InsomniaInk

Someday there will be comics!!!!

Inky | Hapless schmuck, former insomniac, comic nerd, inking enthusiast, writer, enjoyer of nachos. 18+ only



It's beginning to look like the "Kids Online Safety Act" or KOSA, is going to be carried across the finish line in equal part by democrats and republicans to be signed into law by president Biden (who has already said he supports the bill) as quickly as possible. The wagons are being circled and the legislators that support this bill (46 cosponsers in the senate so far, 24GOP and 22DEM) are already pushing the implication that this bill is THE answer to big tech's exploitative and profit driven treatment of kids, and that if you don't support KOSA specifically, you must support countless abuses of children instead you anti-american heathen. A vote in the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation committee has yet to be set but it looks like as hard as they're already pushing the talking points, they intend to cram it through before the American people can form an organized push back against this censorship and surveillance bill, and EVEN before the public is largely aware of its contents at all!


KOSA is an extreme online censorship and surveillance bill which is being sold under the guise of protecting children from the exploitative and profit driven desires of social media companies. Not only does it fail at doing that, it also creates a set of legal requirements that all websites, apps, and online and mobile games and services that allow for the posting of user generated content MUST abide by or face legal repercussions. That means everything from the largest social media website to the smallest forum or image sharing site. Basically, if you can upload text and/or images and/or videos and/or audio and/or any other forms of media/files not explicitly covered by that, it will affect that site and the site owners can be prosecuted if they do not follow the legal requirements set out in KOSA or the interpretations of those requirements as declared by state attorney's general.

Evangelizers of KOSA say it will simply put requirements into place for what information is accessible to minors online and the way personalized info from a minor is used for targeted advertising. They will say it does not require age/identity confirmation and does not censor anything. They can say this because the bill puts in place legal requirements that websites must abide by but does not specify in what WAY the websites must abide by them. The trick there is that to meet the legal requirements, websites must either heavily censor what content may be posted on the site OR require age/identity verification such as not being able to make an account unless you upload government ID or the like, OR do some combination of both.

KOSA imposes a small number of requirements upon websites/apps/services/games itself but it THEN delegates power to each state's attorney general to interpret what may constitute a violation of this law THEMSELVES and bring civil action upon that entity on behalf of the residents of their state. In other words, states run by right wing governments will interpret anything relating to the LGBTQ+ community, trans healthcare, the BDS movement, underground abortion assistance, anti-capitalist/anti-colonialist/socialist/communist/anarchist ideas and commentary, the movement for police accountability and abolition, BIPOC history, information about the civil rights movement/gay rights movement/any other movement seen as anti-authority (Marsha Blackburn, one of the co-authors of the bill, argued directly that some education about racism and the civil rights movement that can be seen to overlap with the dreaded CRITICAL RACE THEORY, as well as content involving the transgender community were some of her intended targets of the legislation), etc, as constituting a violation of this law and act to prosecute the offender(s). And when I say right wing governments I'm not singling out republican led states. Democratic led states with right wing governments will take the same sort of actions. An example being; Georgia will likely censor any discussion of police abolition and the movement against cop city.

The thing to keep in mind about this is that while the largest threat of censorship comes from each separate state government, and supposedly only affects the state itself, it totally doesn't work like that in practice. How complicated would it be for every type of website/app/service/game, that allows the transmission of user generated content, to impose 50 different sets of rules as to how that content is made available within each state? If you're a single person running a tiny forum of any stripe and you don't have the ability to set up something as complicated as that, what happens when someone posts something that one of the 50 states has deemed "BANNED KNOWLEDGE?" In a more basic sense, even if you were just trying to meet the censorship requirements of the state you live in, you would have to either have a system implemented that would block posts dealing with those subjects, or if that's not something you're capable of, check every single post made on your little forum to make sure it doesn't break your states rules on "BANNED KNOWLEDGE." I'm pretty sure any way you slice it the operation of such a small forum would be made impossible by your limited means in the realm of money, knowledge, or time. You could still try to run it but you risk becoming the target of a serious lawsuit...

On the other end, in which there are effectively NO limitations in any of those three areas, money/knowledge/time, what do you think the massive tech/social media companies are going to do regarding the implementation of this law? Do you think they're going to set up a complex system to only allow posts regarding certain subjects to be seen in certain states? No, I respect your intelligence, that was just a rhetorical question... The big tech/social media companies are going to collect and collate a list of all censored subjects all across the nation and implement filters in their product/service to block ALL of them EVERYWHERE. Like they're going to spend an extra cent to make a complicated system of state based filtering? Nahhhhhh.

Supporters of the bill have ACTUALLY stated that fear of KOSA being used to censor information on things like the LGBTQ+ community or trans healthcare is unfounded as any enforcement of such censorship would, and I quote this directly from Fairplay's website, "face substantial opposition in court." I would be laughing at that ludicrously flippant and idealized view of our court system but the fact that this bill would send thousands of queer children to their graves has stifled my humor.

With the exception of a bit at the bottom of this post, below the cut, regarding examples of the kinds of sites KOSA will affect, I've said my piece. I will leave you with a petition you can sign if you're not cool with all this.

I signed it and have already received auto-generated emails from my representative and senators who are all republicans (meaning in my case, completely deaf ears), but still I encourage you to sign it, send emails to your representatives, call their offices on the phone, gather audio clips of your representative's biggest donors and pipe them into a voice mimicking AI to generate statements opposing support of the bill and send the audio directly to your representative's voicemail while spoofing the donor's number (that last bit was a joke obviously), and do what you can to get the word out about KOSA.


A short list of websites the language seems to affect: EVERY; social media website, art archive, forum, news site that allows comments, online storefront that sells/streams music by third parties, fanfiction sites like AO3, oekaki boards that show recent creations by users, video conferencing services, voice chat services, work management services that allow collaboration, and in fact ANY collaborative services, online photo-albums and stock photo sites, tiny fan sites for ancient board games that post sets of house rules submitted by players, online databases for media/games/anything really that allows any kind of user generated content (examples: myanimelist because it allows users to make lists of recommended series, boardgamegeek because it allows for users to post pictures/reviews/comments/videos/files/fan-made rule sets and expansions...), online games that allow for any type of voice chat/text chat/image sprays etc..., online storefronts that have product reviews or comments, online storefronts that sell any physical or digital items that are not owned by the parent company (examples: Amazon, Unity Asset Store, Itch.Io, Kofi, Ebay, Nintendo/X-Box/Playstation/Steam stores...) and moooore!

Some people may quibble about some of the things I listed above such as, "online storefronts that sell any physical or digital items that are not owned by the parent company" but the reason I list things like that above is because the coverage of the bill hinges upon the words, "user generated" and if you, say, publish an album on Bandcamp, Bandcamp is not going to trust you if you say you won't do anything prohibited OR go to bat for you in court if you include something prohibited within your album. They will consider you a "user" of their service in the same way that a customer is, and censor your content where necessary to avoid liability and do their best to offload any other liability onto you as well. (the "funny" thing here is that if you are selling a physical product that would run afoul of this law if it were digitized and uploaded online, such as a book, that item itself wouldn't be in violation of this law but any information about the item that could be seen as being in violation that is displayed on the storefront WOULD get you in trouble. You likely wouldn't be able to sell the book "Gender Queer: A Memoir" under it's original title or with any written description of what the book is about... but if you put it up to sell as something like "GQ-Memoir" and listed no description, you would probably skate.)


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