cross-posted from: https://infosec.exchange/users/thenexusofprivacy/statuses/111847834655628571
Microsoft endorses anti-LGBTQ online “child safety” bill KOSA night before Big Tech hearing (US Politics)
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!
We don’t have rules about editorializing article titles in this magazine?
I agree with you, and normally like posts to just use the original headline, but in this case, it feels like the newspaper is pro-KOSA. They mention in the article hundreds of organizations support the legislation but don’t mention the hundreds that have opposed it.
Perhaps something like “Microsoft president endorses online child safety bill night before Big Tech hearing [Bill is opposed by EFF over censorship concerns]” would be a better way to handle adding context.
When journalists become activists, objective reality suffers.
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.
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Politics…
They get to position themselves as looking out for the children.
It likely gives them a higher degree of control over their user base
They have the money and resources to comply with it, but any small competitor won’t. So Microsoft will gain even more dominance in the market
Great point. Mike Masnick has said that he wouldn’t be surprised if Meta also comes out in support, for similar reasons.
I also wouldn’t put it past them to be thinking of ways they can take advantage of identity verification schemes. The idea of everyone needing to have Microsoft Authenticator installed to verify their age for any site they want to visit must make them salivate. Makes me wanna puke that they’d get away with it, too.
Yep. There’s money to be made here!
