Yeah I should have said “for now” – we knew at the time it would come back. My bad.

The House and Senate are pretty far apart so if we can mobilize again we’ve got a good chance to stop KOSA again this year. https://thenexusofprivacy.net/kosa-kids-act-june-update/ is my post from late June.

Technically yes but judges get annoyed if there’s absolutely no case, so they rarely do – and if they threaten when there’s no case, larger companies will look at it and say the threat’s not real.

The law’s defintion of harm is extremely broad. Charlie Jane Anders has a good discussion of this in The Internet Is About to Get a Lot Worse:

“This clause is so vaguely defined that attorneys general can absolutely claim that queer content violates it — and they don’t even need to win these lawsuits in order to prevail. They might not even need to file a lawsuit, in fact. The mere threat of an expensive, grueling legal battle will be enough to make almost every Internet platform begin to scrub anything related to queer people.”

In practice, when the AG threatens to sue and the law makes it clear that they’ll win (which KOSA currently does), companies will typically stop what they’re doing (or settle if the AG actually launches a suit)

Yep. There’s money to be made here!

Great point. Mike Masnick has said that he wouldn’t be surprised if Meta also comes out in support, for similar reasons.

Totally agreed that it opens things up to censorship in general and doesn’t actually make kids safer. Charlie Jane Anders’ The Internet Is About to Get A Lot Worse sets it in the context of book banning. The LGBTQ part is in the headlines because one big focus of the advocacy against it is highlighting that Democrats who claim to be pro-LGBTQ should not be backing this bill. This has been effective enough that Senators Cantwell and Markey both mentioned it in the committee markup, although it’s certainly far from the only problem with the bill.

Sec. 11 (b): Enforcement By State Attorneys General covers this. It’s hard to find – the bill text starts out with all the text removed from the previous amendment, and if you click on the “enforcement” link in the new table of context it takes you to the old struck-out text. It’s almost like they want to make it as hard as possible for people to figure out what’s going on!

They get to position themselves as looking out for the children.

Yes, exactly. For Senators who support LGBTQ+ rights and reproductice rights (or at least say that they do), focusing on the threat anti-trans AGs can be very effective; In Washington state, we put enough pressure on Cantwell last fall about the LGBTQ+ issues that she mentioned it in the hearing (as did Markey). 5calls and EFF’s scripts and emails are written to appeal to legislators from both parties (so just talk about the harms to kids and threats from state AGs in general terms), which makes sense for a one-size-fits-all form, but customizing it to your Senators’ priorities can make a lot of sense.

WTF indeed. But, thanks for emailing them – they track how much email they get in each direction, and if there’s enough they may rethink their position.

[email protected] is tracking all the bad internet bills … right now KOSA’s where the most action is.

Thanks for making the effort! On bills like this, enough pressure can make a difference – we stopped KOSA from passing last year, and have a good chance this year as well.

Great point about editing the letter – and calling is even better!

In terms of whether or not we’ll be able to change it … last year the broad pushback succeeded in stopping KOSA, and there’s certainly a decent chance to do the same this year. Who knows, but as you say, it’s always worth trying!

It’s just a list of Senators, I don’t think there’s an equivalent bill yet in the House.

That’s disappointing … but, enough pressure can get them to change their position (or, almost as good, ask Schumer not to bring the bill to the floor so that they don’t have to take a politically costly vote). In the Senate Commerce Committee hearing, both Cantwell and Markey voted yes but said they had gotten a lot of calls and email from constituents who were concerned about the impact on LGBTQ+ teens so there was work to do before bringing the bill to the floor … so the pressure is definitely getting noticed!

here’s the list of cosponsors … if they’re there, then they’re certainly supporting it. It’s worth contacting them in any case; they’ll often send you a form reply saying their position on the bill.