The Internet Is About to Get a Lot Worse
buttondown.email
We've all watched in horror as red states have banned books in schools and libraries. We've seen teachers fired merely for reading a book about gender...

Charlie Jane Anders discusses KOSA (the Kids Online Safety Act).

If you’re in the US, https://www.stopkosa.com/ makes it easy to contact your Senators and ask them to oppose KOSA.

"A new bill called the Kids Online Safety Act, or KOSA, is sailing towards passage in the Senate with bipartisa>n support. Among other things, this bill would give the attorney general of every state, including red states, the right to sue Internet platforms if they allow any content that is deemed harmful to minors. 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.

The right wing Heritage Foundation has already stated publicly that the GOP will use this provision to remove any discussions of trans or queer lives from the Internet. They’re salivating over the prospect.

And yep, I did say this bill has bipartisan support. Many Democrats have already signed on as co-sponsors. And President Joe Biden has urged lawmakers to pass this bill in the strongest possible terms."

  • spez@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    513·
    1 year ago

    I don’t know how American voters can stand for this, how can you re-elect people who cause your children to get shot in schools and believe the same people have set out to protect them with things like these?

    • ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml
      21·
      1 year ago

      A lot of them are really stupid hateful racists. They are figuratively and literally shooting themselves in the foot.

    • Dion Starfire@lemmy.worldEnglish
      18·
      1 year ago

      Because the way voting works in the US is based on assumptions from the days when getting all the votes together to tally them would have been a logistical nightmare. Instead of counting everyone’s vote individually, the map is divided into regions. Each region tallies up their votes, and then one single vote is counted for that entire region based on the majority vote from that region. Those regional votes are tallied, and the majority winner of the regions gets the win. By drawing the regions correctly (a process called gerrymandering), you can put the majority of one party’s voters into a small handful of regions, so all of them only count as a handful of regional votes while making sure the rest of the regions are drawn to give the other party a 51%+ majority. As a result, it’s possible to have a candidate that would garner less than 50% of the individual votes win a landslide of over 75% of the regional votes.

    • this@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      7·
      1 year ago

      We don’t, enough of the US is gerrymandered as fuck and we use first past the post voting so most of us are voting to get a plurality for the guy other than the one we hate more, and that’s if your even interested in politics here. The whole system is fucked and corrupt.

      Edit: oh yea and the electoral college fucks us too.

    • MrTulip@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      3·
      1 year ago

      A third or so of the country believes the right wing propaganda machine that has been churning for decades.

      For everyone else, we’re constantly offered a choice between a center-right neoliberal, or an outright fascist. We’re just voting for how fast the country falls.

    • Coreidan@lemmy.worldEnglish
      512·
      1 year ago

      Because Americans are hateful racists who care more about taking away from you than helping their community. Own the libs!