Good morning, Twitter 🤗Since a bunch of sex-trafficking conspiracy theorists (and some well-meaning but misinformed folks) are demanding that I explain myself...
Good news: I already have (at length!). This is probably the best place to start reason.com/2015/09/30/the…
Here's some information on child abductions:
"Enough Stranger Danger! Children Rarely Abducted by Those They Don't Know" reason.com/2017/03/31/kid…
FYI, child sex-trafficking prosecutions have actually decreased since Trump took office reason.com/2019/07/18/chi…
Here's more on the insane idea that 300,000 kids are "trafficked for sex" in the U.S. each year (a myth that won't die, in part, thanks to Ashton Kutcher)
Here's how everyone from Kamala Harris to Josh Hawley, Homeland Security agents, and cops & prosecutors across the country are fighting human trafficking reason.com/2020/02/02/mas…
Here's another good example of how the FBI & federal prosecutors fight child sex trafficking reason.com/2016/03/04/the…
If it's starting to look like a lot of what the government calls "fighting human trafficking" actually isn't... congrats, you've stopped being a useful fool for the police state 👏👏👏
I think I love QAnon. It’s making relatively sane people more receptive than ever to looking past propaganda about sex trafficking
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It's hard to overstate just how bad the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) is
The Senate is likely to vote on it today, so let's take a look...
KOSA requires online businesses to "prevent or mitigate" minors from being exposed to anything that could cause basically any sort of "harm"
There are two ways to do this, and neither is good: Censor massive amounts of free speech, or age verify everyone reason.com/2024/07/24/sen…
KOSA would be cataclysmic for the internet when enforced in the most neutral of ways (think FOSTA but instead of just applying to sexuality, it's applied to just about everything).
But the real kicker is that it's going to be enforced *by political appointees*
It seems like every literary or journalistic depiction of motherhood these days is dark af and somehow always elicits ample praise for being brave and truth-telling. It's... bizarre nytimes.com/2023/03/18/boo…
I'm all for society sugarcoating motherhood & parenthood less but... it feels like we've slipped into a weird pathology in certain circles where all people do is warn about how miserable it is & the only accounts accepted as truths are litanies of neverending hate & terror & pain
Related to this, people love to tell expecting or new parents that their lives are going to be miserable. @swin24 & I got sooooo much of this — often from internet strangers, but also friends & acquaintances — when I was pregnant.
Here's a roundup of various state bills seeking to make changes — some good and some bad — to prostitution laws reason.com/2023/03/17/sta…
In 3 states — New York, Vermont, & Hawaii — lawmakers have introduced measures to decriminalize prostitution between consenting adults reason.com/2023/03/17/sta…
The Hawaii decrim bill (SB 1204) was introduced in January & comes from Sen. Carol Fukunaga, who's also proposed a bill to "study the effects of New Zealand's model of decriminalizing prostitution on sex workers, their clients, and the broader community" capitol.hawaii.gov/session/measur…
Today's #ReasonRoundup highlights a few new findings on abortion.
First: The number of legal abortions in the US dropped significantly after SCOTUS overturned Roe. There were 6% fewer abortions in August 2022 than April—though more from virtual clinics reason.com/2022/10/31/nea…
Support for total bans on abortion is down! PRRI poll finds it dropped from 13% in 2020 to 8% this year, with steepest drop among Republicans
48% of voters in a new ABC-Ipsos poll prefer pro-choice candidates, while just 33% prefer candidates who support strict abortion restrictions (18% don't care)
This is why it’s odd that Musk said he aims to make Twitter more open to free speech AND "the most respected advertising platform in the world" … the two goals are fundamentally at odds
I love people suggesting this will just lead to Twitter keeping the right kind of advertisers. The number of advertisers — esp big ones with deep pockets—who don’t care what kind of content their ads run beside is small to nonexistent…
Corporate advertisers & people who want less content moderation are 2 groups with no overlap