Tweet

Evan Greer is on Mastodon

Dec 14 • 7 tweets • 5 min read

THREAD: There is a new version of the Kids Online Safety Act (#KOSA).

The bill's sponsors are claiming that these changes address the concerns raised by more than 100 human rights and LGBTQ+ organizations.

They do not. We still oppose #KOSA and it should not be in the #omnibus.

We appreciate that #KOSA's sponsors made changes that attempt to address some of the concerns that we raised in this letter: fightforthefuture.org/news/2022-11-2…

But the new version of the bill still poses a significant threat to LGBTQ rights, abortion access, privacy, and free expression.

The "Duty of Care" model that #KOSA takes is fatally flawed when applied to content regulation / user speech. You can tweak the definitions all you want, but in the end you're giving Attorneys General like Ken Paxton a massive cudgel to to threaten platforms over allowing content

If Congress wants to do something to actually protect kids, they should pass a real privacy bill like #ADPPA. I've said many times that I'd like to see this bill improved, but it's unquestionably an improvement over the status quo, and unlike #KOSA it's ready to move.

#ADPPA has strong language that would protect kids' privacy (without the harmful side-effects of a bill like #KOSA.) But it also would do so much more to rein in the surveillance capitalist business model that is at the root of so many of Big Tech's harms.

An actual data privacy bill like #ADPPA (ideally paired with antitrust bills like #OAMA and #AICOA) would help us build the world we want our kids to grow up in: a world with privacy, basic human rights, a functioning democracy, access to information, and free expression.

If Congress wants to "do something" they have options. There is no excuse to advance a bill like #KOSA that would do more harm than good.

The whole world is watching. Doing nothing is unacceptable. So do something good: #ADPPA, #AICOA, #OAMA, or all three. Let's go!

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

More from @evan_greer

Evan Greer is on Mastodon

@evan_greer

Dec 16

THREAD: There has been a fair amount of discussion about how, even with the changes, the #KidsOnlineSafetyAct (or #KOSA) would be weaponized against LGBTQ+ folks & especially queer and trans youth.

But there's another huge problem with the bill: it would censor abortion content.

#KOSA creates a broad "Duty of Care" for tech companies that goes way beyond dictating what kinds of privacy or security they need to have in place and gets the government involved in dictating what kinds of content they can allow or recommend to minors.

The bill tries to keep this narrow by saying the duty of care only applies to specific impacts on mental health (as defined by the DSM), or predatory, unfair, or deceptive marketing practices" prong (Sec.3a6) or "physical violence."

All sounds reasonable, right?

Read 19 tweets

Evan Greer is on Mastodon

@evan_greer

Dec 8

@nytimes

just gonna say it: I'm seeing a lot of trans people on here showing solidarity with @nytimes staff and ... jeez it would be really nice if they could return the favor

Workers don't need to be perfect to deserve our solidarity. I'm never gonna not support striking workers. But would love to see some of this collective leverage be used to push back on the tranphobia, imperialism, and racism that the NYT peddles on the daily

@NYTimesGuild

Apparently it was not clear from my many other posts today and the previous two tweets but I SUPPORT THE @NYTimesGuild UNION AND ALL UNIONS (except cop unions). I SUPPORT THE #NYTStrike. #NotAllNYTstaff or whatever

Read 5 tweets

Evan Greer is on Mastodon

@evan_greer

Nov 8

Okay despite being a tech policy "expert" I am actually not very tech savvy. I was pretty confused when I first started getting myself set up on #mastodon, but i figured it out pretty quickly (with some help from friends!) and you can too. Here's the steps I took if helpful🧵

First, our brains our so trained to think of social media in a centralized way, so some of the terminology around #Mastodon can feel a little confusing. But really it's pretty simple. Think of it like email. Choose an address on a provider (server) you trust, or host your own

I kind of agonized a bit over choosing a server. I thought about hosting my own on a domain that I own like evangreer.org (this gives you the most independence and control, and means you aren't relying on someone else's server or trusting some admin with your DMs)

Read 17 tweets

Evan Greer is on Mastodon

@evan_greer

Nov 8

🧵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.

Read 54 tweets

Evan Greer is on Mastodon

@evan_greer

Nov 7

@elonmusk

Honestly mad respect to @elonmusk for making the new Twitter TOS so much more transparent, clearly readable, and easy to understand

I was really skeptical of his leadership but if it's gonna be straightforward and transparent like this then I'm feeling a lot more optimistic time.com/6228045/elon-m…