Joshua Casey 😷 @JoshuaACasey@social.cleverlibre.org

8/ As we explained, the clearest risk-averse option is to block minors from even legitimate content, like drug policy reform/harm reduction discourse, or anti-eating disorder content. Blocking minors from valuable, informational content does not serve their best interests.

7/ Sure, services won't have to prevent minors from *searching* for content.

But they would still be subject to a broad, vague duty of care to prevent/mitigate harms allegedly caused by *seeing* or *encountering* often legitimate, constitutionally protected content.

6/ Duty of care: The revised bill pays lip service to our concerns that KOSA would cut minors off from entirely legitimate, protected material, by “allowing” platforms to let minors seek out information for themselves.

But this doesn't actually fix the underlying problem.

5/ This could be prevented by explicitly stating that audience composition doesn't create constructive knowledge that users are minors.

Otherwise, services popular with minors will be pressured to age-verify; and adults may find the Internet Disneylandified for themselves too.

4/ If audience composition (>X% of users are minors) can create constructive knowledge, then services above some threshold will *still* have to age-verify users to protect themselves from liability under #KOSA, with all the attendant free speech problems.

3/ But what constitutes constructive knowledge that a user is a minor? Is it enough that the service “should know” that some users are minors? The bill doesn’t say.

So the FTC/state AGs may allege that knowing a certain % of users are minors creates such knowledge.

Take TikTok, for example: estimates indicate that more than half of the platform’s US users may be minors. Does that mean that TikTok “should know” that *any* user is more likely than not to be a minor?

2/ Age verification: We explained how KOSA's mandates would unconstitutionally require age verification for a huge part of the Internet.

The revised text tries to avoid this, primarily by narrowing its application to where a service knows *or should know* that a user is a minor.

[THREAD]

1/ Last week @TechFreedom explained to Congress how the Kids Online Safety Act endangers free speech *and* kids: https://techfreedom.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Kosa-Letter-December-6-2022.pdf

Yesterday, its sponsors introduced revisions: https://aboutbgov.com/52Q

It's better, but still pretty bad.

#KOSA simply doesn't belong in an omnibus spending bill.

#Tech #freespeech #FirstAmendment #trustandsafety #techpolicy

Fight for the Future PETITION: Mega-corporations are trying to ban libraries from owning digital books! Sign on now to tell @AmericanPublish
to turn over a new leaf in 2023 by standing up for libraries + diverse voices.

https://www.fightforthefuture.org/actions/2023books

@JxckS @elonjet Lol. Twitter is now saying that sharing links to the @elonjet at Facebook is "unsafe."

In a welcome move, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown is commuting the sentences of all 17 inmates awaiting execution in the state.

Human Rights Watch opposes the death penalty in all circumstances and in all countries because of its inherent cruelty. #UnitedStates https://apnews.com/article/crime-prisons-oregon-kate-brown-salem-eca820b1dcd2b51f0ad623f13f9e0387

@mmasnick @elonjet There should be a name for that effect, Mike.

@mmasnick @elonjet Same here, wasn't it interested before but followed here immediately.

That forbidden fruit tastes so sweet.

I didn't follow and wasn't even interested in following @elonjet on the other site, but now that it's been banned over there, I feel compelled to follow it over here.

I took a look at Elon's new advertising plans for Twitter, and how they almost certainly violate (1) FTC consent decree (2) California privacy law and (3) EU privacy law.

It's a choice!

https://www.techdirt.com/2022/12/14/twitters-big-ad-plan-violate-both-ftc-consent-decree-california-privacy-law-to-force-users-to-hand-over-info-for-ad-targeting/

@elonjet Heh. And as someone point out, while the ElonJet at Twitter was banned, the BezosJets account (run by the same guy) was allowed to remain. It's almost as if Elon's content moderation is perhaps less than principled.

capitalism has a huge number of exploitive systems that were around before the latest tool showed up.