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So Section 230 is safe on the federal level for now thanks to the Supreme Court’s decision from what I hear but there’s still other issues in the tech/internet world.

The Heritage Foundation is pretty much openly pro-censorship as they greatly support the revived KOSA/Kids Online Safety Act to censor whatever they deem as harmful:

Meanwhile in France:

I hearing that Section 230 is at risk in this case:

I’m going to advise as usual that you always backup content likely to be at risk if Section 230 is adjusted in anyway on offline storage devices in case shit goes sideways.

The latest horrid proposal is the PROTECTING KIDS ON SOCIAL MEDIA ACT just introduced TODAY.

This portion from the article summarizes the main worry:

“Specifically, it bars children under 13 from creating accounts on social media apps, while also greatly curtailing the algorithms tech companies could deploy on people between 13 and 17 years old. (Users under 13 would still be able to view online content, provided they aren’t logged into an account.) The bill would also require parental consent before anyone under 18 could create a profile.”

“To ensure pre-teens and children don’t create social media profiles, the bill would also create a government-run age-verification program, overseen by the Department of Commerce. The system would require children and their parents to upload identification to prove their age. While the legislation doesn’t mandate that companies use the government system, it would nevertheless represent a significant expansion of the government’s role in the online ecosystem.”

Direct link to text of bill:

It shouldn’t be surprising that they’re pleased to propose this at the same time EARN IT and KOSA have been revived.

Ignore the sus poster above me.

Anyway, here’s the latest on backwards nonsense:

The Restrict Act, the newest censorship bill:

Anti-Porn Organizations attacking freedom as always:

@CaptainXtra
On this subject, the final decision on Section 230 by the court shouldn’t be expected until June.

Just an FYI.

So you might want to back up and archive some of your favorite stuff around the web in the meantime just incase Section 230 is altered in anyway which would legally endanger said content.

From the article:

So I stumbled across this:

Yeah, we might have a problem.

Direct Link to Tweet:

The KOSA is still a threat:

@CaptainXtra
Good news: It’s not in the NDAA

So according to the EFF there’s risk of a Link Tax called JCPA being slipped into an upcoming must pass spending bill.

@CaptainXtra
Though to be fair the issues here are not like the Texas law.

Key Points:

As you can guess, I’m pretty concerned about Section 230 being looked over by an institution currently controlled by backwards dinosaurs.

So recently this topic was brought to my attention and I think it should be shared:

A brief summary from the article!

Before we get overwhelmed by the bill’s details, I’ll highlight three crucial concerns:

First, the bill pretextually claims to protect children, but it will change the Internet for EVERYONE. In order to determine who is a child, websites and apps will have to authenticate the age of ALL consumers before they can use the service. NO ONE WANTS THIS. It will erect barriers to roaming around the Internet. Bye bye casual browsing. To do the authentication, businesses will be forced to collect personal information they don’t want to collect and consumers don’t want to give, and that data collection creates extra privacy and security risks for everyone. Furthermore, age authentication usually also requires identity authentication, and that will end anonymous/unattributed online activity.

Second, even if businesses treated all consumers (i.e., adults) to the heightened obligations required for children, businesses still could not comply with this bill. That’s because this bill is based on the U.K. Age-Appropriate Design Code. European laws are often aspirational and standards-based (instead of rule-based), because European regulators and regulated businesses engage in dialogues, and the regulators reward good tries, even if they aren’t successful. We don’t do “A-for-Effort” laws in the U.S., and generally we rely on rules, not standards, to provide certainty to businesses and reduce regulatory overreach and censorship.

Third, this bill reaches topics well beyond children’s privacy. Instead, the bill repeatedly implicates general consumer protection concerns and, most troublingly, content moderation topics. This turns the bill into a trojan horse for comprehensive regulation of Internet services and would turn the privacy-centric California Privacy Protection Agency/CPPA) into the general purpose Internet regulator.

So the big takeaway: this bill’s protect-the-children framing is designed to mislead everyone about the bill’s scope.
The bill will dramatically degrade the Internet experience for everyone and will empower a new censorship-focused regulator who has no interest or expertise in balancing complex and competing interests.

So I heard the DOJ plans to just say screw you to Privacy altogether:

Why, just why?

For those in Canada:

Are there any laws that ban use of Robotic Troops?

Because the last thing we need are these things being used by the military and police:

I hope these things will only be used for janitorial stuff in the end because Boston Dynamics could easily become Skynet if they ain’t careful about who they sell these guys to.