Randomperson

You might have seen that a bill package including the notorious Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) passed out of the House in a rushed vote last week.1 This bill and many of its counterparts would lock large swaths of the Internet behind invasive online ID checks and threaten our ability to speak out online.2 This is far from the end of the road. And calls and messages from people like you have made a huge impact. We’ve been fighting these bills for years, and I can tell you with certainty that the tide is turning. Legislators are shifting, fearmongering “kids safety” arguments are losing their grip, and we’re building a strong, diverse movement of people refusing censorship. KOSA is not yet law, and with the House and Senate disagreeing on fundamental provisions, we have a critical opportunity to build momentum against this legislation and other nonsensical Bad Internet Bills that threaten to kill the Internet as we know it. Now’s the time to dig in. Call and tell your lawmakers how you feel about the KIDS Act passing. Then, check out our brand new Bad Internet Bills tracker, where you can take targeted action against all the most dangerous bills threatening encryption, free expression, and community online.

KEEP UP THE FIGHT

If you’re not sure how your rep voted last week, you can check here.3 Together, Matt at Fight for the Future

P.S. If you believe in our anti-censorship work and can spare the cost of a coffee per month toward the fight, we’d so appreciate it.

Footnotes:

NBC: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/kids-internet-and-digital-safety-act-passes-house-free-speech-concerns-rcna352341

EFF: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/06/kids-act-would-require-age-checks-get-online

At least we can say we're ending Pride Month with a bang. As we wrap up our celebrations, we've been pushing more than 4,000 calls to DC, where lawmakers are yet again set to vote on legislation1 that would wall off LGBTQ+ content and voices behind dangerous online ID checks.2 Censorship threats like these won't just got away—we have to make them. And after years of fighting off the same dangerous legislation session after session,2,3 I won't lie: resources are drying up, and we need your help. We set out to raise $15k this Pride Month, funds our small team sorely needs to run anti-censorship campaigns year-round. But with just one more day left in June, we're only a third of the way there. I'm hoping you can pitch in today:

GIVE TO FIGHT CENSORSHIP

Weeks like these are a crucial slice of the struggle. It takes a lot of resources to mobilize massive call-ins to Congress, send vote recommendations to offices, drum up online resistance, and secure thoughtful press coverage. But we're also playing the long game. Donations from folks like you guarantee that we can build out an anti-censorship movement that dreams bigger than shooting down the worst threats. We deserve good, privacy-preserving legislation that actually protects us from Big Tech greed without requiring we scan our faces or submit IDs to engage in our favorite fandoms, access LGBTQ+ or reproductive health resources, organize a protest, or game with friends. We have a vision: of youth4 and parents5 joining up against censorship, of an intersectional coalition of groups denouncing queerphobic think tanks6 and their disingenuous "protect the kids" messaging. With your support, we can make it happen. If you're with us, throw us a few bucks or consider starting a monthly gift. Even $5 or $10 a month makes a huge difference for an org of our size! Thanks for everything you do. With Pride, Alex at Fight for the Future

Footnotes:

Politico: https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2026/06/22/congress/guthrie-and-pallone-cement-deal-for-kids-online-safety-package-00969686Teen Vogue: https://www.teenvogue.com/story/some-democrats-are-helping-the-trump-admins-anti-lgbtq-tech-agenda

KOSA is dead. Now it’s time to unite to take on Big Tech for real: https://www.fightforthefuture.org/news/2024-08-01-kosa-is-dead-now-its-time-to-unite-to-take-on-big-tech-for-real/

Youth Against KOSA: www.youthagainstkosa.com/

Parents Against Censorship: https://www.parentsagainstcensorship.com

Bad Internet Bills, disguised as “kids safety” bills, are moving through Congress again.1

If you’ve been around for our years-long fight against the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA)2 and its similarly disastrous friends like the SCREEN Act,3 you know what time it is. Let’s get phones in Congress ringing off the hook with one simple message: we refuse any bill that age restricts, censors, and surveils the Internet.

STOP BAD INTERNET BILLS

Like always, we expect proponents of these bills to tell you that they want to hold Big Tech accountable. But it’s beyond time we see past their BS. The reality is, more Big Tech companies support bills like KOSA than oppose them.4 Most recently, Meta dropped its opposition to KOSA, salivating at the promise of federal preemption of state AI regulations that lawmakers are trying to package with it.5 That’s the same Meta that has allegedly poured millions of dollars into groups lobbying for the App Store Accountability Act.6

Companies like Meta may be evil, but they’re not stupid: they’re doing what best protects their business model and bottom line. They know that bills like KOSA provide good cover from heat about kids safety, while skirting real change that would better protect everyone’s safety and privacy online, like comprehensive privacy legislation, algorithmic justice, and antitrust action. Don’t let lawmakers distort reality. These “kids safety” bills will harm more than they help. Call now and demand lawmakers pass real protections for everyone, not censorship bills. Solidarity, Sarah Philips at Fight for the Future

Footnotes:

Politico: https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2026/06/22/congress/guthrie-and-pallone-cement-deal-for-kids-online-safety-package-00969686 Gadget Review: https://www.gadgetreview.com/reddit-user-uncovers-who-is-behind-metas-2b-lobbying-for-invasive-age-verification-tech

Stop KOSA: https://www.stopkosa.com/

Stop the SCREEN Act: https://www.fightforthefuture.org/actions/stop-the-screen-act/

TechDirt: https://www.techdirt.com/2026/05/14/openais-kosa-endorsement-is-regulatory-capture-with-a-smiley-face/

I'm hoping you caught this. Looks like the fight against dangerous facial recognition technology in gay bars is heating up. Bar owners are denying the tech does what it does, companies are downplaying harm, and patrons are getting rightfully riled up.1 All this leading up to San Francisco Pride this weekend…

We have a key opportunity to gain ground against facial recognition tech this week. If we can get SF gay bars to stop putting their patrons at risk during Pride Month, we’re one step closer to surveillance-free queer spaces year-round, for good.

We’re moving fast to organize performers, patrons, and privacy nerds to take a stand at SF Pride in just a few days’ time. Can you rush a donation to the campaign today to make it happen?

DONATE NOW

Footnotes: 1. SF Gazetteer: https://sf.gazetteer.co/privacy-rights-advocates-push-back-against-data-collection-devices-in-castro-bars

Did you know that at least three gay bars in San Francisco are using dystopian face-scanning technology on their patrons?1

That means that businesses that claim to foster safety and community are building secret, unaccountable lists of everyone who walks through their doors—during an enormous wave of political persecution against queer and trans people.

Bars say facial recognition makes people safer. That is an utter lie. Take action ASAP to tell these businesses to keep creepy biometric surveillance out of our queer spaces:

TAKE ACTION

Venues that use facial recognition to scan and track their visitors are, fundamentally, building lists of gender and sexual minorities and their allies. What’s just as scary: we have no idea how many LGBTQ+ spaces are using this tech, how long the data is stored, and who has access to it.

The spread of surveillance tech through LGBTQ+ venues is a crisis for our community.

Facial recognition is dangerous for everyone, but it carries special risks for queer and trans people. Certain states are already building databases of trans people.2 Other states and agencies are demanding trans people’s medical histories3 and other sensitive data.4 This, as powerful political figures push for our reeducation and eradication.

We’ve seen this movie before, and it does not end well. LGBTQ+ venues that use biometric surveillance technology, including facial recognition, must remove it, scrap the data, and apologize to their patrons. All others should commit to keeping their community safe by rejecting surveillance technology—now and forever. Tell these businesses how you feel now, and share this action if you can.

In solidarity, Anna and the team at Fight

Footnotes:

Gazetteer SF: https://sf.gazetteer.co/why-do-these-castro-gay-bars-have-tsa-style-face-scanners

LGBTQ Nation: https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2026/05/gop-gov-signs-harmful-law-creating-a-state-database-of-trans-patients/

LGBTQ Nation: https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2026/06/the-admin-is-trying-to-collect-trans-kids-medical-information-so-families-are-suing/

We’re launching something important for Pride Month.

For a long time, we’ve known that there are some less-than-scrupulous people working on tech policy. It turns out that several powerful anti-LGBTQ+ organizations have infiltrated the movement—lobbying for bills like KOSA and pretending to be experts on what keeps kids safe online.1

The Heritage Foundation, NCOSE, the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and the Eagle Forum are Religious Right groups that have been active for decades.2 They got their start opposing marriage equality and fighting abortion rights. Now, they’re trying to blacklist LGBTQ+ and abortion speech.

This Pride Month, we're asking digital rights groups to cut ties with the Religious Right. If you agree that that anti-LGBTQ+ hate groups have no place in this movement, sign our letter now.

SIGN NOW

Unfortunately, the digital rights space is small, and Heritage et al. are sneaky. We learned that some digital rights groups have collaborated with the Religious Right—whether they know it or not.

Humanpower can feel scarce in the digital rights movement, and sometimes we work with people with whom we disagree. But we have to draw a line: collaborating with hate groups is unacceptable, especially as LGBTQ+ people are being targeted by a government partially staffed by Religious Right figures.

If you can sign, thanks in advance. If you know or work with organizations who would like to be a listed signatory on the open letter, indicate that on the form and we’ll be in touch.

In solidarity,

Footnotes:

Them: https://www.them.us/story/kids-online-safety-act-kosa-youth-lgbtq-content

Did you know that at least three gay bars in San Francisco are using dystopian face-scanning technology on their patrons?1

That means that businesses that claim to foster safety and community are building secret, unaccountable lists of everyone who walks through their doors—during an enormous wave of political persecution against queer and trans people.

Bars say facial recognition makes people safer. That is an utter lie. Take action ASAP to tell these businesses to keep creepy biometric surveillance out of our queer spaces:

TAKE ACTION

Venues that use facial recognition to scan and track their visitors are, fundamentally, building lists of gender and sexual minorities and their allies. What’s just as scary: we have no idea how many LGBTQ+ spaces are using this tech, how long the data is stored, and who has access to it.

The spread of surveillance tech through LGBTQ+ venues is a crisis for our community.

Facial recognition is dangerous for everyone, but it carries special risks for queer and trans people. Certain states are already building databases of trans people.2 Other states and agencies are demanding trans people’s medical histories3 and other sensitive data.4 This, as powerful political figures push for our reeducation and eradication.

We’ve seen this movie before, and it does not end well. LGBTQ+ venues that use biometric surveillance technology, including facial recognition, must remove it, scrap the data, and apologize to their patrons. All others should commit to keeping their community safe by rejecting surveillance technology—now and forever. Tell these businesses how you feel now, and share this action if you can.

In solidarity, Anna and the team at Fight P.S. Want to help grow our power as a small queer and trans-led org to fight back against BS surveillance like this? Read more about our work and chip in here. Any amount helps!

Footnotes:

Gazetteer SF: https://sf.gazetteer.co/why-do-these-castro-gay-bars-have-tsa-style-face-scanners

LGBTQ Nation: https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2026/05/gop-gov-signs-harmful-law-creating-a-state-database-of-trans-patients/

LGBTQ Nation: https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2026/06/the-admin-is-trying-to-collect-trans-kids-medical-information-so-families-are-suing/

The backlash to AI is real, and it’s growing. People don’t want broken tools surveilling them and polluting the Internet with slop, all while driving up energy costs where they live.

AI affects everyone differently. But here’s what scares me: the unique risks AI poses to LGBTQ+ people have barely been explored.

This fall, we want to launch a set of projects to research and expose the ways AI specifically hurts queer and trans people. These projects take advantage of our unique position as a queer- and women-led organization with over a decade of tech advocacy experience.

But funding’s tight—like it is for any project critical of AI. Can you help us power these projects with a recurring donation?

FUND CAMPAIGNS FOR AI JUSTICE

We know AI has disparate impacts on different groups of people.

AI identity verification tools locking trans people out of the Internet for not having “normal” government IDs1

AI-generated propaganda pushes people towards far-right and anti-LGBTQ+ views

Chatbots using insecure data storage that could expose people's therapy sessions or identity exploration

All of this during the most anti-LGBTQ+ and pro-AI presidency ever.2

Civil society needs to understand just how dangerous AI can be for queer people. Then we need to build a bulwark against the dangerous AI companies that want to capture our future.

Queer- and trans-led advocacy is essential here. Otherwise, we’ll get the same “solutions” that purport to protect kids—but really would wipe LGBTQ+ information and communities from the Internet. We’ll get government backdoors that violate our privacy. We’ll get biased algorithmic systems that push queer people out of legal recognition and public life.

Your donation will build out this capacity, enabling things like:

A publication connecting the dots between AI investment and the homophobic, transphobic tech bosses seeking control over our lives

Our ceaseless fight against age verification bills pushed by anti-LGBTQ+ groups

A campaign to kick facial recognition out of Pride events for good

Become a sustaining donor and help us make it happen. We need 21 more to reach our goal for the month!

Yours,

Footnotes:

1. Tech Policy Press: https://www.techpolicy.press/age-verification-is-locking-trans-people-out-of-the-internet/

Happy pride to us all. And especially to any queer femmes out there just trying to exist who, like me, are using a VPN right now.

A quality VPN is a very important tool for privacy. They protect us from malicious scammers on iffy wifi, from what we do online being surveilled by the people and institutions that would do us harm. They hide the location we’re browsing from, so that creeps can’t mess with us at home. In a word, they help keep us safe.

They’re also essential for access to community. They let us dodge censorship and join the online world from the perspective that’s best for us. This means a lot as walls go up around queer digital life in the US, and also to people around the world whose love and identities are criminalized. In a word, they keep us alive.

So what are states like Utah and Michigan trying to do?

Ban them, of course!

At Fight for the Future, we’ve been slapping these lawmakers upside the head: holding a VPN Day of Action1, dragging Utah’s nonsensical law even as they delayed its rollout2, heaping shade on Michigan3, and generally organizing so that there’s an actual resistance to protect these crucial tools.

But we’ve got to be real: nobody’s really been funding this work except our grassroots supporters. And there is a lot more that we need to do.

So, if you can (and like I said, we get that we’re all just trying to exist out here), would you consider becoming a monthly donor to help us keep going on VPN defense?

This pride, we are really hoping to get support from 30 new monthly donors. We already have 6 this month - wanna help get us into double digits? To thank you, you can pick out a special piece of pride merch.

If you’ve got it, you’ve got it. If you don’t, don’t stress. We’ll keep fighting with everything we have!

Wishing you a little too much fun this June,

Lia at Fight for the Future

Footnotes:

TechRadar: https://www.techradar.com/vpn/vpn-privacy-security/we-want-to-make-some-noise-advocates-are-stepping-in-to-defend-vpns-and-they-need-your-help

Fight for the Future Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DYDjrjoPIJa/

 i wanted to make sure you caught this. If you’ve got a sec to read and share the Pride 2026 page, or make a donation of any size, it goes a long way in helping us fight the censorship bills threatening LGBTQ+ resources and voices online. With Pride, as in, f-censorship,

Alex at Fight Fight for the Future is one of the only queer and trans-led groups throwing down to defend our communities at the intersection of LGBTQ+ rights and tech justice. This past year, we’ve seen a wave of proposed ID check mandates,1 VPN bans,2 AI-powered surveillance,3 and censorship bills targeting our community on a scale we have never seen before, and putting everyone at risk. We’ve been pouring an immense amount of our scarce policy advocacy resources into blocking the worst of these efforts on the state4 and national level.5 But that money is drying up. We can’t wait till the end of the year for more resources to materialize: censorship is accelerating right now. And it’s killing us.

FUND ANTI-CENSORSHIP WORK YEAR-ROUND

We just launched our Pride 2026 page that highlights our most pressing campaigns and sets a baseline goal to ensure we can continue this work through the end of the year: $15,000 and 30 new monthly sustainers by June 30th. Please, take a moment to browse our work, and start a monthly gift to sustain our anti-censorship campaigns year-round. Policy tracking, coordinating with peer orgs and impacted groups on the ground, driving calls and emails, organizing protests, getting our angle in the press, securing meetings with offices, raising viral hell, and building and maintaining the tech tools that make it all happen: that’s all happening behind the scenes of successful campaigns like Queers Against Censorship,6 Stop Online ID Checks,7 and Flock Out.8 And it all runs on support from folks like you. Fascists won’t stop at targeting queer and trans people. Their normalization of surveillance and their vision of a sanitized, age-gated, and tightly controlled Internet harms us all. Your solidarity this month helps us fight year-round for an Internet where everyone gets to be free, safe, private, and proud.Thanks for everything you do, Alex and the team at Fight for the Future P.S. You can help by sharing the Pride 2026 page and shouting out our work if donating isn’t in the cards. Any way you can spread the word is so appreciated. Footnotes:

Governing: https://www.governing.com/policy/states-are-increasingly-trying-to-keep-kids-off-social-media

Tech Radar: https://www.techradar.com/vpn/vpn-privacy-security/a-waste-of-money-digital-rights-group-slams-utahs-new-impossible-by-design-vpn-restrictions-under-controversial-age-verification-law

CNET: https://www.cnet.com/home/security/when-flock-comes-to-town-why-cities-are-axing-the-controversial-surveillance-technology/

Stop Online ID Checks in MA: https://www.fightforthefuture.org/news/2026-05-13-50-human-rights-groups-release-letter-urging-massachusetts-lawmakers-to-reject-age-verification-bills-hold-press-conference-with-rep-mike-connolly/

Section 230: https://www.fightforthefuture.org/news/2025-12-18-statement-2026-year-online-protest-dies/

Queers Against Censorship: https://www.queersagainstcensorship.com/

Stop Online ID Checks: https://www.stoponlineidchecks.org/

I know this isn’t the only email you’ll get for Pride Month, so I’ll try to keep it to the point. Fight for the Future is one of the only queer and trans-led groups throwing down to defend our communities at the intersection of LGBTQ+ rights and tech justice. This past year, we’ve seen a wave of proposed ID check mandates,1 VPN bans,2 AI-powered surveillance,3 and censorship bills targeting our community on a scale we have never seen before, and putting everyone at risk. We’ve been pouring an immense amount of our scarce policy advocacy resources into blocking the worst of these efforts on the state4 and national level.5 But that money is drying up. We can’t wait till the end of the year for more resources to materialize: censorship is accelerating right now. And it’s killing us.

FUND ANTI-CENSORSHIP WORK YEAR-ROUND

We just launched our Pride 2026 page that highlights our most pressing campaigns and sets a baseline goal to ensure we can continue this work through the end of the year: $15,000 and 30 new monthly sustainers by June 30th. Please, take a moment to browse our work, and start a monthly gift to sustain our anti-censorship campaigns year-round. Policy tracking, coordinating with peer orgs and impacted groups on the ground, driving calls and emails, organizing protests, getting our angle in the press, securing meetings with offices, raising viral hell, and building and maintaining the tech tools that make it all happen: that’s all happening behind the scenes of successful campaigns like Queers Against Censorship,6 Stop Online ID Checks,7 and Flock Out.8 And it all runs on support from folks like you. Fascists won’t stop at targeting queer and trans people. Their normalization of surveillance and their vision of a sanitized, age-gated, and tightly controlled Internet harms us all. Your solidarity this month helps us fight year-round for an Internet where everyone gets to be free, safe, private, and proud.

Thanks for everything you do, Alex and the team at Fight for the Future P.S. You can help by sharing the Pride 2026 page and shouting out our work if donating isn’t in the cards. Any way you can spread the word is so appreciated.

Footnotes:

Governing: https://www.governing.com/policy/states-are-increasingly-trying-to-keep-kids-off-social-media

Tech Radar: https://www.techradar.com/vpn/vpn-privacy-security/a-waste-of-money-digital-rights-group-slams-utahs-new-impossible-by-design-vpn-restrictions-under-controversial-age-verification-law

CNET: https://www.cnet.com/home/security/when-flock-comes-to-town-why-cities-are-axing-the-controversial-surveillance-technology/

Stop Online ID Checks in MA: https://www.fightforthefuture.org/news/2026-05-13-50-human-rights-groups-release-letter-urging-massachusetts-lawmakers-to-reject-age-verification-bills-hold-press-conference-with-rep-mike-connolly/

Section 230: https://www.fightforthefuture.org/news/2025-12-18-statement-2026-year-online-protest-dies/

Queers Against Censorship: https://www.queersagainstcensorship.com/

Stop Online ID Checks: https://www.stoponlineidchecks.org/

We’re gearing up to bring some serious heat to Lowe’s, one of surveillance-monger Flock Safety’s biggest commercial customers. Lowe’s' partnership with Flock scans our license plates en masse, exposing our data and movements to warrantless ICE surveillance.1 What’s worse, Lowe’s has voluntarily shared this surveillance data with law enforcement without a court order.2 With your support, we’ve successfully dragged Lowe’s in the press for their complacency.3 And now, it’s time to keep up the pressure until they end this dangerous partnership. On May 29th, Lowe’s will hold their annual shareholder meeting. Along with partners on the ground in San Francisco, we’ll gather at Lowe’s to demand they drop their dangerous and dystopian Flock partnership. We’re raising $5,000 to cover the costs of this action and ensure companies like Lowe’s are held responsible for their complicity in mass surveillance. If you’re ready to throw down with us, will you make a gift of any size today?

LOWE'S: BREAK UP WITH SURVEILLANCE!

Ahead of the big day, we’re building an action map and toolkit to inspire anti-surveillance advocates across the country to join in our action. Plus, we’re fronting the costs for posters, signs, protest supplies, and more to ensure our demands make it into any press coverage of the shareholder meeting.

Folks like you have made work like this possible. More than 80 cities across the country are dropping or cancelling their Flock partnerships,4 and our movement is only growing. If you have the means to start a recurring donation to support this work, please do. It really makes a difference.

Footnotes:

404 Media: https://www.404media.co/cbp-had-access-to-more-than-80-000-flock-ai-cameras-nationwide/

404 Media: https://www.404media.co/home-depot-and-lowes-share-data-from-hundreds-of-ai-cameras-with-cops/

Fast Company: https://www.fastcompany.com/91531608/lowes-cut-ties-flock-safety-ai-surveillance-cameras-privacy-groups

NPR: https://www.npr.org/2026/02/17/nx-s1-5612825/flock-contracts-canceled-immigration-survillance-concerns

Meta just announced1 that the company will be "developing" an AI tool that can determine a user's age based on visual, physical characteristics. We’ve seen this play before: a tech company uses “kids online safety” to justify invasive and nefarious collection of our data. This time it wants to use an “AI tool” that it swears “is not facial recognition” to analyze our “height and bone structure” in images. We’re supposed to believe that running our kids’ faces through Meta’s latest AI tool keeps them safe? Make it make sense.

That’s why we’re calling it what it is: a dangerous form of online ID checks that puts all of us at risk. Meta should not be able to freely scan our photos and videos on the platform with its AI surveillance tool.

Tell Meta to keep its AI tools and online ID checks away from our faces!. Can you add your name to the petition now?

Tell Meta get out of our faces!

Meta has some guts trying to convince us this isn’t facial recognition, especially right after it got heat for developing those facial recognition Ray Ban glasses perfect for perverts and stalkers alike. We could list all of Meta’s privacy blunders and public breaches of trust here, but we respect your time and ours enough not to bother. We both know that list is long.

The truth is, today people are acutely aware of Big Tech’s role in promoting fascism in this country. When it mattered most, Meta has broken its commitment and rolled back end-to-end encryption on Instagram. Meta has also allowed law enforcement to access Messenger to prosecute abortion investigations. In other words: Meta cannot be trusted-- especially not with our faces.

Demand Meta drop its online ID checks and GTFO of our face!

Thanks for all you do, Reem at Fight for the Future

_______________

"NEW: Senate Commerce Chairman @SenTedCruz announces his committee will mark up the Kids Online Safety Act, COPPA 2.0, Keep Kids Off Social Media Act and a chatbot bill he introduced last week.

Comes at rally w/ parent advocates, #KOSA cosponsors @MarshaBlackburn

@SenBlumenthal"

"At rally with survivor parents earlier today, @SenateCommerce Chair Cruz said the committee would pass KOSA, COPPA 2.0 (which already passed the Senate), KOSMA and his new chatbots bill. The first three are his longtime priorities but markup time presumably draws near,"

Politicians around the world are pushing for laws that would turn the Internet into a mass surveillance machine. ”Age verification” and “age assurance” mandates1 are being marketed as protections for kids, but the truth is, they mostly impact adults2 : by forcing all of us to upload a government ID or submit to an intrusive and discriminatory face scan to access information or speak out online. For dissidents, journalists, and human rights activists in many areas with rising authoritarianism, the ability to criticize the powerful anonymously is a matter of life or death.

This is the free speech fight of our generation. And I have to be honest with you, we are gaining ground, but we are seriously outgunned. Billionaire donors, conservative think tanks,3 and giant corporations like Meta4 are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into lobbying and PR campaigns to convince lawmakers to age-gate the Internet. Online ID check laws are being proposed in a growing number of countries5 and US states,6 including in our “progressive” home state of Massachusetts, where we’ve dug in to stop a dangerous precedent.7 We’re building a global movement of human rights groups, ordinary Internet users, parents, educators, and impacted communities to fight back against the rising tide of dangerous age verification laws. I’m reaching out today today to ask: will you make a recurring gift to sustain this fight?

DONATE TO STOP ID CHECKS

This is not a fight we’re going to win overnight. But it’s clear we’re at a turning point. If we continue down the path we’re on, governments could require surveillance and censorship to be baked into every piece of technology we own. Not just social media: financial transactions like Venmo, wearable health devices, even the operating system of any computer, phone, or tablet you buy.

We don’t just want to play whack-a-mole, swatting down bad laws that just come back year after year and eventually pass. We need to sustain a global movement that wins hearts and minds, helping people understand why hard-coding surveillance into the Internet makes all of us less safe, not more safe.

With your support, we’ve already made significant strides in changing the narrative around online ID checks.8 But we don’t have giant corporations or billionaire donors backing this work. We’re relying on people like you who understand what’s at stake to contribute whatever you can. Can you pledge the cost of a coffee or Netflix subscription per month today?

START A MONTHLY GIFT

Every dollar will help fund:

A full scale media and narrative campaign to educate journalists, pundits, and prominent influencers about why ID check laws are dangerous and ineffective

Collaboration with frontline LGBTQ+, abortion rights, and youth mental health organizations who would be most impacted and can speak on this issue

Direct grassroots lobbying and educational meetings with lawmakers in statehouses and in Congress

Coordination between fights in the US, EU, Australia, Brazil, and other countries

The launch of our “Parents Against Censorship” campaign to counter disingenuous Big Tech astroturfing claiming to speak on behalf of all parents

Awareness-raising actions at Pride Month events this summer and future movement events

Footnotes:

The Intercept: https://theintercept.com/2026/03/05/kosa-online-age-verification-free-speech-privacy/

CNBC: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/08/social-media-child-safety-internet-ai-surveillance.html

Free Speech Coalition: https://www.freespeechcoalition.com/whos-behind-age-verification-legislation

Gigazine: https://gigazine.net/gsc_news/en/20260316-meta-lobbying#gsc.tab=0

Politico: https://www.politico.eu/article/age-check-social-media-scientist-warning/

Free Speech Coalition: https://action.freespeechcoalition.com/age-verification-bills/

Civil liberties and LGBTQ+ advocates protest social media “ID check” laws: https://www.fightforthefuture.org/news/2026-04-28-civil-liberties-and-lgbtq-advocates-protest-social-media-id-check-laws-outside-wgbh-ask-the-governor-broadcast/

Wired: https://www.wired.com/story/age-verification-is-sweeping-the-us-activists-are-fighting-back/

This week was a big one in the fight against online ID checks in Massachusetts. On Tuesday, a crew of queer youth, teachers, LGBTQ+ rights and digital privacy experts demonstrated outside of Governor Maura Healey’s radio broadcast,1 demanding she engage with criticisms of her new social media ban bill2 that would mandate online ID checks for anyone in the state to post online. We handed the Governor our critiques directly in-hand and confirmed a meeting with her office next week!

Here’s why this matters for you: what happens in Massachusetts won’t stay in Massachusetts. If so-called progressives in MA pass one of the strictest age-gating bills in the country, it puts every other state at greater risk of implementing these surveillance and censorship laws and hamstrings our ability to actually reign in Big Tech.

With your support, we’re making headway here in MA. We might actually be able to flip the Governor’s bill (and its House counterpart3) from one of the worst age verification proposals in the country into real protections against Big Tech abuses.

But to do that, we need to keep up the momentum with more actions, more meetings, more coalition-building, more press…you get the gist. For an org of our size that relies greatly on small dollar donations from folks like you, costs can really add up. Can you throw us $30 or more to fund the sustained pressure campaign we need to defeat ID checks in MA and beyond—or better yet, start a small monthly donation to fund this work?

DONATE TO STOP ONLINE ID CHECKS

Footnotes:

Civil liberties and LGBTQ+ advocates protest social media “ID check” laws outside WGBH “Ask the Governor” broadcast: https://www.fightforthefuture.org/news/2026-04-28-civil-liberties-and-lgbtq-advocates-protest-social-media-id-check-laws-outside-wgbh-ask-the-governor-broadcast/

A line-by-line analysis of Governor Maura Healey’s proposed social media legislation: https://www.fightforthefuture.org/news/2026-04-16-a-line-by-line-analysis-of-governor-maura-healeys-proposed-social-media-legislation/