archived due to bad formatting

IMPORTANT

congress.gov reports bills neutrally, innocently, almost as if to hide foreseeable risks to millions of people. Take a peek at badinternetbills.com for a better take.

# What?

I've recently learned about the KOSA act that is currently being considered for passing in US. History shows, if something used to "protect the children", then it's most likely a cover up for something meant to harm lots of innocent communities.

# Caveats

"However, the bill exempts ISP's, email services, educational institutions, and other specified entities from the requirements."

Why though? "Educational institutions" I can kind of understand, but excluding ISP's from the bill feels like another attack on net neutrality.

"This bill sets out requirements to protect minors from online harms."

"Online harms"? Too vague, how do you classify something as "harmful to children"? Also, aren't platforms supposed to regulate such content, not the government?

"Additionally, covered platforms must provide (1) minors with certain safeguards, such as settings that restrict access to minors' personal data"

Just from that sentence alone, I don't see any harm yet. "Providing minors with certain safeguards" is still very vague though.

"and (2) parents or guardians with tools to supervise minors' use of a platform, such as control of privacy and account settings"

They said it. That's an outright violation of someone's privacy. "Oh but they are a minor" - doesn't matter. Everyone deserves privacy. "But think of the children!" - are you thinking of children? Wouldn't this out millions of queer kids to their parents, who, might not be accepting? If anything, this bill is putting children at risk.

"Covered platforms must also allow parents, guardians, minors, and schools to report certain harms"

Isn't that already a thing in majority of social networks? Though most of the time the report button doesn't do anything, it is an option. Still concerned about the fact that "harms" were never formally defined.

"(cont.) refrain from facilitating advertising of age-restricted products or services (e.g., tobacco and gambling) to minors"

I see this as a genuinely good change. However,

• How are they going to identify if some user is a minor? For example, I've never set my age on Twitter, and it reports that "These are the age ranges associated with you - 24". I'm concerned that they even tried to calculate my age, though they are far from right - I'm still a minor. I hope they never ask me for my ID, because that would be breach of privacy and security - how did no one realize that yet?

• What stops other users from advertising said age-restricted products/services?

"For example, such platforms must (1) provide users with notice that the website uses such algorithms,"

EU does that, already; every time I activate my VPN, that just happens to redirect me to Netherlands, I get popups on almost every website that "we use cookies and target ads to you are you ok with that". I guess that's a good change too?

"and (2) make available a version of the platform that uses algorithms that do not prioritize information based on user data"

I'm all for it, however wouldn't that just kill existing platforms? This doesn't make sense.

If anything, reading about these bills made me think US is turning into China 2. It's ironic, as US is known for being "land of the free". It's a violation of the 1st amendment, yet it's still being considered for passing to "protect the children". It's sad.