The Kids Online Safety Act is “a blank check” for Republican AGs to "intimidate any way they can," a digital civil liberties advocate told Jezebel.
22 Democrats Sponsor a Bill That Could Censor Abortion Info From the Internet::The Kids Online Safety Act is “a blank check” for Republican AGs to "intimidate any way they can," a digital civil liberties advocate told Jezebel.
In a literal level, this person is not being unreasonable. Facebook moderators and the psychological conditions they face as a result of their work are a good indication of that.
You are right, most of it is probably to keep people in power and the servants in line, but there are also a lot of situations in which we actively ask for censorship. Moderators are needed for a reason. Censorship is our only relatively effective tool to counter disinformation campaigns and fake news. Even search engines censor their results either to avoid lawsuits or to prevent certain situations, like someone asking for suicide methods is redirected to sites telling him why life is worth it.
I still understand this is a double edged sword and im not sure if the risks involved with compulsory censorship are worth losing our internet freedom, but I do understand this shit is needed on certain situations
Now imagine if they used the law to force Google not to provide any results in a search for abortion. While it may not remove content from the Internet, it effectively removes access to it.
This shows we need an open source search engine that anybody can whip up. To all the devs and volunteers out there, please make something like this, if there's one already, I'll see if I can contribute to the project.
In the meantime, you can use something like ProtonVPN to make sites think you’re not in the US. Google uses your IP address to determine your location and implement regulations based on that. You get better privacy options when it thinks you’re in Europe too.