<
https://www.techdirt.com/2024/02/05/politicians-are-using-kids-as-props-to-pass-terrible-harmful-legislation-dont-let-them-get-away-with-it/>
"Amidst all of the attention paid to last week’s Senate hearing on child safety
online, it remains stunning just how little time was actually spent on how to
help children online. Instead, we saw pure theatrical nonsense, with Senators
insisting (falsely) that these five tech CEOs could magically stop bad things
from happening to kids, if only they would just “nerd harder.” And, of course,
the accompanying suggestion was that these CEOs simply don’t care about
protecting kids.
At no point was there any serious or thoughtful discussion on what actually
could be done to improve things for kids online, or to deal with the very real
mental health crisis that is facing kids today (which is often blamed on social
media, despite no real evidence to support that claim).
When politicians are grandstanding about protecting kids online, the best
person to turn to is danah boyd, who has been studying this stuff for decades,
and whose 2014 book
It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens
should be required reading for anyone who is serious about understand this
stuff.
In a blog post, boyd has explained how KOSA, in particular is not even remotely
designed to protect kids, and that it gets basically everything wrong.
To be honest, I am pulling my hair out over “online safety” bills that
pretend to be focused on helping young people when they’re really anti-tech
bills that are using children for political agendas in ways that will
fundamentally hurt the most vulnerable young people out there.
The Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) continues to march through the halls of
Congress as though it’s the best thing since sliced bread, even though one
of the co-creators of this bill clearly stated that her intention is to
protect children from “the transgender” and to prevent “indoctrination” from
the LGBT community. I’m flabbergasted by how many Democrats shrug their
shoulders and say that it’s still worth it to align with hateful politicians
because it’ll help more kids. The thing is: it won’t."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
