dafuq, brutus, you too?

Likes are great, but I need you to reblog and call. If you call after hours, you won't have to speak with anyone! You'll be prompted to leave a message. That's what the call script is for.

Update: The Republican-introduced Kids Internet and Digital Safety (KIDS) Act now incorporates KOSA.

Remember KOSA, the dangerous internet censorship bill that claims to protect children? Its proponents are trying once again to push this bill through.

The newest proponents are none other than Elon Musk and Linda Yaccarino of X (formerly Twitter). You should be wary of any social media regulation bill they support. With their encouragement, Senators Blumenthal (D-CT) and Blackburn (R-TN), the bill’s sponsors, are making one last push to shove this bill down our throats. There’s some concern that they may try to attach the bill as a rider to any mandatory funding bills, though House Speaker Johnson has qualms about pushing a bill with such dire free-speech implications this hastily.

And make no mistake, the bill is still terrible for free speech. Despite its proponents’ claims that it’s now “content neutral”, it still restricts functionality related to multiple issues, so it remains dangerous to LGBTQ+, minorities, and anyone expressing dissent. Effectively the bill requires websites to identify people whom the service “knows is a minor” and restrict features that make certain content available to them. This can result in an age-gate (which might require proving your age and identity), but may also result in wholesale censorship of any content deemed too risky to host.

According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the harms include:

LGBTQ+ youth will be at risk of having content, educational material, and their own online identities erased.

Young people searching for information about their sexual health and reproductive rights will find their search results stymied.

Teens and children in historically oppressed and marginalized groups will be unable to locate online information about their history and shared experiences.

Activist youth on either side of the aisle, such as those fighting for changes to climate laws, gun laws, or religious rights, will be siloed, and unable to advocate and connect online.

Young people seeking mental health help and information will be blocked from finding it, because even discussions of suicide, depression, anxiety, and eating disorders will be hidden from them.

Teens hoping to combat the problem of addiction—either their own, or that of their friends, families, and neighbors—will not have the resources they need to do so.

Any young person seeking truthful news or information that could be considered depressing will find it harder to educate themselves and engage in current events and honest discussion.

Adults who are unwilling to share their identities will find themselves shunted onto a second-class internet alongside the young people who have been denied access to the full online public sphere.

The EFF has built a resource hub to educate and fight back against these intrusive surveillance measures. With the recent passage of the 18-bill online surveillance package out of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, it is more important than ever that we let our representatives know that this legislation is unacceptable.

As there have been significant changes made in the legislation, if it passes the House, it will have to be approved by the Senate again. So now is the time to also let our senators know that we oppose this legislation, which is bad for everyone.

We continue to oppose KIDS/KOSA and ask you to do the same.

Call your Senators and tell them: We still want you to vote NO on KIDS/KOSA!

KOSA IS MOVING FORWARD IN THE HOUSE!

It's part of a package called the KIDS Act, filled with digital ID and age verification and censorship!

MAKE THOSE PHONES RING!! CALL YOUR HOUSE REPRESENTATIVES ALL WEEK

202-224-3121 i HIGHLY encourage everyone to read the bills in the KIDS Act, because you will be doing more than 95% of people who read and introduce these bills

"Democrats and Republicans in Congress have struck a deal on a bill they say will help keep children and teens safe online. The KIDS Act could pass on the House floor as soon as next week; if enacted, it would fundamentally change the way everyone — not just kids — accesses the internet.

At stake is your ability to use many social media platforms without revealing your identity. 

That’s because the KIDS Act at least strongly incentivizes — and, for some services, outright requires — age verification. Many platforms will turn to age verification to avoid potential liability under the law. Companies like X, video-sharing services like Vimeo, and others with a history of users’ populating social feeds with edgy content may be required to verify users’ ages because they host a certain amount of content deemed “sexual material harmful to minors,” a term that the KIDS Act defines broadly. 

That’s a big problem for people who need to be able to use the internet anonymously, since, as Taylor Lorenz has previously written about in The Intercept, “there’s no way to reliably verify someone’s age without verifying who they are.” 

Threats to online anonymity harm everyone, but one group is often overlooked: journalists and the sources who talk to them. Age verification requirements will help the Trump administration carry out its vendetta against the press by creating new avenues to identify journalists’ confidential sources. [...]

bavarian prussia:

(links)

UYGFSTFYUAYSFY, HIMAAA!!!!

More links (going overkill bc refs + Idk which couldn't be opened)

Source

KOSA IS MOVING FORWARD IN THE HOUSE!

It's part of a package called the KIDS Act, filled with digital ID and age verification and censorship!

MAKE THOSE PHONES RING!! CALL YOUR HOUSE REPRESENTATIVES ALL WEEK

202-224-3121 i HIGHLY encourage everyone to read the bills in the KIDS Act, because you will be doing more than 95% of people who read and introduce these bills

list of characters - compilation of official character bios for each character, with notes on when and where they were published

blog mirror - you’ll find nearly every kitayume blog post here (+ some of himaruya’s tweets), including a few non-hetalia things like hima’s travel posts and his review of the emperor’s new groove. there’s handy tags you can search by, including “[character](notes)” which will give you posts where hima writes about the character and doesn’t just post art of them, gakuen hetalia, nyotalia, etc

unlisted and lost content - things that really shouldn’t be considered canon but that may still be of interest to people (as the name implies, hetarchive is an archive!)

game translations - what it says on the tin. highlights include hetalian horror show, mr prussia’s cleaning game, and the gakuen hetalia demo

I don't apologize

I was seduced and I seduced..

Little Ludwig has his own Roman Empire, I'm sure he's happy

Breaking the chains of new forms of slavery 173. This distorted view of the human person is reflected today in various forms of servitude directly linked to the digital economy. Nothing in the world of AI is immaterial or magical. Every seemingly immediate and flawless response is the result of a long chain of mediation, involving vast networks of natural resources, energy infrastructure and, above all, people. A significant part of the digital economy’s functioning relies on the silent work of millions of people engaged in essential yet largely unseen activities, such as data labeling, model training and content moderation, often involving disturbing material. In many cases, these workers are young people, predominantly women, working under demanding conditions for minimal wages. Added to this invisible labor is the even harsher work of extracting the resources required for the production of the devices and microprocessors on which AI depends. In some regions of the world, children and adolescents work in dangerous conditions, crushing the materials from which rare earth elements are extracted. The bodies of these people are scarred, injured and worn down so that computational flow may continue uninterruptedly. Furthermore, criminal networks use online platforms, messaging systems, anonymous payment methods and profiling techniques in order to recruit, control and transport victims of trafficking — very often minors — reducing men and women to “data” to be tracked and “packages” to be moved around within the same digital circuits that support much of the global economy. This reality deeply challenges the moral conscience of our time. It is not enough to invoke efficiency, nor to celebrate the benefits of innovation, if they are built on a chain of exploitation that remains deliberately hidden. If technology promises emancipation, yet produces new forms of global subordination, it stands in contradiction to the fundamental principle of human dignity.