‘Pass It, Pass It, Pass It, Pass It, Pass It,’ The President Says About A Bill The GOP Says Will Be Useful To Silence LGBTQ Voices
from the you-sure-about-that-joe? dept
Well, this is not surprising, but unfortunate. With the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) to be debated in a Congressional hearing on Thursday, the White House had President Joe Biden come out and give a full throated endorsement of the horrible, dangerous, bill that will damage privacy and harm children.
We’ve got to hold — we’ve got to hold these platforms accountable for the national experiment they’re conducting on — on our children for profit.
Later this week, senators will debate legislation to protect kids’ privacy online, which I’ve been calling for for two years. It matters. Pass it, pass it, pass it, pass it, pass it.
I really mean it. Think about it. Do you ever get a chance to look at what your kids are looking at online?
But that’s not even remotely close to accurate about anything. Remember, the Republicans have been quite vocal about how they support KOSA because they know they can use it to suppress LGBTQ voices. They flat out said that they believe that “keeping trans content away from children is protecting kids.”
This is why so many people are up in arms about KOSA. It’s not about “protecting” kids privacy at all. It’s about giving the government more control over kids. The nature of the bill will require more data collection, not less. It will create serious 1st Amendment concerns by holding companies potentially liable if kids face harm that can be (indirectly) traced back to anything they found online.
It will create systems that will put kids who are at odds with their parents in extremely dangerous positions.
This bill is not about privacy, because it will put private data at risk.
This bill is not about kids’ safety, because it will put their safety at risk.
It is not about parental oversight, because it takes those issues out of the hands of parents.
It is not about helping kids, because it’s going to shield kids from useful information that has literally saved lives.
The Republicans seem to know all this and are embracing it for these reasons. Which leaves a big question open: why are the Democrats supporting it at all?
Filed Under: age verification, for the children, joe biden, kids online safety act, kosa, privacy
Comments on “‘Pass It, Pass It, Pass It, Pass It, Pass It,’ The President Says About A Bill The GOP Says Will Be Useful To Silence LGBTQ Voices”
The GOP will use the bill to indoctrinate children, rather than protect them. Florida is recommending PragerU as suitable for schools to use.
I just called Sen. Markey’s office and gave a staffer a bit of an earful, saying that Biden must like KOSA because he only read the title.
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The Slippery Slope Came True
In just a few years, the argument has gone from “We just want to have a civil ceremony and be left alone” to “You have to allow us to sexualize your kids, with no parental input”. Many Democrats have had enough.
Re: Huh?
Koby-
You think that the internet is trying “sexualize our kids”?
What kind of QAnon/Right Wing BS is that?
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It’s the line the fascists are using in their push to make sure the first words we get for ourselves are “faggot” and “sinner” when we’re trying to figure out why we’re different.
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Just a reminder that those words will also be used to describe anyone who isn’t White, Anglo-Saxon, and a “true believer” of their ideology. In that order.
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If the Heritage Foundation supporting KOSA wasn’t enough to give Democrats second thoughts, Koby supporting it with nonsense about LGBT people “sexualizing kids” definitely should.
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You seem to be confusing the internet with the Catholic church.
Men wearing dress trying to sexual kids, the word you’re looking for is clergy.
Re: The Slippery Slope Remains Fallacious
You broaden the definition of “sexualize” whenever it is convenient. I’m sure you have no problem calling children boys or girls, but the moment someone wants to be called the other someone must be sexualizing them.
You have to pretend that parental input is ignored when it is mandatory in all cases of underaged transitioning. Of course, if parental refusal starts to impact the mental health of a child, the state may step in, just like they do, and rightly should, with any other type of parental abuse.
You lie about the availability of genital-oriented (and other) surgery to minors to scare people to your cause. Top surgeries are seldom performed on minors. Bottom surgeries are never performed on minors except for religious reasons, perhaps you’ve heard of one called “circumcision,” which is medically pointless in 99% of cases and is typically performed on infants.
You lie about children being forced to believe they are trans. You’ve clearly never raised a child — they have minds of their own and until you beat blind faith into them, they are very willing, even eager, to question things and not do things they don’t like. And do you know who beats blind faith into kids? Religious organizations, not public schools.
You lie about everything so that you can scare people who are afraid of their ideas being challenged and so you don’t have to face the actual challenges to your ideas, whilst actively supporting organizations that shelter child molesters, from the Republican Party to the vast majority of Christian church organizations (Catholic, JW, LDS, Southern Baptists, just to name a few).
If you want to protect children from being sexualized, take them out of churches, or at least sentence the church leaders who molest children and hide child molesters from the law.
Don’t worry about if the kids realize they, or other people, aren’t straight or cisgender. Worry about the people who consider them sexualized for even knowing the terms.
Don’t defend a party that runs known pedophiles for office. When a Dem gets accused of sexual misconduct, they leave service. When a Republican does it, they get their party covering their misdeeds as false accusations or claims the accusations are a result of witch hunts (even though they are the party of witch hunters), or perfectly normal.
Don’t defend religious organizations that claim their faith means they can avoid revealing child molesters within their ranks. Any faith that will protect child molesters, that will forgive them and keep them in service rather than expose them to the government, deserves to die in its spiritual stagnance.
If you have a refutation of my claims, say even one documented case of a minor being rushed through gender-affirming surgery, provide the link. Give me the data.
You won’t, because you can’t, because it doesn’t exist.
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For all the shit conservatives like to talk about how liberals/progressives are enabling Newspeak, conservatives are the ones who keep trying to reduce any discussions of sex, sexuality, and gender identity into the “goodsex” and “sexcrime” dichotomy found in 1984. It’d be funny if it weren’t so goddamn fascistic.
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It’s definitely funny, just dark humor funny. The kind where you laugh because it’d be too tiring to cry about it because if caring people cried about every injustice in the world they’d be crying 24/7 until they die. Dark humor definitely allows me to deal with heavy issues on a regular basis while keeping a positive attitude towards reality overall. I do, however, adjust my comedy level depending upon who I am around as I don’t wany my dark laughter to make somebody uncomfortable and some people who would take such things literally–especially because I’ve practiced various evil laughs including a superb witch’s cackle–I definitely take into account my audience’s grasp on comedic reality before pulling out improv segments.
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Nice straw man, brave sir Koby. It comes as a surprise to absolutely no one.
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You are typically wrong about…well, damn near anything, really. But on this subject, your wrongness is astounding.
Queer people are not trying to “queer your kids” (or whatever anti-queer terminology you want to use). They’re trying to educate everyone of all ages that queer people are people who are no more or less people because of how they dress, who they love, or anything else you can use to disparage them.
You can tell a kid about gay people without having to discuss anal sex with them. You can tell a kid about trans people without having to show them an hour-long slideshow about gender reassignment surgery. That you seem to believe you can’t have a discussion with anyone about queer people without bringing up sex and/or genitals is your bigoted-ass problem.
Also, yes or no, Koby: Do you believe the government should have the right to compel any interactive web service into hosting any third-party speech that it would otherwise refuse to host?
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I find it amusing how many of us enjoy tilting at the various windmills of Techdirt such as Koby. It’ll probably never move him but it nonetheless improves our rhetoric ability for so it can help influence real world people who are actually open minded and willing to participate in respectful conversations and even possibly change their minds even though that’d mean admitting they’re wrong. It also has to ability to move lurkers here reading what we’re saying so it makes me happy to see people here keep trying because that’s literally half the battle with democracy. There’s always fascistic and authoritarian elements who would manipulated the levers of democracy to abolish it, which means we have to be eternally vigilant. Not perpetually vigilant every moment, that’s impossible, but forever vigilant as an outlook. It’s a bit annoying, but that annoyance would be far worse under a fascist system. You clearly understand the concept of having to remain vigilant to insure this place doesn’t become a Nazi bar.
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It’s true that many Democrats have had enough of Republican bullshit.
The problem is, While the Democrats are more than willing to endorse Republican bullshit (like this Bill), it’s the REPUBLICANS who have changed their tone from “Leave Us Alone” to “Give us what we want, or will fucking KILL all of you.”
Jan 6 wasn’t enough for you, Koby?
Re: Koby, on behalf of the Techdirt community and its writers, please….
Shut the fuck up
You’re a fucking cunt
Shut the fuck up
You’re a stupid cunt, suck my dick
Shut the fuck up
Stop being a fucking cunt
Shut the fuck up
Nobody even wants you here.
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Meow!
Re: You’re like the John Madden of incels
“Many Democrats have had enough.”
Out of all the stupid shit you’ve evershat out your pie hole that may actually be the most dumbass things you’ve ever said.
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…hallucinated nobody mentally competent, ever,
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Your brain is a butt plug.
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Please don’t insult butt plugs like that.
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The Democrats saying “for the kids!” here are the exact same ones protesting the anti-drag laws. Clearly you’re wrong that they “had enough”.
Also, no one is saying that. Stop lying.
KOSA is anti-LGBTQ
Make no mistake …
KOSA is anti-LGBTQ.
And it’s supporters are anti-LGBTQ.
Plenty of its supporters will talk about how they fully support the LGBTQ community, but their actions will speak louder than their words.
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Re: boosted
@M
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What someone says tells you what sort of person they want people to think they are.
What someone does tells you what sort of person they actually are.
In a clash between words and deeds while you should pay attention to their words you should give much more weight to their actions when it comes to judging a person’s character.
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Fascists and liberals. Name a more iconic duo.
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Elon Musk’s dick and a car door.
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I don’t think we have centuries of history illustrating car doors working with Elon Musk in pursuit of genocide.
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But liberals working with fascists is about as masterful a gambit as Elon slamming his dick in a car door—mainly because the liberals think they’ll be good enough to escape the leopards when face-eating time rolls around.
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We don’t have centuries of history of fascists and liberals working together to pursue genocide, either. For one thing, fascism didn’t even exist two centuries ago.
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That’s not even a duo except maybe in the sense that Batman and the Joker are an iconic duo.
This bill is about control, pure and simple. Both parties are authoritarian in their own ways. They salivate at the thought of centralizing control online. No more wild west outside of their reach. No more small forums / open source platforms that compete with the big guys because they can’t afford to check IDs. Then once ID checking is normalized, they will require online platforms to keep a record of who posted what for terrorism / child safety (although most would do that anyway because what online platform doesn’t want to collect more data?). Then you’d better hope you don’t talk about abortions in right-wing states or gun manufacturing in left-wing states.
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How likely is this bill to pass?
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About as likely as you are to stop asking this same question every time a bill is talked about on Techdirt.
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Word.
It will be heard the same day a California court considers a preliminary injunction to the Age Appropriate Design Code, which is substantially very similar to KOSA. This judge’s ruling could potentially speed KOSA’s passage or stop it in its tracks.
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"why are the Democrats supporting it at all?"
Because they are Republicans Lite 😛
This is all very concerning to us in democratic African countries. LGBTQ rights are paramount to human rights, the UK and USA are not just violently and cruelly attacking vulnerable minorities, you are exporting your vicious hatred to otherwise democratic countries. Shame on you!
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Please. The Democratic party supports queer rights including trans rights and queer marriage. They support making sexual orientation one of the protected classes you cannot discriminate against like sex, religion or country of birth. The GOP is trying to criminalize drag performers to harass them and trans citizens, legislation Democrats massively oppose. The Drag Isn’t Dangerous online telethon raised over half a million for the ACLU Drag Defense Fund.
Are Democrats more conservative compared to most liberal parties in comparative nations, most definitely. But Democrats aren’t conservative or Republican Lite. Almost all the great legislation in America was brought about by Democrats: the 40 hour work week/overtime pay, labor unions, child labor laws, Social Security, Medicaid, universal education and the creation of the national parks system. As a queer person living in a deep red state, I most definitely know the differences between a conservative who hates me and a liberal ally, it’s definitely not conservatives who hate me and liberals who hate me a bit less or just tolerate me here.
At this point over 70% of American adults supports gay marriage, which means the number is even higher if you poll all Americans including children. I’m sure it’s just as accepted where you live, I’m sure it’s legal for you to get married where you live where things are more liberal than America, which seems highly unlikely. I’m sure your nation is a utopia and not a petrol state hell hole or some other horrible incarnation of near universal servitude capitalism.
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If we’re talking Africa, some African nations have been thoroughly poisoned by Republican ideology.
If we’re talking China, the LGBTQ+ technically have the same tax breaks as heterosexual ones, and can own property, and can be in civil unions, but are not allowed to be shown in a positive or humanizing light.
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Re: Re: "Some Democrats"
Not all, support trannies and gays.
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The vast majority do.
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What’s the current rate in Yuan for a shit post like that?
With President Joe endorsing the bill again it may well put him and the rest of the democrats in a dangerous position with the under 35 vote come the election.
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I have a feeling we’re being vigilant enough to make the level of noise required to get noticed so that those Democrats, who think they’re doing the right thing, will take the time to listen and learn that they’re being duped, That places like the Heritage Foundation have come out declared they will use KOSA to get all discussions of LGBTQIA+ information banned as indecent for children placing all queer discussions behind an 18+ only legally mandated gate.
Easy question if you're a good parent
I really mean it. Think about it. Do you ever get a chance to look at what your kids are looking at online?
If you’re a responsible parent who has talked with your kid, set boundries, given them advice as to what they might see and what to avoid, made clear that if they run across something they’re not sure of they should feel comfortable coming to you to talk about it and if all else fails put filters in place to limit what they can see then why would you need to?
‘I demand that everyone else make sure my kids don’t see anything I don’t want them to and be punished if they don’t’ is the cry of a lazy parent, little different than one who would drop their kid off in the middle of a crowded city without supervision and then throw a fit when they kid got lost or wandered into a rough area.
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Typical hypocrisy from racist white western males
All the self-righteous comments condemning the right wing yet demonstrating the same level of narcissism, homophobia and racism. Maybe you should all take a long introspective look at yourselves and ponder why you are so racist, and yet think you are not.
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Maybe you, Valis, should take a long introspective look at yourselves and ponder why you are so undemocratic, and yet think you are not.
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*yourself
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I guess Xi doesn’t pay you enough to do self-introspection, or, more appropriately, to read the comment section.
Do point out to us where we’re being racist and homophobic/transphobic again, I’ve seem to be unable to catch those instances.
There should be enough evidence to show we’re being racist, at least. Or does the CCP not pay you enough to do some basic fucking research?
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That was aimed at Valis and not me, despite myself being the reply recipient, correct? Just making sure.
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Yeah.
Apologies.
WordPress do be wonky…
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lmao fuck off CCP shill
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We should take a second look at people who are upset about KOSA.
You want to preserve the alarming rise of teenage suicide, depression, and disassociation by making some nebulous LGBTQ+ connection.
Preserving that status quo makes you highly suspect.
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No, we want to preserve privacy and the right to anonymity. The words ‘it’s for the children’ stop sounding trustworthy when they want to add a surveillance camera to your bedroom with those words.
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Fuck anonymity.
The day we all have to own what we say online, the more polite we will be as a society.
For every gay outed, there will be 10 pedos dropped into a dark hole to be forgotten.
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You would think so, but that doesn’t turn out to be true. Banning anonymity would be giving up privacy for more or less nothing.
https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/naming-names-wont-stop-abuse-on-social-media/
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It would be worse than nothing, it would make it much easier for the rich and powerful to sue anyone who criticizes them into bankruptcy.
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“Fuck anonymity.
The day we all have to own what we say online, the more polite we will be as a society.”
Said the Anonymous Coward
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You don’t need to post under a name to take responsibility for your own speech.
If you’ve been told you are wrong, man the fuck up, apologize, and learn from it.
Don’t need a name to do that.
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It just so happens that is every authoritarian’s wet dream, since everyone will be so ever polite or draw the ire of said authoritarian.
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… said the person posting anonymously.
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You seem to want to correlate the existence of queer people with the rise of suicides and depression in teenagers. FYI: The reason queer teenagers might be more likely to suffer depression/die by suicide is because they’re bullied, harassed, and made to suffer only because of their queerness.
Re: Re: 'Beatings will continue until mental health is achieved'
‘We keep beating them, telling them how sinful and disgusting they are, strip away their rights and/or have their own families disown them and throw them out of their homes, clearly being anything other than straight and CIS is the cause of all the resulting mental problems the subhuman things that don’t fall into the correct category experience!’
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I see you’re still living in the 1980’s completely disconnected from the reality of kids in high school today.
Kids are claiming to be Bi, or gay to fit in.
You wouldn’t know that because you don’t touch grass often enough.
Gay, straight, whatever, kids are killing themselves at an alarming rate, and this will help slow that trend.
Stay away from the kids Stephen, they don’t need you near them.
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Got a citation for that? And no, “my kids told me” doesn’t count.
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“You wouldn’t know that because you don’t touch grass often enough.”
What does marijuana have to do with it?
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ahahaha fucking what
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No, they are not. I have no idea where you got that, but it certainly isn’t reality.
No, no it won’t. There is no evidence of a causal connection between the two, so it likely will do nothing or make it worse.
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As someone who does live in a place where the LGBTQ+ community is constantly browbeaten, made into monsters AND forced into suicide simply for being them, KOSA will do more than just silence a community.
It’ll lead to such nice things as “making criticism about the government illegal”, and eventually “promote hate speech with impunity”.
Oh, and entrenching a shitty status quo where the only things you’re allowed to do is either die making less than minimum wage or die bleeding out in BumFuckistan because Der Fuhrer had a bad hair day.
Slippery slope, yes, but when teenagers realize that their lives are going to get worse than the bad sitch they already are in…
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[Projects facts contrary to evidence]
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Don’t bother yourself with Googling something that might force some introspection.
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Teens committing suicide isn’t limited to the US.
And as someone who has a passing familiarity with this, maybe, just maybe, it’s because they are forced to take responsibily for the fuckups of their parents? While getting turbofucked by said mistakes?
If I had to unfuck my parents’ fuckups with such a disadvantage, I’d be in so much despair even a team of mental health professionals would be hard-pressed to fix me up just enough to be an economically viable unit…
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It’s telling you couldn’t even bother to post a link yourself…
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Ah yes, the classic “do your own reasearch” admission that you’re just parroting stupid lies.
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I’m unconvinced that the rise in suicide, depression, and disassociation has any connection to social media or the internet in the first place. That link is far more tenuous than the one you’re objecting to.
Do I ever get a chance to look at what my kids are looking at online?
Yes Mr. Biden, yes I do. You see, I fully understood the dangers that may (and do) exist on the open internet, and took steps to mitigate them. I learned how the internet works, and how to set up my own DNS server that the traffic from all the devices in my control route their queries through. At any moment, I could with a few clicks, enable logging on that server to see what sites anyone using it are accessing (I don’t currently do so as my kids are old enough and responsible enough to be afforded some privacy in their life). You see, I actually took the role as “parent” seriously, and taught my kids how to protect themselves from harm, but also gave myself the ability to be the parent and have the ability to check up on them (and teach them) if needed.
Well, presumably because opposing a bill entitled “Kids Online Safety Act” would be met with cries of “Do you not support the safety of children? What are you, a pedophile?”, among other (bad) reasons.
Bills entitled to suggest they do one thing when they actually do another continues to be a common phenomenon because it works. Not reading past the headline is as much a thing with politicians and voters as it is with readers of the press.
Re: 'Of course I want to protect kids, that's WHY I'm against this bill.'
Well, presumably because opposing a bill entitled “Kids Online Safety Act” would be met with cries of “Do you not support the safety of children? What are you, a pedophile?”, among other (bad) reasons.
Which is still the coward’s choice on their part as in that situation what they should be doing is pushing back hard by pointing out that bills like this are anything about protecting children and if anything those supporting them are the ones putting children at risk.
I suspect the Dems supporting this bill either
(A) don’t know what it actually does beyond the talking points spread by its authors
(B) do know what it does, but think it (or large parts of it) will be struck down by the courts without them having to actually do anything like voting against it (which would require political courage) or
(C) know what it does, but think it won’t be used against LGBTQ people in blue states, and don’t particularly care about what happens in red states.
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Of course, now that I think about it, there’s also (D) Are aware of that possibility*, but think it’s a worthwhile risk to “protect kids from (nasty stuff x) and/or ‘Stick it to Big Tech'”
And as for Biden? Frankly, given his age, and the era he was raised in, I wonder if he really understands how the Internet works.
*I’d argue it’s extremely probable, but they may be deluding themselves otherwise.
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Don’t forget:
Well, presumably because opposing a bill entitled “Kids Online Safety Act” would be met with cries of “Do you not support the safety of children? What are you, a pedophile?”, among other (bad) reasons.
And while true, it’s cowardly, do you think voters would want to vote a pedophile in office… Of course, I may be wrong.
But yeah, could be D.
Biden is definitely not a progressive. In many ways, he is a conservative, though far from being as extreme as republicans.
And he is in many ways the same ancient kind of politician who is satisfied with being seen “doing something” about a problem rather than taking the time to understand the problem and its complexities before acting. His urge to “pass it, pass it, pass it” is a symptom of such people. Do something, no matter how useless or even harmless it is, because it’s better than being seen as “doing nothing”.
Worse yet, this is playing into the highly hypocritical “think of the children” narrative that republicans have pushed for decades… while they bring back child labor, defend child marriage, and prevent any action against school shootings.
Biden wants to be seen as “doing something” on the subject (which is harmful when done thoughtlessly), and he wants to be seen as “reaching across the aisle” (which will not get him any goodwill from the right-wingers anyway). It’s pointless at best and extremely harmful at worst, but that’s how Biden does politics.