KOSA: Still a Dangerous Attack on Online Anonymity & the First Amendment
Plus the state of space exploration, Orwell, the FTC in trouble, and more
KOSA: Ari and Berin sent a letter on the newest iteration of the Kids Online Safety Act, which fails to address any of the First Amendment problems we raised about last year’s version.
For more, check out Ari’s Twitter thread and post-hearing statement. Ari was also quoted in MediaPost (free with subscription) and Reclaim The Net. The letter was quoted with commentary in Techdirt.
Space: Corbin hosted Jim and Ars Technica’s Eric Berger for a space-themed episode of the Tech Policy Podcast. The three discussed the Artemis program, the Chinese space industry, SpaceX, how to get to—and from—Mars, and more.
Orwell and Social Media: In The Bulwark, Corbin complained of how “The overuse of allusions to Nineteen Eighty-Four is dulling our thinking about speech, technology, and politics.” He also covered the imbroglio over Missouri v. Biden and government “jawboning” of social media platforms.
FTC: Bilal held a panel, hosted by the Committee for Justice, on the FTC’s recent woes. The video is now live.
First Amendment: Ari was a guest on CBN News to discuss online censorship and the RFK Jr. testimony about the federal government and social media content moderation.
Reason quoted Ari about state attorneys general censoring corporations: “State governments cannot simply purchase stock in a company and declare that they now have the right to threaten the company over their protected expression.”
Slate quoted Ari about a slew of recent state-level laws that aim to suppress citizens’ constitutionally protected recordings of police at work. The new laws are nothing but “a targeted assault on First Amendment activity,” he said.
Privacy: The Messenger quoted Ari about the Cooper-Davis Act and the EARN It Act, which would require online platforms to break end-to-end encryption and snoop on users’ messages.
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I think KOSA can be defeated, especially if California's design code act, which is very similar, goes down. The one that concerns me more is COPPA 2.0. Moving the goalposts on COPPA is a dangerous proposition, since the original hasn't been challenged on First Amendment grounds in over 20 years since it has been passed.
Do you see a legal challenge to COPPA 2.0 happening if it's passed? If so, would you see it being successful? Do you see COPPA being thrown out in its entirety, or just moved back to its present restrictions? I always felt like it's a solution in search of a problem. The state justifies "protecting" minors because, advertising. It seems overly broad and burdensome to take the position that advertising to minors is per se unfair and deceptive (harmful) regardless of the product or service being advertised.