KOSA and other Bad Internet Bills (US-specific for now)

As expected, the House subcommittee voted today to advance #KOSA and the other bills in the package (including the App Store Accountability Act, the SCREEN Act, and COPPA 2.0). Somewhat surprisingly, though, they had voice votes on KOSA and COPPA -- and all the Democrats voted against them. So there certainly isn't a bipartisan consensus!

To be clear, a lot of the D's voted against KOSA for a not-so-good reason: the House version removes the unconstitutional "duty of care" from the Senate version, and Rep. Kim Schreier (D-WA) and another D on the committee spoke passionately about the need to restore it. No! Please don't do that! LBGTQIA2S+,, reproductive justice, civil rights, and digital rights organizations have long opposed KOSA's duty of care because it would give Trump's FTC the power to sue apps and websites that don’t take measures to “prevent and mitigate” various harms to minors that are vague enough to chill a significant amount of protected speech.

Still, no matter what the reasons are, it's very good that the D's voted against it -- it highlights that there isn't consensus. And as some of the speakers on the live stream @fight hosted during the markup highlighted, some of the D's may well have been against it for some of the right reasons too.

So thanks to everybody who took action! As Fight highlighted, the wave of literally thousands of calls this week got noticed, so your activism really does make a difference!

(Here's the recording of the livestream -- it's a really excellent discussion, with a ton of insights on the political process in general as well as the specific bills.)

@bad_internet_bills
#KOSA #BadInternetBills