WE. WILL. WIN.

WE. WILL. WIN.

KOSA Is gonna get defeated if we try hard enough, THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHOSE SPOKE OUT ABOUT IT SO FAR!!

We keep pushing, keep hoping, keep fighting!

juliaserano.substack.com

KOSA: A Nationwide Anti-Trans/LGBTQ+ Bill in All but Name

And What You Can Do to Stop It

Teen Vogue

This Bill Threatens Access to LGBTQ+ Online Communities

The Kids Online Safety Act is a censorship bill in disguise.

Los Angeles Blade: LGBTQ News, Rights, Politics, Entertainment

U.S. Senator: "Kids Online Safety Act" will target trans content

The lead sponsor stated in a video that it will be used to "protect minor children from the transgender in our culture"

Ars Technica

The Kids Online Safety Act isn’t all right, critics say

Critics warn KOSA could trigger widespread censorship, privacy concerns.

HERE'S WHAT YOU CAN DO:

email, call, or write your reps (this is the most important one) — use this tool to find your reps HERE IS A TEMPLATE that you can pull from.

Here is the text used in the petition that you can pull from to include in your email/letter to your reps:

I’m writing to urge you to reject the Kids Online Safety Act, a misguided bill that would put vulnerable young people at risk. KOSA would fail to address the root issues related to kid’s safety online. Instead, it would endanger some of the most vulnerable people in our society while undermining human rights and children’s privacy. The bill would result in widespread internet censorship by pressuring platforms to use incredibly broad “content filters” and giving state Attorneys General the power to decide what content kids should and shouldn’t have access to online. This power could be abused in a number of ways and be politicized to censor information and resources. KOSA would also likely lead to the greater surveillance of children online by requiring platforms to gather data to verify user identity. There is a way to protect kids and all people online from egregious data abuse and harmful content targeting: passing a strong Federal data privacy law that prevents tech companies from collecting so much sensitive data about all of us in the first place, and gives individuals the ability to sue companies that misuse their data. KOSA, although well-meaning, must not move forward. Please protect privacy and stop the spread of censorship online by opposing KOSA.

Here is an open letter from parents of trans and GNC kids that you can also add your name to/ pull from in writing your own letter

sign this petition

KOSA is gross, but AO3 will likely go unharmed

I've seen a LOT of people talking about how if KOSA passes, it would forced AO3 to either scramble to find somewhere to operate outside of the United States, or would force them to take down most of (if not all) of the content uploaded to the site.

KOSA primarily focuses on commercial platforms, like Twitter and Tumblr. The OTW, a nonprofit organization, is mostly out of the bills jurisdiction, though we don't know which exact laws proposed in the bill could end up affecting OTW and other nonprofits.

In fact, AO3 News published this all the way back in September of last year:

The tl;dr is that the OTW and AO3 are not currently implicated by KOSA and many of the other bills because of our nonprofit status (most of the proposed laws only apply to for-profit institutions). This means the operations of the OTW and the AO3 wouldn’t be directly impacted by these bills.

I am fully against KOSA passing, as with everyone else on this website with at least some sense of intelligence, but some of the things I've seen people posting are ill informed. We need to keep fighting this disgusting censorship garbage, but we can at least breathe a slight sigh of relief knowing that at least one beloved website is unlikely to get caught in the fire.

URGENT: Congress about to pass a mass censorship and surveillance bill under the guise of "protecting children"

May 13 2023

The Senate has been in a "do something!" mode regarding children's online safety. They're using this as an excuse to push for widespread internet censorship and surveillance. The EARN IT Act, has a slimmer chance of passing with widespread opposition and some senators saying they won't vote for it. TLDR;The real threat is actually KOSA (s.1409), the Kid's Online Safety Act, which will mass censor and surveill the entire internet by giving all 50 state attorney generals the power to remove content that is "harmful" for kids, and force you to upload your govt ID online to access the internet. I'll explain how it works below the action items but it's absolutely urgent that anyone who likes having a free and open internet fights back. It's all hands on deck, because this has so much public support it's insane:

HOW TO FIGHT KOSA

CALL YOUR REPRESENTATIVES & THE COMMERCE COMMITTEE

This is a link to the Senate Commerce Committee phone numbers and a call script to read off of. (202) 224-3121 connects you to the congressional hotline

Opposition is getting drowned, and these upcoming weeks will be heavy for lobbying and they're using young people to do it. We NEED to show these senators that young people are actually opposed to this and don't want it.

2. Sign these petitions

Open Letter Against KOSA

Petition 1

Petition 2

Petition 3

Petition 4

Resistbot: Text PHJDYH to 50409

3. Spread the word.

The opposition is getting absolutely drowned online. Dove has nearly 100k signatures to push for KOSA. Influencers on tiktok are pushing for this without ever having read the bill. Fucking Lizzo is sponsoring it. If you have twitter, reddit, tiktok, are in any community, SPREAD THE WORD, PLEASE.

Here is a linktree with all the above petitions for easy shargin: Link to linktree

HOW KOSA WORKS

First, KOSA pressures platforms to install filters that would wipe the net of anything deemed “inappropriate” for minors. This means instructing platforms to censor. We saw how these filters impacted websites firsthand with tumblr in 2018, with not only blocking all adult content but also sfw queer content such as suicide hotlines, art archives, wiping out entire blogs because they had queer fandom related posts, etc. Places that already use content filters have restricted important information about suicide prevention and LGBTQ+ support groups. KOSA would spread this kind of censorship to every corner of the internet. And who gets to decide what is and isn't harmful for minors? Oh don't worry, just every single state attorney general and the FTC, which is appointed by the president. You know, the same attorney generals that just banned gender-affirming healthcare under the guise that it "ruins mental health" of minors. This is why the Heritage Foundation was one of the first to sponsor the bill because they can use it to censor trans content, and Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee is it's co-author.

Second, KOSA would ramp up the online surveillance of all internet users by forcing websites to use age verification and parental monitoring tools. Yup, that's right. Now every single person who wants to access the internet has to upload their govt ID online to third party apps that get hacked all the time. You queer in a red state? You undocumented? You an activist? Have fun getting all your online activity and metadata attached to your govt ID.  

Over 90+ human and LGBT rights groups agree that KOSA is dangerous and updates to the 2023 version won’t and can’t address the big problems with the bill. This bill has MASSIVE bipartisan support, and the authors Blumenthal and Blackburn (yes, that Blumenthal that's pushing the EARN IT Act, and who also sponsored the RESTRICT Act and SOPA/PIPA if you remember) are using the tragedy of mothers who lost their kids to online harassment and young adults who've been traumatized online to lobby for it, and got Dove the company to use a bunch of influencers to push for this under the guise it prevents eating disorders...I wish I was lying. There are already 30 co-sponsors.

It is all hands on deck. I'm dead serious when I say if this bill is passed it is the beginning if not end of the open and free internet.

Hi, I’m glad I could reach out to you and hope this reaches you well. You’re a very popular blog on here and trans gender as well.

So you can understand that people want to stop KOSA, which is a bill that will censor much of this website including anything related to transgenderism and hrt. I know that this seems horrible but we need to spread the word so it gets stopped again.

Thanks so much and sorry if i bothered you.

I’m so sorry if this seems long but I really appreciate it and if you could spread the word, since censorship of the internet will affect every single person on it.

thank you so much for gathering all these sources. to anyone who sees this and is able, I urge you to call or email a senator. we don't have a lot of control in the United States, but this is a way we can have some agency against KOSA. I have the link for the Change.org page below

Change.org

Sign the Petition

STOP THE KOSA

‼️Call/Write your Senators to STOP BILL S.1409 (KOSA)‼️

This is not my normal content but the word needs to spread

‼️KOSA IS A MASSIVE ONLINE CENSORSHIP BILL‼️

This bill is proposed by, Richard Blumenthal and Marsha Blackburn, who is very vocal about being against LGBT ppl!

It will force everyone online who wants to use a website to UPLOAD THEIR GOVERNMENT ID AND AGE TO THE PUBLIC!

Yes they did change the language of the bill but the sentiment is still the same. It will be used for censorship no matter what they say.

THIS BILL COULD PASS THE SENATE AS SOON AS NEXT WEEK AND THEN THE HOUSE THE SAME DAY

Omarsbigsister on TikTok is going into more detail.

This is so serious and will change the internet as we know it. People need to spread the word and call/write their senators.

Omarsbigsister on TikTok has videos and recourses on their page to help.