KOSA, the “Kids Online Safety Act”, sounds good. Who doesn’t want to keep kids safe? But as over 90 LGBTQ and human rights organizations said last year, KOSA would harm LGBTQ+ youth especially, and could be weaponized by Attorneys General to censor online resources and information for queer and trans youth, people seeking reproductive healthcare, and more.
And it’s not just a hypothetical concern! This article from a couple months ago includes a screenshot of a Heritage Foundation tweet talking about how they’ll KOSA to attack trans-related content – because after all, they think that censoring trans-related content is “protecting kids”.
So if you’re in the US, please contact your Senators and ask them to oppose KOSA.
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if you prefer the phone, you can call the US Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121. The bill number is S. 1409. Your message doesn’t have to be fancy: “KOSA won’t keep kids safe” is enough if they’re Republicans; if they’re Democrats you can add “and it will harm LGBTQ+ teens”.
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or, https://resist.bot/ lets you contact your legislators by texting or using Messenger, Apple Messages, WhatsApp .
As an elderly person who has been online 30+ years, I am so unbelievably exhausted by the endless sea of power hungry technophobes that somehow float to the top of government.
I hate to go for the tired old saw of ‘no more old people’, especially since we have a fresh crop of younger (under 50) people who are just as stupid, venal and completely lost around anything more technologically complex than a cup of water… but maybe we should stop electing and re-electing people who are old enough to have considered retirement in the private sector a decade or two prior?
As for the Heritage Foundation. Other than the very small handful of ‘reasonable’ conservative groups (aka those being targeted by the GQP as a whole such as Log Cabin Republicans), they’re all going mask off. And have been since 2016.