So you’d think the Kids Online Safety Act would protect kids from predatory apps, gross manipulative advertisers, content mills, gambling addiction, and marketing-based body dysmorphia, right?
HAHA
WRONG
Wikipedia Summary
Critics, including the EFF, note that the bill’s definition of harm toward minors leaves room for broad interpretation by the state attorneys general who are charged with enforcing the bill,[23][24] likening it to the FOSTA-SESTA bills.[25] The bill was revised in February 2024 as to shift the enforcement of the “duty of care” aspects of the bill from state attorneys to the Federal Trade Commission, though states would still be able to enforce other parts of the bill.[26]
The conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation wrote that the initial 2022 iteration of KOSA did not go far enough, as the bill did not explicitly list transgender health care as a harm.[27][28] The inclusion of the phrase “consistent with evidence-informed medical information”[29] could be used by attorneys general to cherry-pick anti-trans sources as justification since there is no definition of what “evidence-based medical information” can include.[30] Senator Blackburn, co-author of the bill, has argued that some education about racism and the civil rights movement overlaps with critical race theory, which she labels a “dangerous ideology” that can inflict “mental and emotional damage” upon children.[31] She has also explicitly stated that the bill will be used to censor content involving the transgender community.[32] EFF columnist Jason Kelly states that in the framework provided by the bill, that KOSA could be used to censor education about racism in schools since it could be claimed that it impacts mental health.[33]
In September 2023, a video from the Family Policy Alliance showed Blackburn saying that there should be a priority to “protecting minor children from the transgender [sic] in this culture”, alongside her promotion for KOSA, stating “This would put a duty of care and responsibility on the social media platforms, and this is where children are being indoctrinated.”[34] This drew criticism from LGBT advocacy groups, fearing that the bill would allow LGBT information for minors to be censored. A spokesperson for Blackburn stated that KOSA was not intended to censor LGBT information.[34] To address these concerns, the bill’s language was altered so that the “duty of care” only focused on the product design features that influenced minors’ behavior with the platforms, and not the content. As a result, several LGBTQ groups, including GLAAD and GLSEN, dropped their opposition to the bill.[35] However, the EFF, Fight for the Future, and the American Civil Liberties Union found the revisions far from adequate, arguing that LGBTQ content could still be suppressed by targeting any design feature that makes that content available.[26][36][37][38]
- Beetle_O_Rourke [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish15·4 months ago