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John,
URGENT: Congress is trying to sneak through S. 3663, a dangerous “protect the children” bill that will make the Internet less safe and expand censorship and surveillance as part of the “must-pass” spending package.
We’re fighting back, but we need your support. Will you chip in to help us defeat this dangerous legislation?
DONATE NOW
You know how politicians love to call bills the exact opposite of what they actually do? Like “right to work” or the PATRIOT ACT? Well, that’s exactly the story with the “Kids Online Safety Act” (KOSA / S. 3663), a dangerously misguided bill that would actually make kids less safe online, while threatening human rights and free expression.
KOSA, which is cosponsored by Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), has a lot of the same problems as bills like the EARN IT Act and SESTA/FOSTA. It’s well-intentioned and trying to solve real problems like addictive algorithms and invasive data harvesting, but it’s so badly written that it would actually make those problems worse, while forcing platforms to collect even more sensitive data on kids and teens and opening the floodgates for widespread censorship of legitimate content.
Last week we sent a letter signed by more than 100 organizations including the ACLU, GLAAD, and EFF to Congressional leaders explaining how KOSA poses a major threat to human rights and opposing any attempt to include it in a must-pass spending bill.1
But KOSA’s sponsors seem hellbent on scoring political points even though they know their bill is a mess. So now we need to ramp up the pressure by launching a petition campaign, alerting the press, generating social media attention, and driving phone calls to key offices. And we need to do all of that fast.
We don’t currently have any grants or foundation funding for this work to oppos3 bills like KOSA, so we’re relying on supporters like you. We know you understand how important it is to fight back against dangerous legislation that threatens our basic rights.
Will you chip in whatever you can to help do it?
Big Tech is doing real harm, to kids and everyone else. That’s why we need Congress to stop using kids as pawns to advance bills that do more harm than good, and instead pass real privacy and antitrust legislation to crack down on the abuses of giants like Amazon and Meta.
We need a world where our kids are safe online AND have basic human rights. That’s worth fighting for.
Thanks for all you do,
-Evan at Fight for the Future
Footnotes:
1. CNBC: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/28/kids-online-safety-act-may-harm-minors-civil-society-groups-warn.html
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