this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2023
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Not the US government, republicans and one random house dem that seems to hate technology.
The bill has 21 Democrats as cosponsors (22 Republicans). Source: https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/1409/cosponsors
oMg boTh sIdeS aRe nOt tHe sAmE.... except for when it comes to eroding freedoms
Not the US government, republicans and one random house dem that seems to hate technology.
Whose the Dem?
Blumenthal, of course.
What about the other 20?
Why do say of course?
He's always the one giving a 'bipartisan' veneer to these awful bills. Here's one trying to end encryption, which he co-sponsored with Lindsey Graham
WTF then he isn't a Democrat if he co authoring bills with Graham.
Somehow it never crossed their minds to stop selling firearms to teens, but vendor Internet in the name of protecting kids? Sign us up. Fuck that.
Pretty much any bill, worldwide, that includes the phrase "project kids" is always about pushing censorship, government surveillance and other forms of oppression on everyone. And guess what: zero actual benefit to kids.
This is quite scary. I don't know if it being on the calendar means they're guaranteed to vote on it but the text of the bill would completely fuck the Fediverse. You literally need paid personnel to comply with these regulations.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/3663/all-actions?overview=closed#tabs
Host somewhere else. They're not the world police.
I guess we'll just become criminals and host our servers in countries that actually respect freedom.
Why old men are so obsessed with kids? Are they pedo or something?
It's never about kids. If they gave half a fuck about kids, we'd have free school lunches and teachers would be paid a fair salary.
So long as the internet is around to distribute fact-checks and officer-involved homicide videos they have no plausible lies by which the 80% of us in poverty or precarity should tolerate the abuse of plutocrats and capitalists.
So this is a first amendment issue: it's about suppression of political speech. It always was 🌍 👩🚀 🔫 👨🚀 🌑
They're a convenient scapegoat. You can accuse the other side of not caring about/endangering children for political points, and children don't have politically-relevant opinions, or votes, so you're never going to have children speaking up and going "that's not correct", or protesting against you for a law you've passed. If they do end up protesting, you can point fingers at the parents and say that they're indoctrinating the children.
every time they say it's to "protect the children" or "protect freedom" it is invariably neither.
Fine, so who will be judging if there's a depressive content on the internet, a psychologist? Also how about non-US sites, will they be banned or something?
Perhaps politicians should concentrate on making it so there's less depressing stuff in the world for anyone to see and hear, and not creating more of it with things like this rubbish bill. 🤷♀️
Culturally we're going back to the Middle Ages...
Specifically the Dark Ages.
Isn't this also the bill that could screw up encryption too?
woah no way
in other news, every sixty seconds in Africa, a minute passes.
it has nothing to do with protecting children and everything to do with destroying privacy
why is it always the worst laws proposed under the guise of protecting children
Because you can't argue that. Any other ground reason for policy can be challenged or counterargued or relies on values which are arguable.
No one is going to plainly argue "ok but how about we do not protect children?". And if someone tries a different angle such as "this law is not really going to protect anyone and will bring a lot of problems for children and adults alike" it will be easily dismissed as "you insidious snake, why do you want to hurt children?! Don't sabotage child protection!". Which autokills conversation.
Let's use it against the government, they want to "care" about kids and steer them away from depression and anxiety? How about stop making the world suck for them. Because you can white wash any news report online about bad things happening, but it won't mean the practice has stopped.
Isn't it something that China has been doing for a while? In their version, it's called 'spreading positive energy'.
It's almost like everything the US said about China was just a projection of their own insecurities.
It might get to a point where China actually is relatively more liberating than "stable democracies" in internet access.
What else is new?
This doesn't seem different from what many if not most major platforms are already doing voluntarily. Just replace the word "depressing" with the word "toxic" and suddenly everyone will support this.
This headline could have been written 20 years ago.
Protect kids from guns would be better.
Jack O'Neil's son would still be alive today if he didn't get a hold of his father's gun. But then we wouldn't have Stargate. It's sort of a toss up to me.
Good luck with that. They can't even stop child abuse online and that's an actual problem that should be solved.
Dunno why you're being downvoted
Why take a principled stand against those who are pushing this when you can just say "government" and leave everyone thinking this is a bipartisan problem?
Because it is a bipartisan problem.