1y ago

The Internet Is About to Get a Lot Worse (US focused)

buttondown.email The Internet Is About to Get a Lot Worse

We've all watched in horror as red states have banned books in schools and libraries. We've seen teachers fired merely for reading a book about gender...

Charlie Jane Anders discusses KOSA (the Kids Online Safety Act).

If you're in the US, https://www.stopkosa.com/ makes it easy to contact your Senators and ask them to oppose KOSA.

"A new bill called the Kids Online Safety Act, or KOSA, is sailing towards passage in the Senate with bipartisa>n support. Among other things, this bill would give the attorney general of every state, including red states, the right to sue Internet platforms if they allow any content that is deemed harmful to minors. 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.

The right wing Heritage Foundation has already stated publicly that the GOP will use this provision to remove any discussions of trans or queer lives from the Internet. They're salivating over the prospect.

And yep, I did say this bill has bipartisan support. Many Democrats have already signed on as co-sponsors. And President Joe Biden has urged lawmakers to pass this bill in the strongest possible terms."

Slacker News @lemmy.world

The Internet Is About to Get a Lot Worse (US focused)

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United States | News & Politics @lemmy.ml

The Internet Is About to Get a Lot Worse (US focused)

buttondown.email /charliejane/archive/the-internet-is-about-to-get-a-lot-worse/

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265 comments

More of them “freedoms” that you yanks are always going on about?
- No, no, it's "free dumbs". As in, they were giving away stupidity for free, so we each took as much as we could carry.
- Experiencing a protracted regression of sanity, similar to Brexit.
  
  lmao gottem
- Pretty much. Just don't post how much oil your home country has.
  
  Hey now, American kids love oil and it's good for them. They should rewrite the bill to remove all content that isn't about oil. Not avocado oil or malarkey like that though. That stuff is bad news, unlike petroleum oil. They may call it crude but we gotta make sure the kids know crude means good. The more crude the healthier the babies, that's what I always say.

Ah yes.. forever and again, the siren song of children being used as an excuse for draconian, rights eroding legislation.. its amazing how much responsibility parents have shirked to the state as they replace babysitters with cellphones and tablets.
- : "You REALLY want little Billy to read a tweet that makes him think he's not perfect because he's white!? YOU MONSTER! Now if you'll excuse me, I have to relentlessly stalk and then bully this freak I found on KiwiFarms for the crime of not being a good normal like me!"
- It isn't so much parents shirking responsibility as folks in power doing what they want and just saying parents demanded it. When actual parents want something there's a lot more hue and cry, hearings, and suchlike. When there isn't, dig a bit and you find convenient lies and excuses.

Ah yes, children security. Of course.
- We can’t have them looking at gay shit, they might get bullied and have to stay home and not get shot.

And then everybody slaps a "Only for 18+, fill in your birth day" on their site and nobody can legally claim it's harming children.
- And suddenly everyone was born on Jan 1st, 2000
  
  I'm not doing maths to keep it at 18 each year.
  I do 1900 lol
- Which you will need to prove by sending your personal identification to a commercial third party provider. Who will eventually get hacked and your data will be leaked.
  
  Meh, it is already out there anyway. Several times over.
- This is how it works on YouTube now, the rules for kids content are draconic and you risk your account, so everybody just says "this is not for kids" on all videos.
  
  YouTube music will not let you put a “for kids” marked song on a playlist! It kind of sucks for putting my KID’s favorite goofy songs on my KID’s playlist. The kid’s playlist that is composed entirely of content not marked “for kids” because that’s all that is possible.
  
  This is the adult tour, it's not FOR kids
- this law requires positive proof with IDs. it's also going to be used by red states to go after online queer communities.
  
  I'm curious how that's going to work in international context. Everything to do with the queer community suddenly has a link to .ca or .mx domain and server park outside the country where this doesn't apply for example. Or reddit suddenly checks with the authorities in Zimbabwe if the ID is valid.

Unfortunately this is just ONE of MANY bad internet bills currently up for consideration and with bipartisan support. Help fight all of them at https://badinternetbills.com
- !bad_internet_bills@lemmy.sdf.org is tracking all the bad internet bills ... right now KOSA's where the most action is.

The internet is about to move to the rest of the world if this passes, no one will host a web server in the US after this.
- which, considering that the U.S considers accessing a server based in the U.S grounds to extradite a person from the otherside of the world and try them for a capital crime might not be such a bad thing.
- The problem is where? The EU is trying to apply similar censorship via the DSA, Russia we all know is LGBTphobic and not truly for free speech, Canada is a joke, and China is lol. Not even sure if Japan is viable.
  
  What do you mean by China is lol?
  
  How is the DSA in any way similar to this?
  
  I'm sure tech company's could just stick their servers in the Virgin Islands or some other fucking tax haven.
  
  In what way is Canada a joke? Like, I'm not saying it isn't, but our online freedom is pretty good. We don't actually have a state sponsored censorship campaign, VPNs are legal, TOR is legal, all we legislate is that you aren't inciting violence or calling for the extermination of a protected group of people or doing shady dark web shit. Pretty much everything else is good to go.
  
  Japan has terrible international peering.
  
  There's some wisdom in the old soviet anecdote
  There's freedom of speech in the USSR: In the USA, you can stand in front of the White House in Washington, DC, and yell, "Down with Ronald Reagan," and you will not be punished. Equally, you can also stand in Red Square in Moscow and yell, "Down with Ronald Reagan," and you will not be punished.
  The Internet is still mostly connected, the law enforcement is not as much. Many businesses exist only because of this. You are free to host (produce, store, distribute) your content where it is legal and access it from where it is not. Access to foreign resources may eventually be outlawed or the access itself restricted. This is already the case in EU, Russia, China, etc. - but for now Internet is mostly connected.
- It is why more need to support the decentralized movement as then there is not centralized group you can choke to get your draconian ways.

I’m shocked that the first openly gay senator Tammy Baldwin is a co-sponsor for the bill. You bet I’m writing her.
- Not really surprising to me. Gay (and now trans) people have long been accused of grooming and/or queerifying children
  The first openly gay senator is probably hyper-aware of this, and I'd guess is probably very hawkish on anything protecting children
  The other aspect is congressmen don't understand shit outside (sometimes) politics or the law. On its surface, this has a very compelling description - hold websites responsible if they let children access NSFW content.
  It's not until you ask how (interpreted by the community as providing identifiable information to "prove" your age) that the first flaw comes up - this provides a way to collect data on online use, as social media is considered potentially NSFW by the nature of user submission
  Then you get to the things most people without a technical background wouldn't see
  The second flaw - companies are terrible at securing data. Get ready for every scammer under the sun to be able to find your ID numbers.
  The third, this won't work. As a young teen, I blazed past parental controls, because there's a ton of porn out there and there's no way to hold back someone determined to find it. If you want this to work, we need to make a child Internet of known safe content and parental controls to keep you there... But just like finding or stealing a Playboy, the fact it exists means kids are going to be stealing passwords or IDs and probably sharing them. If we instead had sites declare content ratings and locked down at the device level, they need to go through a lot of work or get a secret device - it would give parents powerful tools to actually enforce this through Apple, Google, or Microsoft accounts
  And finally, this won't work because it's inconvenient. Make password requirements too strict, and users write them down. Make content moderation too strict, and people will find shortcuts. People will find ways around this that will likely both end up in the hands of children, but also probably make everyone less safe

I don't know how American voters can stand for this, how can you re-elect people who cause your children to get shot in schools and believe the same people have set out to protect them with things like these?
- A lot of them are really stupid hateful racists. They are figuratively and literally shooting themselves in the foot.
- Because the way voting works in the US is based on assumptions from the days when getting all the votes together to tally them would have been a logistical nightmare. Instead of counting everyone's vote individually, the map is divided into regions. Each region tallies up their votes, and then one single vote is counted for that entire region based on the majority vote from that region. Those regional votes are tallied, and the majority winner of the regions gets the win. By drawing the regions correctly (a process called gerrymandering), you can put the majority of one party's voters into a small handful of regions, so all of them only count as a handful of regional votes while making sure the rest of the regions are drawn to give the other party a 51%+ majority. As a result, it's possible to have a candidate that would garner less than 50% of the individual votes win a landslide of over 75% of the regional votes.
- We don't, enough of the US is gerrymandered as fuck and we use first past the post voting so most of us are voting to get a plurality for the guy other than the one we hate more, and that's if your even interested in politics here. The whole system is fucked and corrupt.
  Edit: oh yea and the electoral college fucks us too.
  
  Yeah, quite a bad system of voting. I hope my country moves away from that.
- Propaganda from people who make a profit out of those opinions.
- Fuck /u/spez
- A third or so of the country believes the right wing propaganda machine that has been churning for decades.
  For everyone else, we're constantly offered a choice between a center-right neoliberal, or an outright fascist. We're just voting for how fast the country falls.
- Freedumb
- Our votes don't actually matter in the grand scheme of things.
  by design
- Because Americans are hateful racists who care more about taking away from you than helping their community. Own the libs!
  
  that's just generalization, a racist's most powerful tool.
  
  The majority demonstrably are not. We have a horribly broken electoral system that gives outsize power to the fascists.
  
  You owned those hateful Americans so hard by being hateful and stereotyping them.

Why would you oppose this? Don't you want children to be safe online? Won't anybody please think of the children? /s
- "Why would you oppose this? What are you a pedo????" /sarcasm

in 2014: "Stupid SJWs, my rights don't end where your feelings begin."
now: "Stupid SJWs, your rights end where my ego begins."
'Free Speech' mfs really do like their blasphemy laws.
- Yeah, no, it was always the second one.

Unfortunately I live in a backwards, ignorant red state represented by complete idiots. The last time I wrote to my representatives asking them to oppose something like this they wrote back saying "the agree fully" and then went on to explain that they would definitely support it and thanked me for backing them... Then went on to show a complete lack of understanding of the bill in question.
And I've been on his email list ever since despite clicking unsubscribe probably 30 times. The crusty sock puppet probably thinks that means "show me more" based on how he responded to my initial email.
- If your unsubscribe isn't working, report them to the FTC: https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/#/ If you take want to go the extra mile, report them to their email provider as well. You might be able to get their email shut down, and if their email provider is also their web host provider, maybe their website as well. Providers take CAN-SOAM violations seriously.

This is exactly the bullshit policy Biden sticks his dick into everytime. I really don't want to hate the guy but what a fucking idiot.
Biden being anything but conservative lite is just the fucking truth.
- From my outside perspective the whole democratic party is conservative lite.
  
  Oh it's pretty obvious with an internal perspective too as long as you don't fall for their propaganda about being to the left and instead look at their policies
- It's because of what they named the bill I reckon but it's still bullshit like "citizens united" or "the patriot act" aka not what the bills intent is
- Did Biden introduce this bill or vote on it?
  
  Vocalized support in favor of it and asked for it to be passed, so it seems. About as far as he can go until it's on his desk, so it's understandable to expect he would sign it if it does.
  
  Biden is the President, head of the executive branch and does not have the power to introduce bills or vote on them.
  He can only sign the bill into law or veto the bill.
  
  Looks like he's in full support
  "Republicans and Democrats, Unite Against Big Tech Abuses Congress can find common ground on the protection of privacy, competition and American children."
  "By Joe Biden"
  In the Wall Street journal
  https://www.wsj.com/articles/unite-against-big-tech-abuses-social-media-privacy-competition-antitrust-children-algorithm-11673439411?page=1
  
  Well if it becomes law then he will have. Do you have reason to think he will veto?
- He's a corporate piece of shit. I have to vote for him every time but he's absolutely on the wrong side and if America burns I will consider him like Nero having done nothing but played his fiddle to the tune of the screams of his constituents as he refuses to change things that might upset his benefactors.
  Truly a waste of a presidency and a failure of those in power to try and make things better instead of hiding and playing passive line holders to fascists at the gate.
- This is what gets me about conservatives trying to shit on Biden and expecting a rise out of us. Motherfuckers, we know he's mid lmao. Better than the alternative though
  
  Some of my last days on reddit every bad thing I said about Biden triggered some dem true believer to tell me how actually Biden is the most progressive president in history. I get they don't want to acknowledge bidens conservative leaning in fear it might hurt him at the polls. What they dont realize for every one person you're telling don't believe your own eyes you're maybe only keeping one person from straying from party line. But that person you just showed the dems true colors to, for them, you've tainted the party forever.

American here, and I am totally OK with a tiny bit of extra latency if people & companies want to move their servers to some place in Europe that actually respects freedom and people.
Though I suspect that if you’re a US company with servers located abroad, they will still make the law apply to you since you control it.
- Also adding on to this, buy physical media.
  
  Buy 8 tb hard drives and fill them up. It's cheaper than streaming even if you managed to fill one every year.
  
  Cloud storage is just someone else's computer.
  
  it's pretty horseshit that if you buy a digital copy of a movie, they can just revoke that licence whenever they want, under the guise of "well, we don't have the licence anymore".
- if people & companies want to move their servers to some place in Europe that actually respects freedom and people.
  implying the EU respects freedom
  
  Relative to this new proposal from the US gov....um yeah. The EU is far more free online. No Patriot Act or NDAA either.
  
  I was going to say something about giving it to gypsies and you could probably literally see European fervor to ban something. Lol

Knowing this will probably be passed like
- This is how it feels like to not be American and seeing decisions like this. They affect the whole Internet since so much stuff relies on US Internet infrastructure, yet you can only watch as the citizens of Burgerland drive the 'net into the ground.
  
  the whole Internet
  It will not affect the whole Internet. American-centered English-speaking "Internet" yes, but there's lots and lots of infrastructure and content elsewhere. Many Chinese-, Japanese-, Russian-, and German-centric resources exist almost independently from the rest of the world. Some of them are free to completely ignore the "bad internet bills", copyright, IP, GDPR, and any other regulation you can think of.

"Think of the children" is such a dumb excuse that people keep using in the US to pass laws that restricts citizens and are anti-privacy.
- It's such a dumb excuse that it caught on in many other countries!
- It's not stupid if it works

Make sure you vote!!!!
- For fucking what? This is bipartisan!
  
  don't worry, they're making fun of liberals who claim voting will cure all societal ills
  
  If someone without a website in their name and who has pronouns displayed says some weird shit 95/100 times it’s ironic
  
  PSL, for example.
- I keep voting and things keep getting worse anyway.
  
  You’re not voting hard enough

I would appreciate governments, especially the American government, refraining from passing laws "for the children". They never are. They never work. They are a scam that gives the appearance of being beneficial to all while only benefiting a few. They accomplish nothing the scam indicates it will and instead turns out to be another overreach of government power.
No more "for the children" nonsense from any government - it's not about them and you know it.
You want to pass something for the good of the children? GET RID OF THE GODDAM GUNS.
- Shit, third spaces and public squares would also still be a lot more of a thing if anyone cared about the children. The situation with hostile architecture just makes things worse for everyone. People out there trying to invent ultrasonic devices meant to deter teenagers from hanging around and shit.
  I ended up a terminally online washout in part because there was fuck all to do aside from sitting around the house and going to school when I was a kid. That was 20 years ago. I can't imagine the situation is much better these days.
- Funny how you did the same thing though, get rid of the guns "for the children" after your tirade about the government restricting freedom under that banner. It's OK when you do it, but not them.
  I see the both the same, bullshit appeal-to-emotion power grabs to reduce the freedom of the citizenry. The "get rid of guns" talk is bullshit because that is just not a possible thing to ever accomplish.

Why would a state attorney generally have any oversight over the content of the internet? That seems way out of scope for their job

I hang around a bunch of artists who make money through NSFW art...or shit, they just draw it for fun. This isn't gonna be great for them. Why should me and my friends' thirty year old asses have to hold back so Little Timmy doesn't see a boob or something? Shouldn't their parents be the ones making sure that doesn’t happen?

part 2 of this bill:
Pornography, manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children, for instance, is not a political Gordian knot inextricably binding up disparate claims about free speech, property rights, sexual liberation, and child welfare. It has no claim to First Amendment protection. Its purveyors are child predators and misogynistic exploiters of women. Their product is as addictive as any illicit drug and as psychologically destructive as any crime. Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered.
just so we're all clear on the purpose of this bill.
- All the fascist hentai guys on 4chan are about to commit mass suicide or a mass shooting
  
  The guys who run 4chan are going to be facing life in jail.
- Wtf
- What the heeell? (can't get a more productive comment after reading that, sorry)

I don't know if I'm in the right here but I'm practically at the point where I'm just like fuck it, let them ruin the internet.
I want to hear them scream when because of their own actions they have tanked the companies that their retirements are depending on.
Let's see how fast they can fix shit when they have 35 million angry retirees that hold 78% of the wealth in the country mad at them and telling them to fix it.
- [This comment has been deleted by an automated system]
  
  They'll be in office until they're dead or dying
  Only if they die of old age. If they are found dead before then, the wait could be much, much shorter. After all, aren't the conservatives (like Matt "child-fucker" Gaetz) openly calling for wide-spread violence now?
- I wish the "Dark Web" hadn't turned into shit show, Just looking into it now gets you onto some fuckin watch list but it would have been a perfectly viable place to set up a proper censorship-free web. It also takes care of the user-quality issue by being slightly harder to use than a button that says "INSTALL APP NOW!"
  
  It's gotten so the "dark web" is any website that doesn't show up on page 1 of a Google search result.
  It's all bullshit and they'll keep shoveling it as long as they have arms to shovel with

Ooooh... the liberals are about to hand the fascists the keys to the tanks.
- We did the same in 2016. I forget what happened as I lapsed into a 4 year alcohol fueled amnesia. But I can't imagine that it was too bad. /s
  
  We did the same in 2016
  Nope. Not yet. The right-wingers thought they could install overt fascism without the help of liberals - they thought wrong. They tried to win the streets - antifa beat booted them off it. They got their Great Orange Fuhrer into the Waffle House - liberal disdain isolated him and booted him out. What needs to happen is liberals being frightened to such an extent of working class revolt that the violence fascists offers becomes the "lesser evil" - and a good first step is to find hysteria "hot button" issues that liberals are too ignorant and naive to see through... like above-mentioned "protect the children" trope.

"would give the attorney general of every state, including red states, the right to sue"
What a weird distinction to make. I know they're getting squirrelly, but they still technically count in the "every state" column.
- the distinction is because those red states have extensive efforts underway to go after queer people and this bill enables them to do so online.
  
  There is no need for it though. It is a bipartisan bill and further down it is mentioned how the GOP would use it. The implication of red states being shitty is already there.
  It's just bad writing.

I emailed my senators, both Democrats. One wrote me back telling me how proud they were of co-sponsoring the bill. The other told me how important it is to protect kids from the dangers of social media. WTF.
- WTF indeed. But, thanks for emailing them -- they track how much email they get in each direction, and if there's enough they may rethink their position.

Donate to the EFF.
- i thought you meant the Economic Freedom Fighters💀

A bill like this has merit if it's targeted at real problems, like the sources of fascist growth and propaganda that have existed on the internet for decades.
As per usual the US isn't interested in going after the fascists though. This will absolutely be used against already marginalised people and the left, by which I mean socialists. There's a reason it has bipartisan support.
- yeah, Rs have already been bragging that they're going to use this to go after queer communities online.
- You really can't pick and choose. There's really no such thing as 'good' government censorship of the internet, you have to block all of it or you're getting the bad stuff.
  
  Yes there is. And yes you can. The only people that say this absurd fucking bullshit are literally nazis who don't want to be targeted.
  "Hurr hurr you have to block lgbt with the fascists or you have to accept them both" is a fucking stupid thing to say and you should be ashamed of yourself and the general state of your life leading you to say this stupid shit.
  
  If you learn more about political science you'll find that there is more nuance, it's not so simple as all or nothing.

How do I check if my senator has signed? Or is that not public information
- here's the list of cosponsors ... if they're there, then they're certainly supporting it. It's worth contacting them in any case; they'll often send you a form reply saying their position on the bill.
  
  They are, damn
  
  Damn had to call both my senators. I always hate calling because I have no doubt that it wont do anything.
  
  God in a campaign defined by hilarious self inflicted pratt falls I can't believe they slapped Tim Karnes dumbass into Hillary vp slot.
  And then tried to whitewash him as "your boring uncle (please don't look into any of his actual policy positions)"
  
  Somehow neither of my senators customers cosponsored, but I'm guessing they'll both sign. We passed someone similar in my state recently, so I'm not expecting much.
  I'll contact them though. I guess it can't hurt.
- It's gotta be public info.
  Right?
- [This comment has been deleted by an automated system]

Horrifying to see Biden and the Dems unite with the Republicans on an anti-LGBT+ bill.
- It is incredibly typical.
  My reaction to the sponsor list would be the shocked Pikachu meme.
- You should have seen Biden and the Dems unite w Republicans to make gay marriage and gay military service illegal the first time and they'll keep doing it too
- Biden and the Dems are right-leaning centrists.
  Actual progressives caucus with them because what choice do we have? Refusing to do so effectively gives control of the most powerful nation in the history of the world to a psychotic doomsday cult who never met a minority that they didn't hate with all of their Christian hearts™.
  Kinda makes me wonder if we'll ever have a proper left-wing party in this country since, at this point, saying that poor people should be given a 30 second head start before being hunted by their social betters is considered by Conservatives to be radical Marxism.
- most US dems have the stance of "compromise at all costs" which always just means the conservatives get what they want.
  US dems are just conservatives with people pleaser syndrome.
  
  Well, they sure aren't pleasing me.
- In a few years, if you're not willing to vote with a brick and a molotov, then your vote doesn't count.

Thank you for noting the US focus in the title <3
So often I see sweeping headlines like this that are actually only about a single country, and the country is always named (as it's a key piece of information about the story) unless it's the USA, at which point they just assume you must be in the USA too and so being up front about what country they're talking about isn't a priority xD
- Unfortunately this is about the first time, I'd (almost) disagree with you. If the US bans something on, or makes a law about, the internet it almost always affects the rest of the world. The only difference is the rest of the world has no say in the matter :(
  
  Can you elaborate how this act could affect me in Germany?
  
  You make a good point! It's too early in the morning for me to think about solutions to the issue, they mainly affect platforms used globally but hosted in a specific country like the USA (Facebook for example).
  Though, it's not like we have no say entirely, so there is hope :-)
  For example, a major platform like Facebook banning/restricting gay/trans content would be seen as a pretty major case of discrimination and would certainly land Facebook in court over here, with their access to our market eventually closed should they not comply with our equality laws.
  So sure, they could keep running in the USA, but their access to global markets would be reduced and fractured depending on how evil and draconian the USA continues to get, and how much freedom other countries have internally in their societies, to better protect from discrimination.
  Which I'd say in a way is a good thing, allowing for local rivals to jump up to fill the gap and bring back some of the innovation and joy of the internet of 20 years ago! :-D
  But there's down sides too, it distances us from others, making it harder for us to connect with and understand other nations and cultures. I think having a platform that everyone can use, run by a monopoly or not, is a very beneficial thing for us all.
  Anyway, just a few extra thoughts there. It's a very complex and difficult topic, and I'm not even "armchair expert" level 😅

Lol, kosa means scythe in slovenian.
- In all Slavic languages, if I'm not mistaken.

Screw both parties and Joe Biden in particular. I'll be asking my senators to oppose this, though I highly doubt it'll matter.
- Biden's going to veto it for sure, lol.
  
  Then why is he urging lawmakers to pass it? Just do he can veto it? That doesn't make any sense.

How is this line up with 'liberty'? The US gov can't stop intruding into the private sphere.

If you live in CT contact Blumenthal and Murphy, this is Blumenthals bill... try to get Murph to put pressure on Blumenthal, at least Murph isn't a politcal fox.

"The internet is about to get a lot worse (US focused)" uhh ::: spoiler spoiler
:::
everyday is the same but slightly worse

It's always worth trying, but this is something I don't see us changing. And although it's helpful to have a prewritten letter to send, when they get 363826283636 identical messages it makes it that much easier to ignore because "they're just bots." I edited the message to add my own feelings about government overreach and corporations reaction to censor everything to protect themselves.
- Great point about editing the letter -- and calling is even better!
  In terms of whether or not we'll be able to change it ... last year the broad pushback succeeded in stopping KOSA, and there's certainly a decent chance to do the same this year. Who knows, but as you say, it's always worth trying!
- you might be able to sway some corporate democrats by pointing out how this will destroy a lot of internet businesses. who knows? they might have invested in tech

This removed

Can... can you please just kill me now? Just a bullet between my skull, do it while I'm playing Baldur's Gate.. don't even wanna know you're doing it.
Just wanna fall asleep and wake up on some kind of astral plane where things make sense

Fascists always use "protecting children" as the rationale for implementing mechanisms of social control. Their willingness to allow school shootings shows that they really don't care about protecting children at all.

Guess I'm gonna download a lifetime supply of porn before this goes through. Just in case.
- Western Digital be all like
  
  Ironically I am running WD drives. I've got a 32 TB server in RAID 1 running a Plex server and it's half full. I'm sure I can purge some shows if I need more space.

What the hell?

Wha... What the fuck!?!

What's going on in this popular thread?
- Mix of concern, frustration, and what appears to be complex doomer mating rituals

No!!! Not when porn is so easy to get these days! I need my daily dosage. If this goes through, the we won't have access to California's greatest stars ✨🤩 in the business. Everything will be smaller and lower quality and possibly not in English. I only watch the videos for the articles. But if the articles are all in dutch or Chinese or Japanese, how am I supposed to you know? Like do my thing. You know?
- do you have brain worms
  
  Probably.

Thank you, I just signed this petition. Luckily my lawmaker is already against these bills.
- I don't know if that's lucky. It means you are at the wims of others you can not influence.

Fuck

Awfully bad idea

Attent #452625 at destroying the Internet and counting.
They only need to succeed big once or small a couple of times. They already succeeded small big many times so yeah. Enjoy the internet while it lasts, 5 years from now it will be unrecognizeable and a fraction of what we have now.
But at least the kids are safe because THAT is why we are doing this, right? RIGHT?

Can a federal bill require state AGs to do something? Most of the bills I've heard of give resources to state actors if they agree to do something that the federal government requires.
- this doesn't require them to do anything, it just gives them new powers.

I am not an American and I couldn't care less about their laws or the people in power. Why is content here so focused on the US anyway?
- Then post tech news from your country.
- In this case, sites could make content unavailable to everyone to make sure Americans using VPNs don't see it.
  
  What about sites hosted there, or operated by Americans?
- Because you'll be effected by this too. That's the reason. The internet is full of platforms that are related to the USA in some way, and because of this all of them will have to heavily censor themselves or shut down.
  I feel you. I don't want to have to do anything with the USA. I don't even want to go there at all. As far as it doesn't hurt anyone outside I don't care what they do. But here we are.
- If you don’t care then why are you asking?
- The US likes to throw its weight around. Today it's websites inside the US the tighty righties are afraid of. Tomorrow it might be one of yours; just like the GDPR has caused a lot of USian websites to be even more annoying, USian legislation might do it to non-USian websites next.

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