‘Kids Online Safety Act’ is a Trojan Horse For Digital Censorship.::Washington, D.C. - This week, a bipartisan cohort of US Senators unveiled a new version of the Kids Online Safety Act, a bill that aims to impose various restrictions and requirements on tech
Everytime I read a bill with a moniker like this I’m immediately sceptical
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When they say, “It’s for the children”, you can rest assured, it’s not.
Its annoying because its two gross invasive chronic bad-actors competing for who can be more obnoxious.
You’ve got the House Republicans trying to make Being Gay Online a terrorist act. And then you’ve got the Zuck-club, trying to find new ways to monetize a sensor in your phone that detects every time you take a shit.
Either I accept that an agent at DHS has the right to send me to Gitmo for doing AI Art of two Jesuses kissing or I have to accept the possibility that I one day won’t be able to hail a cab without giving Uber my daily cholesterol numbers.
Who could have seen this coming?
Simpsons did it best….
…. Won’t someone pleeeease think of the children!
Tale as old as time (yes I know your answer was /sarcastic)
The bill is garbage, but it cracks me up that they think this part is a bad thing:
The bill seeks to … limit developers’ inclusion of personalized recommendation systems, notifications, appearance-altering filters, and in-game purchases for apps used by minors.
Every item on that list has been abused by web/app developers in ways that exploit and/or negatively affect the brains of developing children.
It’s for all users, not just minors, but if not we’d need to have a super complex document-based AI authentication system
Not at all. We just need to provide tools to enable parents to effectively manage their children’s experiences. One component of that would be requiring web and app developers to adhere to a higher set of standards if their website or app is available to children.
Since parents are the ones making devices available to their children, they would be empowered to do one of the following:
- set up the device as a child account that’s linked to an adult account elsewhere
- set up two accounts on the device - one for themselves and one for the child
Then the parents would be able to manage apps installed on the device / sites that are navigable. This could include both apps/sites that are explicitly targeted at children and those that have a child-targeted experience, which, if accessed from a child’s account would be opted into automatically. Those apps and sites would be held to the higher standards and would be prohibited from employing predatory patterns, etc…
A parent should be able to feel safe allowing their child to install any app or access any site they want that adheres to these standards.
It would even be feasible to have apps identify the standards they adhere to, such that a parent could opt to only search for / only allow installation of apps / experiences that meet specific criteria. For example, Lexi’s parents might be fine with cartoony face filters but not with in-app purchases, Simon’s parents might not be okay with either, and Sam’s parents might be cool with her installing literally anything that isn’t pornographic.
If a device/account isn’t set up as a child’s device then none of those restrictions would be relevant. This would mean that if a mother handed her son her unlocked iPad to watch a video on Youtube and then left the room, she might come back to him watching something else. An “easy” way to fix that is to require devices to support a “child” user / experience, which could be managed similarly to what I described above (or at least by allow-listing specific apps that are permitted) even if set up as an adult device, rather than only supporting single user experiences.
That is a bad thing. It makes the law very arbitrary and leaves a ton of room for arbitrary or otherwise selective enforcement.
The bill is garbage,
Who wrote the sentence I just quoted?
The consumer choice center is a Washington/ Brussels think tank and lobbying group. They are passionate about free markets and consumer choice and oppose taxes and regulations on things like petroleum products, tobacco, and sugary/fatty foods.
I don’t have an opinion on the “Kids” act, just consider the source.
For my taste, framing CCC as a “Washington/Brussels” project is a far too close to what Russian smearbots do (link everything unpopular back to their current hate objects, i.e. foster resentment against the EU, liberals, etc.).
It looks very much like the CCC is an international organization funded and controlled by the far right.
Their website states:
Which countries is CCC active in?
The CCC works currently with tens of thousands of consumers and partner organizations in North America, Europe, South America, South Africa, India, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and many more.
Their colorful funding history:
Big Tobacco and right-wing US billionaires funding anti-regulation hardliners in the EU
Does this suit you better? https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/02/dont-fall-latest-changes-dangerous-kids-online-safety-act
We care about the kids, just let us sell them our products that may be detrimental to their welfare.
I love the part of this article where it explains why this may be the case instead of just quoting random people.
I love how it explains what is in the bill
