El Tlacuache de los Ojos Tristes

KOSA- Kids Online Safety Act
The meeting for this is happening THURSDAY JULY 27th 2023

TL;DR- It sucks and is harmful for LGBTQ+ Kids and harmful for adults and US citizens. It creates a backdoor for the government. Please call your senators to stop this from happening and please spread the word.

(Note: I'm bringing this up to spread awareness, I might not have the most perfect understanding of this bill and hell maybe I'm wrong about it. But this is what I understand so far. If you have more information feel free to rechost this with your input!)

This is a bill in the USA that 40 FUCKING SENATORS Support unfortunately. This bill will eventually lead to online users (meaning you!) to use their drivers license/I.D in order to use the internet. It is an act that makes websites responsible for children's safety online, and this means that the act could lead to states voting on banning children/teens from accessing educative resources on LGBTQ+ topics, sex ed, etc.
This could also lead to websites outright BANNING content like this, or lead to the shut down of websites that hold these platforms. It could lead to websites requiring that you give our your I.D to prove that you aren't a child in order to post online, which I'd argue fucks with your first amendment since it removes your privacy even more and could actually lead to your information being held hostage and you being blackmailed depending on what you use.
I mean honestly websites get hacked all the time, but I'd rather not have my I.D be connected to my private pages where I can shitpost freely and look at porn freely. Like shit man... I don't want people knowing my AO3 history.

Again, maybe I'm wrong or being paranoid, but apparently the meeting for this is happening THURSDAY JULY 27th 2023

Ok so here are some links to try and fight back on it.
• https://www.stopkosa.com/
• https://linktr.ee/stopkosa
• https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/kids-online-safety-act-still-huge-danger-our-rights-online
• https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/3663/text

*pats flank of skunktaur*

this can fit SO many souls

castlevania: aria of skunktaur

I haven't said this because I own a quarter of this place so it would come off as sour grapes but yeah, bluesky isn't that much larger than cohost, and all of the additional perceived Mindshare they have is due to the fact that:

a) they intentionally recruited twitter influencers to be early users
b) they intentionally put everyone in much closer contact constantly

obviously bluesky has a billionaire and tech celebrity at the helm so they have the ability to do a) in a way we don't, but also these are things we would've intentionally chosen not to do even if we could

knowing that bluesky has like 2.5x more users than this place and posts just very visibly do way fucking worse on there is so funny

break yourself from the mentality of "i need to be where the people are" because you actually don't, you gotta be where people actively want to see your shit. what good is mad followers and mad views and mad algorithm if no one is taking your shit in and supporting you?

Part of it is people unwittingly internalizing VC logic where there's no meaningful concept of audience or intended market. It's why people chase virality when it demonstrably does not lead to sales connections (and this is all assuming you're selling anything at all, where any of this is meaningful!) Instead of actually developing an audience you're just trying to get in front of eyeballs, but no one who's actually successful does this! People who use virality to gain audience are usually springboarding off an existing audience they already developed. If you don't do that, if you're counting on "platform discoverability" and "virality", you're never going to build audience because you're not talking to anyone, all the huge number of users - ~0% of whom are your audience (thanks @TalenLee)! - is just a market diluted beyond any use or hope of connecting with anyone.