Cyan and Ram (not real nicknames). All 3 of us were big fans of Undertale at the time and we friended each other on Steam. One thing lead to another and I was in a large friend group. I also met someone named Spice (also not real nickname) who became my best friend for 2 and a half years. I'm no longer in contact with anyone in that friend group but that group basically saved my life. While I knew them I was going through a lot and I nearly attempted multiple times, but they were what saved me.

While the internet isn't perfect, and it did cause some of my trauma, it did so much for me and without it I would most likely be a carbon copy of my mom. I wouldn't know anything about myself and this might sound like an exaggeration, but there's a chance I would be dead. Social media helped me discover my interests, my identity, and pretty much everything about me, and I've learned so much the 7 years I've had access to the internet.

End of longish rant and TW

If KOSA really does pass, I will lose a lot of what has made me myself, I'll lose contact with a lot of my friends, and I don't know if I'll be prepared for it. However, this does not mean I won't stop spreading awareness. I'll fight until the very last second.

This really may be a forever or at least temporary goodbye, so I just want anyone I'm strictly friends with online to know I appreciate them so much. I'll be replaying every memory in my head for as my brain allows me to hold onto them. Every time I made my friends laugh, every fake argument, every game of Putt Party, every time my art was rudely eaten, and all the amazing experiences I had along the way.

As a potential last contribute to Tumblr, I present Mums the Clown.

[noodles-the-cloudy-clown]

Let's get this to 25,000. Please if you see this, sign it, you don't even need to include your IP. It will help.

[lokiinmediasideblog]

If you care about activism and DON'T WANT TO USE YOUR GOVERNMENT ID TO ACCESS THE INTERNET please contact your representatives.

THEY WILL BLOCK CRITICISM OF ISNOTREAL, SEX ED, LGBTQIA+ TOPICS, CRITICAL RACE THEORY, HISTORY, NSFW CONTENT, ETC.

FOR REPUBLICAN REPS:

FOR DEMOCRAT REPS:

Image captions credit to @fr0ggs

[image id 1: black text on a white background reading:

"My name is (blank underlines) and I'm one of your constitutents. I'm calling to urge you to vote NO on KOSA - the Kids Online Safety Act. The bill's sponsors claim it will protect kids by placing a duty of care on online platforms to prevent anything that could be harmful, but who decides what's harmful and what's free speech?

(next line) The power to decide has been ceded to the FTC. FTC leadership is made by presidential appointment. Current president Lina Khan, a Biden appointee, will have one agenda, but what happens when the someone even farther left than Joe Biden is in the Oval Office?

(next line) Imagine a President Gavin Newsom or Letitia James: Do you trust their appointee not to abuse this enforcement power to scrub information about your children's second amendment rights from the internet?

(next line) KOSA claims to protect kids, but it's poorly designed and will absolutely, without question, (underlined) harm (end underline) children, adults, and anyone who values free speech online. Vote No on KOSA." /end id.]

[image id 2: black text on a white background reading:

"My name is and I'm one of your constituents. I'm calling to urge you to vote NO on KOSA - the Kids Online Safety Act. The bill's sponsors claim it will protect kids by placing a duty of care on online platforms to prevent anything that could be harmful.

(next line) The power to decide what's harmful has been ceded to the FTC. FTC leadership is made by presidential appointment. Current president Lina Khan may proceed fairly, but what happens when the next Donald Trump is in the Oval Office? What if it's Trump himself? Do you trust a Trump appointee not to abuse this enforcement power?

(next line) KOSA claims to protect kids, but it's poorly designed and, given time, it will absolutely and without question, (underlined) harm (end underline) LGBTQ children, adults, and anyone who needs information on reproductive health or abortion.

(next line) KOSA author, Senator Marsha Blackburn, said she introduced KOSA in part - and I quote - "to protect minor children from the transgender in our society." The Heritage Foundation proudly said they'll apply pressure through KOSA to block information about abortion, reproductive health, & LGBTQ issues.

(next line) Vote NO on KOSA."

[sunny-day-jack-official]

URGENT! Stop KOSA!

Hey all, this is BáiYù and Sauce here with something that isn't necessarily SnaccPop related, but it's important nonetheless. For those of you who follow US politics, The Kids Online Safety Act passed the Senate yesterday and is moving forward.

This is bad news for everyone on the internet, even outside of the USA.

What is KOSA?

While it's officially known as "The Kids Online Safety Act," KOSA is an internet censorship masquerading as another "protect the children" bill, much in the same way SESTA/FOSTA claimed that it would stop illegal sex trafficking but instead hurt sex workers and their safety. KOSA was originally introduced by Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass. and Bill Cassidy, R-La. as a way to update the 1998 Children’s Online Privacy Act, raising the age of consent for data collection to 16 among other things. You can read the original press release of KOSA here, while you can read the full updated text of the bill on the official USA Congress website.

You can read the following articles about KOSA here:

EFF: The Kids Online Safety Act is Still A Huge Danger to Our Rights Online

CyberScoop: Children’s online safety bills clear Senate hurdle despite strong civil liberties pushback

TeenVogue: The Kids Online Safety Act Would Harm LGBTQ+ Youth, Restrict Access to Information and Community

The quick TL;DR:

KOSA authorizes an individual state attorneys general to decide what might harm minors

Websites will likely preemptively remove and ban content to avoid upsetting state attorneys generals (this will likely be topics such as abortion, queerness, feminism, sexual content, and others)

In order for a platform to know which users are minors, they'll require a more invasive age and personal data verification method

Parents will be granted more surveillance tools to see what their children are doing on the web

KOSA is supported by Christofascists and those seeking to harm the LGBTQ+ community

If a website holding personally identifying information and government documents is hacked, that's a major cybersecurity breach waiting to happen

What Does This Mean?

You don't have to look far to see or hear about the violence being done to the neurodivergent and LGBTQ+ communities worldwide, who are oftentimes one and the same. Social media sites censoring discussion of these topics would stand to do even further harm to folks who lack access to local resources to understand themselves and the hardships they face; in addition, the fact that websites would likely store personally identifying information and government documents means the death of any notion of privacy.

Sex workers and those living in certain countries already are at risk of losing their ways of life, living in a reality where their online activities are closely surveilled; if KOSA officially becomes law, this will become a reality for many more people and endanger those at the fringes of society even worse than it already is.

Why This Matters Outside of The USA

I previously mentioned SESTA/FOSTA, which passed and became US law in 2018. This bill enabled many of the anti-adult content attitudes that many popular websites are taking these days as well as the tightening of restrictions laid down by payment processors. Companies and sites hosted in the USA have to follow US laws even if they're accessible worldwide, meaning that folks overseas suffer as well.

What Can You Do?

If you're a US citizen, contact your Senators and tell them that you oppose KOSA. This can be as an email, letter, or phone call that you make to your state Senator.

For resources on how to do so, view the following links:

https://www.badinternetbills.com/#kosa

https://www.stopkosa.com/

https://linktr.ee/stopkosa

If you live outside of the US or cannot vote, the best thing you can do is sign the petition at the Stop KOSA website, alert your US friends about what's happening, and raise some noise.

Above all else, don’t panic. By staying informed by what’s going on, you can prepare for the legal battles ahead.

[bmoreisapunkrocktown]

For those who are looking to do something about KOSA (Kids Online Safety Act), it is important that you know that KOSA is not a law by itself. If you look for S1409, it died in committee.

All of these laws are being passed under the umbrella of S.2073 - Eliminate Useless Reports Act of 2024. The actual text of what was passed regarding KOSA is here and the roll call of shame is here.

If you are planning to contact your rep, please contact them about Eliminate Useless Reports Act of 2024, because that is what they will be reading and debating.

[suncatstudiosyt]

!!⚠️ HUGE ALERT ON KOSA ⚠️!!

KOSA is being voted in Senate this Thursday!!! Call now! Sign everything you can now!!

[nats-revival]

Not they tryna reenact KOSA… anyway yall, here’s why KOSA is bad!!

If you don’t already know, KOSA, or Kids Online Safety Act is a bill that was proposed to keep children safe on the internet. You might ask ‘why is this bill bad if it’s in favor of supporting the safety of children online’? Well, according to stopkosa.com, it puts pressure on platforms to add even MORE filters on anything they think is inappropriate for children. This is especially harmful for LBGTQIA+ youth because the knowledge about this topic would be censored, as well as knowledge on suicide prevention and LGBTQIA+ support groups. Do you see how this an issue? For those children who are wanting to learn more about these topics they’d be turned away because of this bill. It would also be likely that it’ll allow the shutdown of websites that allow them to learn about race, sexuality and gender.

This bill would also add more internet surveillance for all users across all social media platforms. It would expand the use of age verification and parental monitoring controls. These things in itself are already very invasive, but doesn’t take into consideration the children who live in unsafe environments where they are domestically abused and/or are trying to escape these situations. To add my two cents onto this, I strongly believe that the KOSA bill is an unnecessary violation of our first amendment rights (if you’re American), and doesn’t really make the internet any more safer. It actually makes it more unusable for youth. Hypothetically, if this bill were to be passed, then this would make social media unusable for literally anybody. To censor content from the youth about wanting to learn about their identity is extremely harmful. Blocking them from accessing resources that may prove as helpful in their scenarios is outlandish and unneeded. We try to shelter our youth so much to the point where we try to boil them down to only being with their parents want them to be and also not being able to let them learn and explore about other things that they may want to identify themselves with. This is very harmful.

This is a list of companies who are saying no to KOSA ..

• Access Now

• ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union)

• Black and Pink National

• Center for Democracy & Technology

• COLAGE

• Defending Rights & Dissent

• Don’t Delete Art

• EducateUS: SIECUS In Action

• Electronic Frontier Foundation

• Equality Arizona

• Equality California

• Equality Michigan

• Equality New Mexico

• Equality Texas

• Fair Wisconsin

• Fairness Campaign

• Fight for the Future

• Free Speech Coalition

• Freedom Network USA

• Indivisible Eastside

• Indivisible Plus Washington

• Internet Society

• Kairos

• Lexington Pride Center

• LGBT Technology Partnership

• Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition

• Media Justice

• National Coalition Against Censorship

• Open Technology Institute

• OutNebraska

• PDX Privacy

• Presente.org

• Reframe Health and Justice

• Restore The Fourth

• SIECUS: Sex Ed for Social Change

• SWOP Behind Bars 

• TAKE

• TechFreedom

• The 6:52 Project Foundation, Inc.

• The Sex Workers Project of the Urban Justice Center

• Transgender Education Network of Texas

• TransOhio

• University of Michigan Dearborn – Muslim Student Association 

• URGE

• WA People’s Privacy

• Woodhull Freedom Foundation

There is something you can do to stop the KOSA bill from being passed! On the website I linked, there is a petition. All you have to do is fill out the information and it’ll send off an email for you. The email reads as follows:

I’m writing to urge you to reject the Kids Online Safety Act, a misguided bill that would put vulnerable young people at risk. KOSA would fail to address the root issues related to kid’s safety online. Instead, it would endanger some of the most vulnerable people in our society while undermining human rights and children’s privacy. The bill would result in widespread internet censorship by pressuring platforms to use incredibly broad “content filters” and giving state Attorneys General the power to decide what content kids should and shouldn’t have access to online. This power could be abused in a number of ways and be politicized to censor information and resources. KOSA would also likely lead to the greater surveillance of children online by requiring platforms to gather data to verify user identity. There is a way to protect kids and all people online from egregious data abuse and harmful content targeting: passing a strong Federal data privacy law that prevents tech companies from collecting so much sensitive data about all of us in the first place, and gives individuals the ability to sue companies that misuse their data. KOSA, although well-meaning, must not move forward. Please protect privacy and stop the spread of censorship online by opposing KOSA.

The website also gives you like a format of what you can say if you chose to call your representatives. If after reading this post, you feel inclined to do something then I would say just go ahead and do it. My first time learning about KOSA was today immediately after seeing the post I felt inclined to send my lawmakers an email. Please try to help when you can and this will only take a few minutes so I think this is something that you can consider. This post is getting a little long now, so I’ll stop here. There are more resources online if you would like to learn more about the cons of this KOSA bill, thank you for reading.

[helios-co]

[bigmack2go]

Idk why i notice these things but Ben Cook does always play the “gay guy who isn’t actually gay”??

Like paterno: everyone calls him the f slur for something that happened TO him. (I’m not gonna get into paterno because if i do, i’ll never be able to stop) they think he’s gay. He is not.

That one law and order episode: he gets called the f slur yet again (this time by his father) even tho he is actually straight

Original sin: everyone thinks he’s gay. He isnt.

The penguin to be fair i haven’t seen this yet so i can’t say 100% but he *is* killed by smn who usually kills women??? But that doesn’t really count tbh…

Anyway

Illinoise: definitely some sort of *something* between him and henry. Also henry thought he might have a chance with carl before shelby cane into the picture so I definitely think that counts

In happiness for beginners i’m also 70% sure that in the books, they think he’s gay, then turns out he isnt

And then theres newsies

He like,,, he’s gay…. But it’s not canon. Yes yes. So thT counts too. Absolutely. Totally. I absolutely make sense rn-

Tbh westside story is the only one that i can’t find a clue of him being gay.

Aanyway the point of this post is not what you think it is.

I will make it seem a lot worse than it actually is, simply because I don’t know how to express what i’m trynna express otherwise. But that doesn’t mean that this isnt an issue. (I just wanted to make it clear first)

It’s about the fact that he’s straight. And that straight men can still “look” or “behave” twink-y whatever that means in your association.

It’s also about the fact that he keeps getting casted as that: a heterosexual twink. Because apparently casters in this century still believe in those stereotypes that-obviously- arent true

[kaurwreck]

If you're following KOSA, you should also be following state legislation, which is much more rapidly adopting tech regulation related to child safety than Congress. For reference, in 2023, 13 states adopted 23 laws related to child safety online.

Even if your locality hasn't adopted similar tech regulation, online platforms, apps, and websites are rarely operating in only some states. When regulations become patchwork, it's often easier for companies to adopt policies reflective of the most stringent regulations relevant to their service for all users, rather than try to implement different policies for users based on each user's location.

I know this because that's what happened when patchwork data privacy regulations began swelling — which is why many webites have privacy policies reflective of the GDPR that apply even to users outside of Europe. I also know this because I'm a tech lawyer — I'm the wet cat drafting policies for and advising tech and video game companies on how to navigate messy, convoluted, and patchwork US regulatory obligations.

So, when I say this is how companies are thinking about this, I mean this is how my coworkers and I have to think about this. And because the US is such a large market, this could impact users outside the US, too.

[thr4shit]

Sorry, the clown's gonna be political for a moment. But PLEASE read. This is important.

Hey, any fellow (unfortunate) Americans who are sitting on pins and needles over the KOSA vote, you can get updates on it here:

https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/1409

(at least I think so...)

Stay safe, and fuck KOSA.

Do everything you can to get your senators to vote NO.

(I can't provide the fucking resources right now unfortunately, but do whatever you can, please. You can find resources in the KOSA tags, including call scripts, information, etc. PLEASE use them.)

Long story short, if KOSA gets passed, I'm fucked. In fact. We'd all be fucked.

Y'all are fucking great, don't let this bullshit get through. Please.

(I hate being political, but this is important *I am NOT saying other political and humanitarian, etc issues aren't important, I support 🍉🇵🇸 and all others under threat in these bullshit times [but I don't post about it as I don't want to draw the attention, *which I know, sounds like such bullshit. I'm scared already for my safety on a day to day basis, I didn't want to make myself more of a fucking target* but I do donate and try my best to help with the limited shit I can do. Outside of here I do as much as I can to advocate.]* I am only posting about KOSA now because if I don't fucking say this then what the fuck am I doing? KOSA is unconstitutional, it's censorship and will strip all those struggling to find safe spaces and help of their access to already dwindling amounts of sources. It will hide and disable access to places to help people who are in crisis, and will make us as a country even more ignorant than we are already. We CAN'T afford to allow this.)

Tell your senators AND house representatives to vote NO on KOSA. It WILL affect you.

[loredwy]

Mmmmm okay but honest question tho

The KOSA regulations would need to be implemented even if the companies offer their services only outside of the country? 🤔 And if they are established on another country and offer its services to usa, they need to implement the regulations right?

Because like, I was thinking of how mihoyo moved from china to avoid the censorship regulations globally, for example

And like, couldnt then social media companies preassure the goverment about doing that too, then

Like, even if they had to censor stuff for usa, they would be losing a lot of potential interactions because of the content theyre hiding, so if they had to censor everything in case of being established in usa (even if it is content being shown outside of the country), wouldnt it be better for them to just move the company to another country then. To continue having those extra interactions from "censored posts" shown to other countries.

Or even, if the cost of filtering the posts was too high, its possible some companies would choose to not offer their services to usa anymore. Idk how taxes to big companies work in those cases, but that would be a loss for them in the long term too right.

Like, isnt the whole bill a bad idea even commercially?

And couldnt it happen that companies publish a statement about getting out of the country in case the regulations were stablished?

[noodles-the-cloudy-clown]

It's absolutely wild that the US government is basically saying "Hey we're gonna censor the entire internet, make it an unsafe space, and were going to spy on you"

I'm going to fight until the last second but this really is a prepare for the worst hope for the best kinda situation.

[geminni5]

Read this article to know why KOSA is bad.

It is just serious censorship pretending to be caring for children's safety.

ALSO HOW TF CAN SHE SAY THAT EDUCATION ABOUT RACE DISCRIMINATION IS HARMFUL FOR THE CHILDREN??????

This is all just a trojan horse for preventing people from talking about important issues like gun laws , abortions , trans rights , racial discrimination and a lot more in the name of protecting children.

This will affect anyone on the internet regardless of their nationality.

Please spread the word!

STOP KOSA

[suncatstudiosyt]

--!!HUGE RED ALLERT ON KOSA!!--

KOSA is being Marked-up on THURSDAY!! PLEASE go to Stopkosa.com and do everything you can to stop this bill

If it gets passed, everyone's privacy online WILL be gone

Latest news from Omarsbigsister on tiktok:

Alternative link:

[charliejaneanders]

[T]his would enable a state AG to pressure online services with the threat of litigation if they did not block or remove content... that the AG asserted could give rise to one of the listed harms. As states across the country consider laws to limit minors’ and adults’ access to information related to gender-affirming care, menstruation and reproductive healthcare, and Black history, KOSA would supercharge state AGs’ ability to coerce online service providers into blocking access to such information.

The Center for Democracy and Technology explains how Republican state AGs could use KOSA to remove anything they don't like from the internet