Minors Against Online “Safety”. I feel like messages against censorship “for the children” will be more effective coming from the children it’s claiming to protect.

Here’s the plan: Find your state’s senators and house representatives. Call them, email them, tell them every little way these bills are detrimental, to BOTH children and adults. Most importantly, do it CONSTANTLY. At least once every few days, IF NOT MORE. AND, tell your friends and classmates to do it too. Regardless of political orientation, I can’t imagine any teen taking kindly to the idea of their internet access being limited or completely revoked.

The bills we’re targeting are: KOSA (requires age verification to access many websites), KOSMA (bans people under 13 from using social media) , the SCREEN act (blocks content seen as harmful to minors for ALL audiences), Block BEARD (supposedly protects against foreign piracy), and the Take It Down act(blocks content seen as sexually obscene to ALL audiences), which has already passed but is ridiculously unconstitutional, so maybe we can get the Supreme Court on that.

Some good points that you may want to bring up (if you can think of any others, put them in comments, please!)

- The SCREEN act could limit a teen’s access to Sex Ed, especially for the lgbtq+ community, who don’t always get taught how to stay safe in schools.

- While this might cut down on kids access to negative content, it could also very easily cut down on access to positive content as well. (e.g. , a child becomes suicidal. While they might no longer have access to material encouraging them to commit, they will likely also lose access to material discouraging them as well)

- A lot of the big companies that would have to enforce these policies are subject to data breaches. What would happen if a predator got access to a list of users containing their ages?

- Block BEARD could lead to many non-profit sites being banned in the U.S. (such as AO3, a fanfiction website that has content tagging and filtering systems put in place, that would likely make it difficult for a child to encounter obscene content, if supervised properly by their guardians.)

- The president has specifically stated that he intends to to use the Take It Down Act to censor those who disagree with him. Not only is this a pretty direct violation of the First Amendment, the government has also put policies like this in place before, to undesirable effects (Alien and Sedition Act).

- Neurodivergent kids. Socializing in person can be quite hard for many ND children, but sites like Discord can be an outlet to help them find connection. KOSMA will ban kids under 13 from social media, which is not only somewhat useless in itself, seeing that most big social media sites either require this already or are specifically for children, but also doesn’t account for the possibility of a child using their parent’s account.

- China. China is infamous in the western world for the unbelievable amount of censorship it puts on its citizens online activity, but not even China requires this kind of age verification.

- A child’s parents should be the one in charge of what they deem too inappropriate for their child, not the government. What if abrahamic religion was considered obscene? How would Christian and Jewish and Muslim parents educate their children on their beliefs?

Source

In the light of recent news of this, here is yet another golden example of how useless digital age verification is.

These bad internet bills won't "protect kids" if children can get pass it anyways.

Hello Everyone. Since it seems like my eternal nightmare with these internet bills will never end, I wanted to bring something to our attention.

KOSMA is moving once more!

I've seen it slowly picking up co-sponsors these past few weeks and since it passed out of committee in February it has already cleared a hurdle. However, June 30th it was properly placed on the Senate calendar. I'm not sure how significant this might be, according to the senate 75% of bills on the calendar go no farther than that, but because Democrats don't seem to understand how badly these bills affect us as there is no real opposition to it. Please, spread the news because this bill will encourage age-gating.

The senate business calendar, its is order# 108: https://www.senate.gov/ (click on senate calendar)

An article about it: https://www.theverge.com/news/607603/kids-off-social-media-act-bill-child-safety#comments

The bill: https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/278

Spreed the word

We’ve got a message for Democratic lawmakers who co-sponsor censorship bills and collaborate with Trump’s fascist agenda: we won’t let you rest until you stop doing their dirty work. Today, a billboard truck is circling Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal’s office in downtown Hartford, calling him out for reintroducing censorship bill KOSA1 and betraying his queer and trans constituents— and we paid for it. It wasn’t in our budget, but someone had to draw a line in the sand this Pride Month, and we couldn’t pass up the opportunity. Can you help cover the $1,925 it cost to demand Dems like Blumenthal stop helping Trump carry out his queerphobic censorship fantasies?

The Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) would give Trump’s FTC full power to censor online free speech and block young people from accessing life-saving information and community online.2 It’s a censorship bill couched in “child safety” that proponents and enforcers like Senator Marsha Blackburn,3 Elon Musk,4 and FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson5 would proudly use to “fight back against the trans agenda” and any topic they don’t approve of. Abortion care access, political speech, and LGBTQ+ content are all on the line.

Blumenthal’s cooperation with this ghoulish bill, especially during Trump’s escalating crackdowns on marginalized communities, is unconscionable. We’ve tried everything: hundreds of thousands of young people have sent letters to Congress,2 hundreds more parents of trans kids penned a letter begging lawmakers not to pass this dangerous bill,6 we’ve written op-eds,7 met with offices, and still, Blumenthal is choosing the wrong side of history. So we took it to Blumenthal's doorstep and made him face the reality of his choices head-on.

Matthew Wallace / The Missing Lens

Will you rush a donation to get this billboard covered and help us gear up for yet another fight against this dangerous bill? Even $5 makes a huge difference for our small, queer women-led org. We’ve beaten KOSA before, and it’s more important than ever that we do it again. And this time we’re going in for the kill.

DONATE NOW

Beyond funds, we need your voice in this fight. If you haven’t already, call and write your lawmakers to Stop KOSA2 and join our urgent actions Signal chat to stay updated on ways to help.8

Thanks for all you do,

Footnotes:

Press Release: https://www.fightforthefuture.org/news/2025-06-16-billboard-truck-decries-senator-blumenthals-hypocritical-reintroduction-of-kosa-an-lgbtq-censorship-bill/

Stop KOSA: https://www.stopkosa.com/

NBC News: https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-politics-and-policy/senator-appears-suggest-bipartisan-bill-will-censor-transgender-conten-rcna103479

Blackburn, Blumenthal Statement on New ‘X’ Negotiated KOSA Text: https://www.blackburn.senate.gov/2024/12/issues/technology/blackburn-blumenthal-statement-on-new-x-negotiated-kosa-text

Incoming FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson wants to throw trans people under the bus. KOSA would help him do that: https://www.fightforthefuture.org/news/2024-12-11-incoming-ftc-chair-andrew-ferguson-wants-to-throw-trans-people-under-the-bus-kosa-would-help-him-do-that/

Trans Parents Letter: https://www.transparentsletter.com/

Teen Vogue: https://www.teenvogue.com/story/kids-online-safety-act-lgbtq-youth

even if it's too much right now, but we need to stop these, if no one is going to. we can't rely on the government anymore (as if we should in the first place), and we need to lift ourselves up in order to make change.