Thread by @evan_greer

🧵Okay it's #ElectionDay (go vote! voting is a valid harm reduction strategy.)

I know this birdsite is going to hell in a handbasket, but while we're all still here, I put together a THREAD on what the midterms will likely mean for tech policy fights that impact human rights.

This is going to be a bit of a ruthless analysis of how I see the election results impacting hot button tech policy issues like Section 230, content moderation, privacy legislation, the FTC and FCC, antitrust and Big Tech accountability, etc.

I'm not gonna spend as much time explaining the substance of each issue, more just how the political dynamics around them are likely to shift depending on the makeup of the House and Senate. But I'll try to link to relevant campaigns / news coverage to dive deeper.

The stakes are extremely high. High profile tech policy fights like data privacy, antitrust, and content moderation have massive implications for core issues like abortion access, voting rights, racial justice, and LGBTQ+ health care, freedom of the press, and global human rights

If Democrats lose the House, there will be enormous pressure for them to tackle some of these priorities during the lame duck. Bills focused on content moderation and speech regulation like Section 230 reform and KOSA are deeply controversial, and would do more harm than good.

#KOSA is one of the most dangerous bills that could potentially move during the "lame duck" (we really need a better term for this) session after the election. It's a well-intentioned "protect the children" bill that would harm LGBTQ+ youth and subject kids to surveillance

EFF has a good post about the core issues with KOSA here (eff.org/deeplinks/2022…). For what it's worth, SOME of these issues have been addressed in the newer version, but the fatal flaws remain.

#KOSA doesn't amend Section 230, but it has many of the same problems as bills that do. By creating a broad legal requirement for platforms to design with the "best interests of children" in mind, but never defining what that means, KOSA is a gift to the Ken Paxtons of the world

The far right Heritage Foundation is openly saying that KOSA will give attorneys general power to attack platforms that allow LGBTQ+ content or sexual health information for youth, for example. Are Dems really going to help them with this just so they can "do something" on tech?

We know that House and Senate leadership more or less shelved the #EarnItAct due to similar concerns about its impact on LGBTQ+ communities, so hopefully they're smart enough to avoid attaching KOSA to some must-pass legislation after the election.

But the good news is that there's renewed momentum for two ACTUALLY GOOD bills that could move before the end of the year: #AICOA and #OAMA, the antitrust bills that crack down on Big Tech giants' self-dealing and monopoly abuses. I wrote about them here: cnn.com/2022/05/10/per…

The White House just issued their strongest statement yet indicating that they want Congress to prioritize these #antitrust bills after the election. This comes after @fightfortheftr and other activists groups launched bidenpromised.us open letter bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

Getting these bills done NOW is essential. If Dems lose the House or Senate, it's pretty clear that the incoming GOP leadership of relevant committees (Jim Jordan, etc) will be focused on grievance politics & creating soundbites for Fox News, not serious legislating.

The few months after the election will be a make or break moment. If the Biden admin fails to deliver on this priority, it's an embarrassment for Democrats, but also puts us on an extremely dangerous path heading into the 2024 election without any meaningful reform to Big Tech.

If Dems lose the House but keep the Senate: with a divided Congress, there will be even more focus on getting Federal agencies like the FTC and FCC to use every ounce of their rulemaking authority to protect democracy and basic rights (especially abortion and LGBTQ+ rights.)

These agencies have the ability to significantly crack down on harmful corporate surveillance practices, unethical uses of artificial intelligence like facial recognition and biometric collection, and more.

The Department of Education (@SecCardona) can and should issue guidance against the use of invasive surveillance technologies in schools, including eProctoring, social media monitoring, and email scanning software. I wrote a bit about this here nbcnews.com/think/opinion/…

There's all kinds of important things the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) can do, from restoring #netneutrality and broadband privacy rules to addressing the harm of wifi connected surveillance devices like Amazon Ring drones. But first we need a full commission.

Getting Gigi Sohn confirmed to the FCC needs to be a TOP PRIORITY for Democrats after the election no matter what the results are. The delays caused by GOP obstructionism and disingenuous dark money lobbying are inexcusable. Latest here: theverge.com/23437518/biden…

The FTC has announced a rulemaking on privacy and surveillance and received comments, but we still don't know the details of what they plan to do. We have a page here where thousands of people commented in support of strong rules: ftccomments.com

We'll be pushing for them to do everything in their power to crack down on things like commercial use of facial recognition, data harvesting, using personal data to power algorithmic recommendations that lead to harmful or discriminatory outcomes, collection and sale of data.

If Republicans take over key committees, despite their bluster about "Big Tech!" they'll be trying to slow the FTC down and throw sand in their gears. So activists will need to keep the spotlight on the agency and demand that Lina Khan push forward over disingenuous opposition.

If Republicans control the House, expect tech policy conversations around content moderation and Section 230 to get significantly stupider (if you can imagine such a thing.) will trot out a series of bills reforming or repealing Section 230.

Nevermind the fact that most of those bills would likely lead to platforms removing MORE posts by conservatives if they become legally liable for things like jokes about the assault on Paul Pelosi it won't really matter anyway because those bills will all be nonstarters with Dems

What worries me the most is that then there will be a lot of pressure on committee chairs to "find the common ground" between Dems and Republicans on Section 230. That could lead to the kind of unholy alliances we've seen behind bills like the EARN IT Act. noearnitact.org

The thing I'm most worried about next Congress is a bad Section 230 bill that's framed as being about "protecting kids" or "stopping opioid sales" or something that sounds noncontroversial, but could have far reaching negative effects like SESTA/FOSTA thedailybeast.com/want-to-fix-bi…

Republicans thinking changing Section 230 will lead to more free speech online. Democrats think that changing Section 230 will lead to Big Tech platforms doing better content moderation and designing their platforms more safely. They're both wrong.

Dems should be extra cautious when approaching possible changes to 230 in the wake of the overturning of Roe v. Wade. One thing we know is going to happen in the next years is that Republican controlled state legislatures will pass a wave of draconian anti-abortion laws.

Many of these laws, like the model law being pushed by the National Right to Life Committee, will criminalize not just providing or facilitiating an abortion, but hosting a website with information about abortion, or being a payment processor that facilitates online donations...

...to an abortion provider, or being a social media company that hosts forums where people talk about their experiences with abortion... you get the picture. The only thing preventing those state laws from dictating the speech rules for the entire Internet is Section 230.

My colleague @liaholland and I wrote about this for @WIRED and if you read one thing about Section 230 I really hope it's this. wired.com/story/section-…

This is also true for the frightening wave of anti-transgender legislation that Republican controlled states are pushing. Many of these bills use a similar model, and could be used to target, for example, a social media platform that hosts groups for trans kids...

...or parents seeking gender related health care. Section 230 is kind of the last line of defense for online speech about abortion and LGBTQ+ issues in a world where Republicans are trying to criminalize that speech at the state level. Read this: theverge.com/23435358/first…

One thing we'll be pushing for is for Democrats to sign on to the Safe Sex Workers Study Act, sponsored by @SenWarren and @RoKhanna which would task the government with conducting a study of the impact of SESTA/FOSTA, the last major change to 230. fightforthefuture.org/actions/tell-c…

Our view is that Congress needs to do its due diligence and study the failures of the last time 230 was changed before rushing to change it again, especially when there are so many other ways to approach Big Tech accountability, like #privacy and #antitrust legislation.

Speaking of privacy legislation, let's talk about #ADPPA. We think this bill is a serious bipartisan effort to establish Federal data privacy rules, but it needs a lot of improvement. It's path to the floor is uncertain, but it COULD move with #antitrust bills post-election

Of all the bills that could possibly ride along with #antitrust bills #AICOA and #OAMA, I'd be the happiest if it were Federal data privacy, though I could live with something like @SenMarkey's COPPA 2.0 bill. Again: KOSA and JCPA are a mess and would do more harm than good.

If Dems hold the House and the Senate, then it's really game on to demand the strongest data privacy protections possible. The overturning of Roe should be a wake up call for Democrats on this issue. They need to go hard af.

We'd also really try to push the facial recognition ban bill, and would push for legislation specifically around facial recognition / surveillance / data collection in schools and educational settings. banfacialrecognition.com

If the GOP takes the House and Senate, it's ... a pretty grim situation overall. We should expect them to advance a national abortion ban, massive voter suppression effort to try to lock in power, anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, god knows what else.

They may do some kind of full repeal or wild rewriting of Section 230, which could throw the Internet into chaos, open the floodgates for all kinds of weird lawsuits, and lead to just a bunch of nonsense online, which may then force a more serious effort around 230, who knows.

The #Gonzalez SCOTUS decision could also lead to a lot of chaos, which could then lead to a pressure cooker for Congress to do so something on 230. Hard to see something good coming out of a situation like that, but it may be the thing that finally forces some kind of action.

Okay time for a tiny bit of optimism? The few areas where I could see POSITIVE bipartisan agreement coming together would be around government surveillance reform. Both parties have condemned Federal government use of facial recognition by the IRS for eg dumpid.me

We'll be continuing to support the strong moratorium bill introduced by Democrats last Congress, but we'd also support narrower measures that prohibit Federal funds for being used on facial recognition, for example. I could see something like that happening in a spending bill

We also may get another shot at FISA / Patriot Act reform? We'll see.

And, as always, since our expectations of Congress are relatively low, Fight for the Future will continue to focus on direct grassroots pressure on the companies and other targets to try to reduce harm and protect people's rights.

Right now we have a major campaign going at MakeDMsSafe.com with 50+ other organizations calling on Meta, Google, Apple, Twitter, Discord, Slack and other messaging services to implement end-to-end encryption by default wherever possible.

We're also pushing back against overly broad attacks on privacy tools and decentralized technologies, like OFAC's sanctioning of the #TornadoCash code: lawfareblog.com/tornado-cash-s…

Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter has really brought into focus the need for social media infrastructure that can't just be bought and sold by mercurial billionaires. Decentralized tech offers one possible solution. I wrote about this for TIME time.com/6228045/elon-m…

It also needs to be a wake up call for progressives that our demands around content moderation need to be more thoughtful and nuanced than just "remove more content faster." When someone like Musk is in charge, it's even more likely we'll see over-removal of legit content.

We @fightfortheftr are also pushing back on the corporate publishing industry's attack on libraries including the @internetarchive (a case that will have enormous consequences for the future of books, libraries, and online free expression) fightforthefuture.org/Authors-For-Li…

I'm sure I'm missing a few things. We are constantly drinking from the firehose. Obviously there are so many other important issues on the ballot this election, and probably a ton of stuff happening at the local and state level I don't have much visibility into.

But hopefully this (extremely long!) thread is a good summary of at least some of what is likely to happen in the tech policy landscape. If you want to support my work and the work of @fightfortheftr please become a monthly donor: donate.fightforthefuture.org

Oh! And follow me on #Mastodon @[e-mail] and @fightfortheftr @[e-mail]

Mastodon is far from perfect, but it's pretty neat and we're excited more ppl are exploring it. #TwitterMigration #Debirdify mastodon.online/@evangreer