The “KIDS Act” Is an Age Surveillance Bill, Take Action. Tell Congress to reject this age-gating bill
Within the next week, Congress is preparing to vote on the KIDS Act, a sprawling package of legislation that seeks to control Americans’ web browsing and private messaging. The package includes a revised version of the Kids Online Safety Act, or KOSA, combined with a collection of other internet bills, study bills, reporting requirements, and new regulations. Instead of debating any of these proposals on their merits, lawmakers are attempting to move them all at once under an ultra-expedited process.
The package of cobbled-together bills is a mess, with different age-gating schemes for different services, using different standards. It’s a lot of complexity, and a lot of legal risk. Faced with that, many companies will conclude that the safest option is restrictive age-checking practices across their entire platforms.
Buried inside the KIDS Act are provisions that will push online services to verify all users’ ages, require government-directed moderation policies for online speech, and even create new rules about private and encrypted communications. While supporters continue to claim this bill protects minors online, its requirements come at the expense of privacy, free expression, and the ability of people of all ages to use the internet without revealing sensitive data.
The US is about to become another censored country. Thanks, Fuhrer Trump.
Yeah we gotta keep the kids off the innernet so they don’t fall victim to predators… Unless they’re billionaires.
In order to protect children from problems their parents create by allowing them unfettered access, we will infantilize the entire population of the planet and ensure that no one can say or do anything that is not befitting Supply Side Jesus’s interpretation of morality.
Glory to our supreme capitalist overlords.
I will enjoy dipping their eyeballs in marinara sauce by the end of this.
Just out a device age range for fucks same, this is insane.
Build a whole industry of surveillance companies to solve “I was too lazy to enter my kids age restrictions”
Lazy parents put iPads in kids’ faces. Lazy parents also don’t bother setting parental controls. Too many Spider-Man and Pregnant Elsa videos happened. Now lawmakers are using this as an excuse to get us to submit our papers to get online.
I agree spiderman-elsa is degenerate, that parents are lazy, but I also think these authoritarian fucks would use any pretense to push their agenda and our struggle against them will never end.
Spiderman pragent Elsa degeneracy is still tame compared to the degeneracy I saw on the internet on 1998 at age 12. I saw ladies pissing, a DIY clitorodectomy, a fella chop the tip of his finger off with a chisel, a guy stealing a human skull from the Paris catacombs and fucking the eye sockets, a human Skellington who got eaten by pihranas, and a Russian man being decapitated by Chechen lads, and that was just Tuesday.
Which is why I said they’re using it as an excuse.
Yes it is stupid that laws and the internet are changed instead of parents using parental controls.
But this was never about protecting children in the first place.
When VPN doesn’t work to get around age verification (because it’s globally required) it will be time to get off the internet I think.
The same people that are pushing for this are the ones who “wouldn’t get the jab because the 5G tracker chips in it”. The government tracking people is good when they want it, but bad when it doesn’t fit their narrative.
Buried inside the KIDS Act are provisions that will push online services to verify all users’ ages, require government-directed moderation policies for online speech, and even create new rules about private and encrypted communications.
This would change the internet as it currently stands. People love to be lazy and hand over their data, but if you make someone send a photo ID to sign up for Facebook, they simply won’t have Facebook. People can’t set up their own WiFi networks or TVs without help from their children, and now you are going to ask them to upload photos of their IDs? They won’t do it.
I think you underestimate just how apathetic people are. I’m not hopeful that there’d be any change, you hand over data or get left behind.
You didn’t understand the second part of my comment. Apathy is the reason why ID uploads won’t work. People won’t do it.
Goodbye Fediverse if this passes, because it’ll surely kill that network. Goodbye FOSS too as that won’t be able to comply the with web DRM that will surely be this law’s enforcement mechanism.
Skimming the bill, it seems at least one of the definitions in it requires that platforms, in order to be covered by it, do this:
(E) Uses the personal information of the user to advertise, market, or make content recommendations.
Fediverse instances usually don’t do this, so wouldn’t be covered at least by this definition, though I haven’t yet read the bill in detail.
They’ll still be blocked by web DRM if web DRM is this bill’s enforcement mechanism. Google and Cloudflare already laid the foundation for that.
Why couldn’t the Fediverse resist something like this? Doesn’t decentralization help to fight against this?
Splintenet would destroy it, assuming this censorship stuff actually causes a splinternet.
You can probably use an instance outside of the US. But yeah, the internet will change.
Better get used to living in NK, because the whole free world is turning into that. I just contacted my rep, but given the state I live in already age-gated porn sites and no doubt wants to lock down the general web too, it probably won’t amount to much.
You can probably use an instance outside of the US.
- Wouldn’t those instances be blocked by the national firewall that’s surely about to go up?
It is only for web browser, usenet and darknet is still fine, right ?
They’re the next targets, if they’re not also targeted in this very bill.
In the words of the great sage George Carlin: “Fuck the children!”
‘Not like that, Steve!’
Um maybe dont use that particular quote.
