any time some senator says action is being taken for the safety of the kids, they don't actually give a jive about kids.
As lots of folks are reporting, Senator Richard Blumenthal, this morning, released an updated version of the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA). He and co-author Senator Marsha Blackburn are also crowin…
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Not unlike the Liberal's new online harms bill in Canada. On its face, it's designed to protect children from harmful content online as well as protect people from revenge porn/etc, however that's only a fraction of what's in the bill. It also drastically increases the government's ability to regulate "hateful content" online, leaving the definition of hateful content extremely vague. Vague enough that the wrong (AKA current) government could easily try to abuse this by stifling free expression of political opinions on platforms like Youtube.
It also (in its current form) enables the government to place you under house arrest if someone
fears/believes you
may post so-called "hateful content" online in the future. Are our Justice Minister has
defended that portion of it, promising that it would have to "meet a high threshold" to happen. I'm sorry, but there is no "threshold" for pre-crime. It belongs exclusively in the realm of dictatorships, theocracies and Tom Cruise films.
Trudeau has been taking a pounding and a half lately, despite the efforts of most mainstream media to steer the conversation away from that. The problem is, nobody in Canada gives a damn or trusts the major news networks anymore. Trust of major media outlets in most provinces is down at rock bottom levels. CBC, Global and CTV are all on the take from the government (and it's gotten so much worse after COVID), and most of their "journalists" are just mouthpieces for government policies or opinions. Trudeau has even publicly opined for the good old days when his public only had a small handful of news sources that all parroted the same crap. I'm paraphrasing, of course, but the gist of it is that all the parts of this Online Harms Bill that
don't pertain to protecting children is a response to this current situation, and arguably the actual purpose of this bill, with protecting kids being incidental.
That they're trying to use protecting children to shield the rest of this insidious bill from legitimate criticism is truly revolting. This government and its cronies can't be gone soon enough. I don't even know what to call them anymore, but it turns my stomach to call the "Liberals", because I no longer believe that's what they are.