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Comment by jmclnx | Hacker News Reader

I would like to know who is paying (or bribing in the US) to push these bills. Seems it is a tracking of children bill that advertising companies would love to have access to.

I am sure it will be private companies that do the tracking. Also I am sure an encryption backdoor will be built into this bill if not already.

As a parent, if you want your young child to be "protected", keep them off line.

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I haven't read the bill, but my first thought is that there's always going to be some threat to children, so any time you want to play pork barrel politics, you can trot out some nebulous child-safety bill and append riders to that.

Second thought is that this isn't about private interests (though it's possible). Big Tech moves and grows faster than the government. Arbitrary requirements are one way to papercut a larger entity into submission, like FOSTA/SESTA or 2257-- we'll give ourselves a way to take you down for something.

Case in point:

> The bill holds platforms liable if their designs and services do not “prevent and mitigate” a list of societal ills: anxiety, depression, eating disorders, substance use disorders, physical violence, online bullying and harassment, sexual exploitation and abuse, and suicidal behaviors. Additionally, platforms would be responsible for patterns of use that indicate or encourage addiction-like behaviors.

Platforms would be responsible for preventing and mitigating anxiety. Platforms are prohibited from doing anything to incentivize repeat business. This is Obscenity 2.0.

If large platforms were required to interoperate and provide complete open APIs, that would break down their network effect lock-in and ad-based double-sided business model and put us users in power to vote with our feet and wallets to make them do all those things we value. That’s what we should be fighting for: to let market forces do their job properly.

However, existing Big Social would rather prefer that law regulated everything about them—it increases the barrier to entry for honest competitors while Facebooks of this world have enough people and money to throw at those things.

The worst part of the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) is the requirement that websites "prevent and mitigate" anxiety and depression in users and viewers under 18 years of age. Here is the exact text from the bill's Section 3(a)(1) which prescribes this restriction:

> 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.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/140...

There are many types of content that can trigger anxiety or depression that should not be censored for people under 18, such as political speech and negative/distressing news. (The implications this bill has on political speech and news reporting also raise questions about whether it is constitutional.) People under 18 have a right to be informed just as adults do, even if they don't have the ability to vote to protect that right for themselves.

If you are in the United States, please call your senator and representatives to reject this draconian bill: https://www.congress.gov/members/find-your-member

In the UK, the AVPA - age verification providers association (members include Experian) have been super active on the Online Safety Bill. Curious to know if there's a US involvement , too.

The media seems to have missed this - then again, these laws are their opportunity to stick the boot into Tech, and usually have carve outs and special treatment under these laws, so they're not especially incentivised to rock the boat here.

Really, Experian ? That should give everyone the warm and fuzzies /s

I am sure they are involved in the US with this. In anycase, it is legal for Companies in the US to donate (bribe) anonymously, so I am sure it is not documented anywhere. There has been many attempts to make that illegal, but no luck so far.

It's a very good point, I haven't seen a lot of discussion of the role of Experian et al in KOSA.

In the US, it seems like it's mostly being driven by "child-safety" orgs, some of whom are well-intentioned but just don't understand the downsides, some of whom are anti-LGBTQ and appreciate the downsides. But others may well be active behind the scenes.

> if you want your young child to be "protected", keep them off line.

What about the school playground and mobile phones?

Do you think kids dont share stuff they have seen, online and offline? Can you stop your offline kids from interacting with online kids with devices?

I see loads of people sharing stuff they have on their mobile phone to other people. What that stuff is, I dont know, but Google's "photoshop" facilities built into their camera app, requires the images to be taken off the phone, processed in the cloud and then sent back to the device, so there are a whole host of points at play, like data privacy.

So is the govt late to the party or is the govt saying the tech companies can not be trusted or is it something else?

If you know anything about biology, you'll realise some parents are not really the best educators. When do parents stop being able to help their kids do homework if they get any help from their parents at all?

Is homework a stealth child welfare test and parental intelligence test?

Do people who complain about this bill, display their own subconcious bias?

How much do you read into what is probably one of the most emotive subjects. Does it dig up our own vulnerabilities and fears as a child for all to see?

So many ways to look at this stuff, just what do you read into it?

> Seems it is a tracking of children bill that advertising companies would love to have access to.

Downvoted - where is tracking in this bill[0]?

[0] https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/366...

In the US usually bills are written by private corporations

This should be illegal.

Sure, but you see it's not a 'bribe' if you just call it 'lobbying', and corporations are people, so all good.

Why would they make it illegal? I know why you would want them to. But I don’t understand projecting wants onto power over us.

You're right. My gut reaction was that it should be illegal because it's the government's job to legislate, not the private sector's. But having the private sector write legislation doesn't violate the government's duty. The government fulfills their role by passing it.

While it still seems ripe for conflict of interest, I suppose it's not much worse than could happen if everything was kept internal to the government.

It should be illegal for businesses to write our laws (the lawmakers do not even read them - so your point about govt fulfilling their duty is a thin one). But power doesn’t work that way, this is the result of power acting in its own interest. Solution is to strip this power

> But having the private sector write legislation doesn't violate the government's duty. The government fulfills their role by passing it.

So massive CEO wages are justified then considering its your boss or the boss of the largest company in your line of work helping to write the legislation?

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