NOTICE: This article is very out of date and requires another revision. Information here will not be reliable.
NOTICE: KOSA is out of the US Senate and is now in the House. If you are a US citizen, I advise you to call your house representative immediately and announce your opposition to this bill!
Take a button to announce your opposition to KOSA:
And link this page (https://bobs-cool-site.neocities.org/files/rambles/kosa)
KOSA is a bipartisan bill that is being used to violate the First Amendment.
KOSA, or the Kids Online Safety Act is a bill that proposes mandatory ID age verification for anything your attorney general deems is inappropriate for kids. What the bill decides is "unsafe" is extremely vague and covers a wide range of topics(listed below) which can inadvertently (or not, some states governments are assholes) harm kids.
What will happen if this is passed federally or in all states?
If this bill is passed, it is a major blow to basic human rights like freedom of speech, privacy and beliefs.
Sites that have any of these will likely require users to input government issued ID:
Adult entertainment
Sexual health and reproductive rights information
History of marginalized groups
Mental health resources
Addiction recovery resources
When I say "18+ information", I am referring to anything that meets this list EXCEPT for adult entertainment.
It will also force companies that make at least $2.5 billion USD in annual revenue to heavily censor any content that can have even the slightest chance of causing self-harm, suicide, eating disorders, substance abuse, depression, anxiety, and bullying, among other things. While considered a small improvement, most online speech happens on platforms like Meta, X, Snapchat, etc, all of which make at least $2.5 billion USD in annual revenue or more. Smaller companies are not subject to this part of KOSA, however "they can just use another provision of KOSA."
It will also hurt any adults who do not want to give up their privacy and anonymity online. Not only that, it has the potential to increase the amount of identity theft as people want to access these services without giving up their identity. There is simply no upside to this bill.
What should we be doing instead of KOSA?
Instead of censoring resources, we should be providing educational tools that provide parents with the tools that already exist and work better than KOSA ever will.
This is a list of around 10,000,000 porn sites in hosts files.
Scroll down the README part or click here for easy installation instructions. You will need administrator/root privileges to install.
If you don't want to use mega for downloading merged files, you can click on scripts, you will get scripts for GNU/Linux operating systems. If you do not use a GNU/Linux operating system, you will have to either use the mega link, write code to do it automatically or merge them manually.
Want to actually prevent kids from seeing pornographic, gambling or otherwise inappropriate content for minors? Invest in programs that teach parents how to use tools that prevent devices from accessing certain webpages. This will only snowball into censorship of helpful resources. All this bill does is cause problems for literally everyone besides the state/federal government. Nobody wants this bill, and the people who do are either uninformed or are hackers.
Summary
This bill only serves to create censorship. There is nothing good about this bill.
