Ari Cohn Profile picture
Dec 6, 2022 23 tweets 12 min read Read on X
1/ As Congress wraps, members are trying to ram through their terrible tech bills, consequences be damned—including the Kids Online Safety Act

Today. @TechFreedom & scholars warned Congressional leaders that #KOSA will *harm* kids—and the First Amendment
techfreedom.org/wp-content/upl…
2/ To hear @SenBlumenthal tell it, you'd think the bill has been through a gauntlet of hearings & experts.

But in truth the actual text of #KOSA has been discussed for less than 20 minutes in committee meetings (mostly non-substantively), all at the July 27 markup.
3/ In fact, the text sent to the floor after amendment hasn't even been made publicly available! We had to piece it together ourselves. We've uploaded it for you here: techfreedom.org/wp-content/upl…

#KOSA belongs nowhere near a floor vote, let alone an omnibus package.
4/ Let's start with who, exactly, KOSA applies to: pretty much every online service. Effectively, if it allows you to communicate or share content, it's bound by KOSA. That has enormous consequences for the Internet.

How, you ask?
5/ KOSA feigns simplicity: its primary provisions just require platforms to act "in the best interests of minors" and provide minors certain safeguards. Doesn't *sound* so bad, right?

Reality is not so simple. There are (at least) three giant problems here.
6/ First, KOSA effectively requires platforms to age-verify their users. How are you supposed to provide minors with a tool that allows them to stop adults from contacting them, or act in the best interest of minors, if you don't know which users are minors, and which are adults?
7/ Congress has been down this road before. In the Communications Decency Act and the Child Online Protection Act, it tried to impose age-verification on the Internet. Courts held both unconstitutional.
8/ In doing so, they noted that requiring age verification chilled protected speech because it would discourage people from accessing lawful content, including government-disfavored content, if they could not do so anonymously.
9/ KOSA is even worse than those previous attempts to impose age verification. COPA excluded forums for user-generated content; KOSA purposefully *includes* them, and imposes an age-verification barrier not just for accessing content, but also for *communicating*
10/ KOSA also runs face-first into another reason courts took issue with age verification under the CDA/COPA: the burden on *websites'* First Amendment rights. Remember how KOSA applies to services and websites alike, regardless of size?
11/ What do you think that means for small forums run by hobbyists/volunteers/etc? They don't have huge budgets, and can't afford EITHER the cost of age-verifying users or the crushing liability of a single enforcement action. They'll just have to shut up, I guess.
12/ It's tempting think senators didn't understand they were doing this. But @SenBlumenthal has been on the age-verification warpath for decades: middletownpress.com/news/article/B…

The Ranking Karen knew exactly what he was doing here. He simply doesn't care about the First Amendment.
13/ At least the drafters of COPA acknowledged the First Amendment's existence, and tried (but failed) to limit the law to unprotected speech. #KOSA invents a new duty to protect people from harms caused by *protected* speech. That's a First Amendment problem too.
14/ More fundamentally, absolutely nobody knows what compliance with this "duty of care" looks like. What is the best interest of a minor? Is it each minor? All minors as a group? There are problems either way. I can't believe I need to say it, but kids are not interchangeable.
15/ So what might platforms do to take "reasonable measures" to "prevent and mitigate" these exceptionally broad categories of harm? Well, they could just boot all minors off the platform altogether, but that would be extremely bad for obvious reasons.
16/ Platforms might also try to broadly block minors from accessing any content that conceivably relates to those categories of harm. That's not going to work on a few levels.

First, it certainly won't work on a technical level, but what more *could* they do, really?
17/ It's also just not what we should *want* them to do. Again, kids aren't interchangeable; they have different reasons for seeking out content, and differing reactions.

Sometimes they are looking for *help*. #KOSA would cut them off from it. So much for "think of the kids"
18/ What about "promotion of narcotic drugs?" Should platforms be cutting kids off from political discussion of drug reform? From music that talks about substance use? From *harm reduction* efforts?

This makes NO sense.
19/ The problem with KOSA's scope comes into stark relief here: you know what website primarily provides a forum for sharing user-generated content?

Wikipedia.

KOSA could force an online encyclopedia to age-gate purely informational content.

Madness, I tell you.
20/ It's not even clear that KOSA requires that harm result *from* a minor's use. It seems enough that a harmed minor is a platform user, if the harm is somehow related to *anyone's* use of the platform. Platforms may also have to censor content between adults to avoid liability.
21/ And so we reach the final, and perhaps most unbelievably obvious issue with #KOSA: it allows state AGs to bring enforcement actions under KOSA.

Need we really explain the obvious ways state AGs will try to purge the Internet of speech they don't like to "protect" kids?
22/ @evan_greer has a good piece in VICE today on just this issue: vice.com/en/article/g5v…
23/ #KOSA is a bad, dangerous bill. @SenBlumenthal & @MarshaBlackburn are willing to shamefully throw kids & the First Amendment under the bus to get a "win" against "Big Tech"

@SenSchumer @SpeakerPelosi @LeaderMcConnell, & @GOPLeader shouldn't let them.

techfreedom.org/wp-content/upl…

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More from @AriCohn

Aug 16
If only someone had counseled people to take a deep breath and not panic over speculative fears that have not been borne out in a single election cycle.

Oh wait. I did.

politico.com/news/2024/08/1…
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I did it when I testified in the U.S. Senate: techfreedom.org/wp-content/upl…
Image
I did it for the Senate's AI Insight Forum on Elections: techfreedom.org/wp-content/upl…
Image
Read 6 tweets
Jan 31
Senate Judiciary is having a hearing today on "Big Tech and the Online Child Sexual Exploitation Crisis," in which senators will yell at a bunch of social media platform CEOs and likely say some very wrong things. Follow along in this thread, if you dare.

judiciary.senate.gov/committee-acti…
2/ Durbin kicks off by showing a video from victims of online CSE and their parents. Undeniably horrible stories, and if the hearing really focuses exclusively on platform efforts to combat CSE/CSAM, I'll be on board--platforms SHOULD be doing more.

But that's unlikely.
3/ And not for nothing, Durbin's STOP CSAM Act swings the pendulum too far, threatening end-to-end encryption and incentivizing takedowns of lawful content and campaigns of false reporting. EFF has a good explainer: eff.org/deeplinks/2023…
Read 111 tweets
Aug 8, 2023
1/ I must respectfully take issue with this piece, for a few reasons.

First, as a normative matter, to mee it comes too close to equating the harms of CSAM with the effects of minors looking at porn. Whatever you think about the latter, the former is *inestimably* worse.
2/ Second, the "secondary effects doctrine" is a heaping MESS that gives government an end-run around the First Amendment, even for non-porn speech. Expanding it to the online world rather than physical locations would be terrible.

SED should be retired, not broadened.
3/ Third, there is no distinction between the age verification mandates being proposed now, and the ones struck down in the Great COPA Wars, practically or constitutionally.

The curtailment was in fact being forced to verify your identity before accessing disfavored content. Image
Read 14 tweets
Jun 30, 2023
1/ So @MiamiSeaquarium, which tortures Orcas by keeping them in confined spaces, have filed suit because Phil published drone pictures and criticized them.

It's evident that they didn't like being criticized, and are trying to shut him up.

Complaint: https://t.co/EwdXgkcQOvtinyurl.com/muhbjzr7
2/ I'm no expert in Bird Law, so the claims involving drones are not in my wheelhouse.

But @MiamiSeaquarium also alleged defamation (a good indicator of SLAPPiness)--kind of.

It seems that their lawyers are not entirely competent. This is the entirety of the defamation count:
@MiamiSeaquarium 3/ This is plainly a deficient pleading. Why?

Because notice what's missing: any identification of the allegedly defamatory statements.

You can't just waltz into court and say "they said defamatory things." You have to actually say what those things were.
Read 8 tweets
Jun 16, 2023
1/ On Wednesday @TechFreedomfiled an amicus brief with the 6th Circuit in Johnson v. @kathygriffin.

Our PR and the brief can be found here: techfreedom.org/protect-intern…

In case you're unfamiliar with the litigation, let me refresh your memory & explain why it's important.
2/ In April 2021, a video started circulating on social media showing a man accosting a teen taking pre-prom pictures with his boyfriend at a hotel restaurant, because the teen was wearing a dress.

Super normal stuff.

When Kathy saw the video, she tweeted about it a few times.
3/ In her first tweet, she identified the man as Sam Johnson, and noted that he worked at VisuWell, a telehealth software company from what I gather.

A couple tweets later, VisuWell announced Johnson's firing. Griffin asked if he was going to remain on the board. They said no.
Read 27 tweets
May 24, 2023
Oh hey, did you know that you can wreck a @Target display and doing that enough will get them to pull the products you're vandalizing about? Image
The War on Christmas is gonna be EPIC this year. Get ready, @Target!
@AskTarget how many people, exactly, need to trash your terrible produce section before you cede ground and stop trying to sell mushy apples?
Read 4 tweets

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