Congress Is Pushing An Online Safety Bill Supported By Anti-LGBTQ Groups (www.vice.com)
from infyrin@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world on 21 Aug 2023 19:57
https://lemmy.world/post/3571229

#technology

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DieguiTux8623@feddit.it on 21 Aug 2023 20:36 next collapse

Who are the authoritarian ones now? As a European, I start seeing differences between our western and eastern neighbours grow thinner and thinner…

captainlezbian@lemmy.world on 21 Aug 2023 21:16 collapse

It’s America. So it depends on the issue. Do you want guns? It’s Democrats. Do you want medicine, free speech, freedom from religion, the government to stay out of your bedroom, to be allowed to dress how you’d like… then it’s the republicans.

jmp242@sopuli.xyz on 21 Aug 2023 22:32 collapse

I have trouble saying the Democrats are overall authoritarian around guns, at least in terms of what’s getting proposed in the government as bills etc. Unless you count the current sort of rules around driving authoritarian in the states - because most of the proposed rules are similar to driving rules.

And both parties are functionally authoritarian around medicine - it’s regulated to heck and back, often to the detriment of people, though I can’t say if the balance is saving more than it’s harming.

captainlezbian@lemmy.world on 22 Aug 2023 01:09 collapse

Fair, but the democrats aren’t like banning modern medicine and driving obgyns and endocrinologists out of states. Yeah both insist on regulating medicine, but one wants abortion to be legal and bleach to not be medicine and the other disagrees on both points

Daisyifyoudo@lemmy.world on 22 Aug 2023 15:16 next collapse

Yes, one party understands and recognizes that abortion is a legitimate medical need and the other party misunderstands abortion as __tHeY aRe kIlLiNg bAbIeS o.O

jmp242@sopuli.xyz on 22 Aug 2023 14:22 collapse

Yeah both insist on regulating medicine, but one wants abortion to be legal and bleach to not be medicine and the other disagrees on both points

But that’s just a disagreement on the rules, not the overall system. My bugaboo is we often get the worst of both worlds with our regulation and sort of free market in medical stuff. Here’s 2 examples:

  1. I had a refill of a prescription, went to my normal pharmacy. I went to pick it up, pharmacy was closed. Tried again on the next day, found out it’s just closed indefinitely. Ok, so I call the other one of the chain in town, same issue. Cannot talk to anyone about pharmacy, the answering system refuses. Ok, no problem, I call doctor, ask to send prescription to other chain in town. Then I call the other pharmacy - they can’t fill it because the first chain that has closed their pharmacies in town has “taken the prescription fill”. Ok, I call insurance company. No dice - the chain that won’t talk on the phone or in person about prescriptions has to release the “fill” they HAVEN’T DONE. I ended up having to have a friend go to a location 45 miles away that was still open to pick up the prescription.

Now, if this wasn’t so screwed up, I could have just ordered on Amazon, and whoever filled the prescription couldn’t count it as filled against Insurance till they actually shipped or handed me the prescription - you know, like when I get my car repaired under insurance, or order a book!

  1. I have a CPAP. There is a company that provides supplies that you need every 6 months or so. This company only exists because for some reason our government thinks regular people can’t figure out a CPAP on their own (IDK if you can’t tell if you’re breathing or not, I don’t think the government can help). And for some reason regular pharmacies and mail order ones cannot fill tubing and mask orders. Or well, they can, but not via insurance, so what is $17 to me via insurance is $150 retail. (This is also bullshit IMHO, and if we didn’t have whatever regulation is going on here, similar tubing and the like - like elastomer respirators - it’d likely cost sub $30 retail). This company is so incompetent that if they weren’t propped up by “you don’t have a choice”, they’d have been out of business years ago. Instead, we get to plead with them to figure out how to fill an order.
Uranium3006@kbin.social on 21 Aug 2023 20:56 next collapse

"online safety"

qooqie@lemmy.world on 21 Aug 2023 21:09 next collapse

It’s a very poor attempt by people who don’t know how to use the technology to regulate it. Ask anyone who actually knows how to ever restart their Wi-Fi how they would protect “the kids” and they can come up with better ideas

chaogomu@kbin.social on 21 Aug 2023 21:17 next collapse

Here's a simple idea, require all sites that kids access to have a second email address that gives access to chat logs, so that concerned parents can know what their kids get up to, and smart kids can route around the issue.

nofunberg@midwest.social on 21 Aug 2023 21:41 collapse

The challenge there is that in situations with abusive parents the kid is in even more danger.

chaogomu@kbin.social on 21 Aug 2023 22:15 collapse

Smart kids just sign up with two of their own email addresses, but yeah, abusive controlling parents will always be an issue. They're an issue without the internet. Adding internet to it doesn't turn non-abusive people into assholes, it just lets them attack their children from a new angle.

What I'm saying is, you cannot fix abusive parents without using CPS. The real answer to abuse is giving kids more tools to report it.

nofunberg@midwest.social on 22 Aug 2023 01:32 collapse

Right, but if a young child is unaware of this and they reach out for help on a monitored platform they’re gonna find themselves in an even worse situation.

c0mbatbag3l@lemmy.world on 21 Aug 2023 22:13 next collapse

One more reason we would do better with specialists for each field being responsible for the laws regarding said field, with some kind of synthesist organizing. It doesn’t have to be a technocracy, we could do it democratically, but we can’t keep going with these 70 year old politicians trying to make laws for things they can even define let alone understand.

Spotlight7573@lemmy.world on 21 Aug 2023 23:38 collapse

The least they could do is bring back the Office of Technology Assessment to help them understand things:

en.wikipedia.org/…/Office_of_Technology_Assessmen…

[deleted] on 22 Aug 2023 02:13 collapse

.

qooqie@lemmy.world on 22 Aug 2023 03:37 collapse

I think Hanlons razor is apt here: never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity

Roundcat@kbin.social on 21 Aug 2023 21:21 next collapse

The fact this is a bipartison bill should have everyone concerned, and figuring out who exactly is supporting this bill, and when is their relelection coming up.

NatakuNox@lemmy.world on 21 Aug 2023 22:15 next collapse

Party of small government people…

Also, parents need to understand technology better than their children. Parental controls are easy to set up and manage on all devices. Dont ruin the internet for everyone because you can’t take the time to parent.

p03locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 21 Aug 2023 22:56 next collapse

Don’t say “Congress”. Say “Republicans”.

The bipartisan bill is also supported by the right-wing Heritage Foundation

Vice, you keep saying “bipartisan”, but then you don’t prove your point with left-wing groups that are supporting it.

mindbleach@lemmy.world on 21 Aug 2023 23:50 next collapse

Generally meaning all republicans and one democrat.

OneOrTheOtherDontAskMe@lemmy.world on 22 Aug 2023 01:16 collapse

One Democrat currently flirting with going “independent”.

thenexusofprivacy@lemmy.sdf.org on 22 Aug 2023 04:02 collapse

Plenty of Democrats support this anti-LGBTQ+ bill – here’s the list of cosponsors. It really does have bipartisan support!

ZodiacSF1969@sh.itjust.works on 22 Aug 2023 06:09 collapse

Shhh, you’re spoiling the narrative.

havokdj@lemmy.world on 22 Aug 2023 00:05 next collapse

Lying snake politicians: THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!

Kids (on YouTube kids): hahaaaa uggy wuggy an freddie fezber go BRRRRRRRRRRRR

Snapz@lemmy.world on 22 Aug 2023 07:07 next collapse

Nothing with Marsha Blackburn involved is to benefit good and decent people.

traveler@lemdro.id on 22 Aug 2023 07:50 next collapse

It’s plain retarded that this is being news like this. It’s a law to control content on the internet and can be used to censor pretty much anything they think it’s not good for children.

primbin@lemmy.one on 22 Aug 2023 13:39 next collapse

Out of curiosity, I went ahead and read the full text of the bill. After reading it, I’m pretty sure this is the controversial part:

SEC. 3. DUTY OF CARE. (a) Prevention Of Harm To Minors.—A covered platform shall act in the best interests of a user that the platform knows or reasonably should know is a minor by taking reasonable measures in its design and operation of products and services to prevent and mitigate the following:

(1) Consistent with evidence-informed medical information, the following mental health disorders: anxiety, depression, eating disorders, substance use disorders, and suicidal behaviors.

The sorts of actions that a platform would be expected to take aren’t specified anywhere, as far as I can tell, nor is the scope of what the platform would be expected to moderate. Does “operation of products and services” include the recommender systems? If so, I could see someone using this language to argue that showing LGBTQ content to children promotes mental health disorders, and so it shouldn’t be recommended to them. They’d still be able to see it if they searched for it, but I don’t think that makes it any better.

Also, in section 9, they talked about forming a committee to investigate the practicality of building age verification into hardware and/or the operating system of consumer devices. That seems like an invasion of privacy.

Reading through the rest of it, though, a lot of it did seem reasonable. For example, it would make it so that sites would have to put children on safe default options. That includes things like having their personal information be private, turning off addictive features designed to maximize engagement, and allowing kids to opt out of personalized recommendations. Those would be good changes, in my opinion.

If it wasn’t for those couple of sections, the bill would probably be fine, so maybe that’s why it’s got bipartisan support. But right now, the bad seems like it outweighs the good, so we should probably start calling our lawmakers if the bill continues to gain traction.

apologies for the wall of text, just wanted to get to the bottom of it for myself. you can read the full text here: www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/…/text

Pixlbabble@lemmy.world on 22 Aug 2023 13:57 next collapse

This neutered internet can go suck a dick. Hate speech is free speech. I’m so over censorship as an American.

infyrin@lemmy.world on 22 Aug 2023 17:57 next collapse

All right, well if by your logic, I’m legally able to tell you how much of a removed you are and how little your life has meaning.

And everyone else should do the same. I’m sure you’d like that everyday if you want to complain about censorship.

Pixlbabble@lemmy.world on 23 Aug 2023 13:23 collapse

I have no idea what you mean by “removed” if you want to call me retarded, go ahead. I am anti-censorship, I don’t get your point.

aeternum@kbin.social on 26 Aug 2023 07:30 collapse

freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeedom! No other country is as free as murica!

TwoGems@lemmy.world on 22 Aug 2023 17:27 collapse

Where are the petitions to reject this garbage

infyrin@lemmy.world on 22 Aug 2023 17:56 collapse

Petitions won’t do anything.

Vote them out.