02/04/2024
The Campaign for Countering Digital Hate, which monitors and advocates against the worst hateful excesses of the internet, says that it welcomes a draft bill before Congress. The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) has expressed its support for the U.S. Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA). Imran Ahmed, CEO and founder of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, said: “Children and young people are in the grip of an unprecedented mental health crisis because of social media platforms that, as our research has shown, are addictive by design and lack guardrails to restrict content that can result in depression, anxiety, eating disorders and poorer mental health." KOSA will protect LGBTQ+ children from being exposed to harmful and hateful online messaging and give them the option to control the recommendation systems that are feeding toxic content". Wikipedia reports that KOSA, the Kids Online Safety Act is a bill introduced in the United States Senate by Senators Richard Blumenthal and Marsha Blackburn. The bill establishes guidelines meant to protect minors on social media platforms. However, in September 2023, a video from the fanatical extremist Family Policy Alliance showed Blackburn saying that there should be a priority to "protecting minor children from the transgender in this culture", alongside her promotion for KOSA. This drew criticism from LGBT advocacy groups, fearing that the bill would allow LGBT information for minors to be censored. A spokesperson for Blackburn stated that KOSA was not intended to censor LGBT information. To address these concerns, the bill's language was altered so that the "duty of care" only focused on the product design features that influenced minors' behavior with the platforms, and not the content. As a result, several LGBTQ groups, including GLAAD and GLSEN, dropped their opposition to the bill. However, the EFF, Fight for the Future, and the American Civil Liberties Union found the revisions far from adequate, arguing that LGBTQ content could still be suppressed by targeting any design feature that makes that content available. The Electronic Frontiers Foundation said that they were" the unique expertise of leading technologists, activists, and attorneys in our efforts to defend free speech online, fight illegal surveillance, advocate for users and innovators, and support freedom-enhancing technologies."
