Microsoft endorses anti-LGBTQ online "child safety" bill KOSA night before Big Tech hearing (US Politics)
Microsoft endorses anti-LGBTQ online "child safety" bill KOSA night before Big Tech hearing (US Politics)
Microsoft announced that it is endorsing bipartisan legislation intended to hold Big Tech companies accountable for ensuring that teenagers and children are safe online. Microsoft Vice Chairman and President Brad
cross-posted from: https://infosec.exchange/users/thenexusofprivacy/statuses/111847834655628571
Worth noting: Microsoft owns LinkedIn, which wouldn't be particularly affected by KOSA.
There's a hearing on Wednesday, and potentially a Senate vote soon, so if you're in the US now's a good time to contact your Senators. https://stopkosa.com and EFF's page make it easy!
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The LGBTQ part only got into headlines about this because this thing might open up censorship in general, like book ban requests in Texas. It provides no path to prevent the harms to children described, meaning platforms could censor much legitimate and normal speech in an effort to prevent harm. An EFF article also says it'll have Attorneys General determine what counts as harmful to kids, meaning opening up censorship, but I can't find that in the bill text.
Totally agreed that it opens things up to censorship in general and doesn't actually make kids safer. Charlie Jane Anders' The Internet Is About to Get A Lot Worse sets it in the context of book banning. The LGBTQ part is in the headlines because one big focus of the advocacy against it is highlighting that Democrats who claim to be pro-LGBTQ should not be backing this bill. This has been effective enough that Senators Cantwell and Markey both mentioned it in the committee markup, although it's certainly far from the only problem with the bill.
Sec. 11 (b): Enforcement By State Attorneys General covers this. It's hard to find -- the bill text starts out with all the text removed from the previous amendment, and if you click on the "enforcement" link in the new table of context it takes you to the old struck-out text. It's almost like they want to make it as hard as possible for people to figure out what's going on!
Yeah, I saw the part that wasn’t crossed-out, but couldn’t find where it says Attorneys General can determine such things; I only saw where it says they can sue websites using this bill
In practice, when the AG threatens to sue and the law makes it clear that they'll win (which KOSA currently does), companies will typically stop what they're doing (or settle if the AG actually launches a suit)
Wouldn’t the law only make clear they’ll win if it fits the law’s definition of harm?
The law's defintion of harm is extremely broad. Charlie Jane Anders has a good discussion of this in The Internet Is About to Get a Lot Worse:
"This clause is so vaguely defined that attorneys general can absolutely claim that queer content violates it — and they don't even need to win these lawsuits in order to prevail. They might not even need to file a lawsuit, in fact. The mere threat of an expensive, grueling legal battle will be enough to make almost every Internet platform begin to scrub anything related to queer people."
Hmm, I was under the impression that Attorneys General could already sue whomever they want, success rates aside. Is that not the case?
Technically yes but judges get annoyed if there's absolutely no case, so they rarely do -- and if they threaten when there's no case, larger companies will look at it and say the threat's not real.
Wouldn't the same go for attempting to sue with this law on hosting LGBTQ content, which has no mention?