Calling Our Senators
Feb. 20th, 2024 09:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
writerkitSo our senators are in favor of KOSA, apparently.
Most of you probably know why that's bad, but it's essentially another attempt at "let's use THINK OF THE CHILDREN" to force websites to collect information on people and Marsha Blackburn introduced it explicitly to try to use it to force trans information off the internet and the Heritage Foundation has pledged to use it to force abortion information off the internet--- we really, really do not want the Republicans deciding what's harmful.
Actually, if you're one of the people who has been following the Hugo Awards discussion about how censorship works in China, this is an excellent example of it showing up here: create a law with harsh punishments, vague standards, and a vague enforcement mechanism, and the websites will do the work of censorship for you because they can't afford to risk being the one to be made an example of. All the Republicans need to do is use it to successfully go after a couple of small websites and they've suddenly enforced censorship over every website based in America.
And it's passed the House.
So let's call our senators, please?
Most of you probably know why that's bad, but it's essentially another attempt at "let's use THINK OF THE CHILDREN" to force websites to collect information on people and Marsha Blackburn introduced it explicitly to try to use it to force trans information off the internet and the Heritage Foundation has pledged to use it to force abortion information off the internet--- we really, really do not want the Republicans deciding what's harmful.
Actually, if you're one of the people who has been following the Hugo Awards discussion about how censorship works in China, this is an excellent example of it showing up here: create a law with harsh punishments, vague standards, and a vague enforcement mechanism, and the websites will do the work of censorship for you because they can't afford to risk being the one to be made an example of. All the Republicans need to do is use it to successfully go after a couple of small websites and they've suddenly enforced censorship over every website based in America.
And it's passed the House.
So let's call our senators, please?
