Today I am watching the Senate Judicial Committee on
"Hearing on Child Internet Safety." Less than 60-seconds into the hearing, #Section230 and The Earn it Act get a mention.
https://www.c-span.org/video/?526011-1/hearing-child-internet-safety&live
They are taking a "consumer protection" angle to this.
It appears that they wish to make providers liable for the actions of others online. It isn't clear to me what reasonable steps they would like someone to take to meet a duty of care.
Self Harm Reference
Blackburn is saying something about kids being the product, not the customer. Demands safety by default. Says independent audits are needed. But I'm still not hearing any set of actions that one could take. I don't know what would be audited.
One of the people testifying is Kristin Bride. Her son hung himself after being bullied online. She faults the providers of applications that allow anonymous communication and #Section230 for protecting them.
#Section230
#KOSA (Kids Online Safety Act)
The second person, Emma Lake, faults social media for her depression, self esteem, and spending 5-6 hours online per day until she "reached [her] breaking point" in 9th grade.
She identifies as being park of Gen Z and fighting for the next generation. She describes unregulated social media as a WoMD.
A rep from NCMEC is there too. She is speaking of companies not sufficiently reporting information in reporting CSAM or taking sufficient steps to protect them.
That someone has no recourse if the hosting entity takes no actions to detect the material.
She wants victims to have immunity allowing them to report their abuse.
That the law make victim identifying efforts.
Liability for knowingly distributing CSAM.
Use of appropriate words when describing crime.
uh oh...encryption...
...encryption is always a hard one.
She wants methods built into encryption that detects CSAM. She is concerned that default end-to-end encryption is going to interfere with detecting CSAM.
There is a much older underlying issue here. How does one insure another is not saying something unlawful if they cannot see what is being said?
Onto Raven, an org dedicated to protecting children He asserts any app that allows sharing pix could be a danger to children.
...he is stating that leads, and lack of uniformity in what is provided by service providers makes it difficult to impossible to do investigations.
Next person is a psychologist. He says online activity offers benefits and harms, and claims the harmful features are part of the architecture of the app.
The psych is naming some negative effect, such as increased anxiety from app notifications.
He wants more research done, warnings on hateful/discriminatory content mandated. That entities publish the inherent risks of their services.
Now, onto some rep from Fair Play. He is talking about amplification through algorithms.
He wants privacy laws, prohibitions of data collection, ban targeted advertising at teens, impose liability for design choices and algorithms, ...
...accounts default to most private settings, impose transparency, including letting researchers access algorithms.
Durbin wants the Earn it Act to condition §230 on meeting some unnamed requirements.
Now they are talking about encryption. Time marker 1:05:40 if you want to see it.
She is saying they seek a balanced approach to protect privacy without children as collateral.
https://www.c-span.org/video/?526011-1/hearing-child-internet-safety&live&vod
Emma Lembke says that companies should put in reasonable safeguards; noted that someone searching for healthy recipes could lead them to anorexia content.
The psyc is saying children are biologically incapable of stopping themselves from excessive use of these social media services(1:08:30).
Likes, repost, feeds without features to block the consumption of content are being faulted.
@ThinkingSapien Children are biologically incapable of not drinking poison from under the sink too... that's why we have child-guards. And parents.
These people really want a nanny state....
@ThinkingSapien I wouldn't be surprised if "it's burdensome for parents to track what kids are reading" was used as an excuse to ban books many times over in history.
Keeping track of what a child is doing with their phone is said to be burdensome, that the parents can't track every single thing that the children do.
Call me archaic, but I promote a child's access to the Internet being supervised and with restrictions.
@LouisIngenthron