"These 'kids online safety' bills need to die"

+ Buying spells on Etsy, a new crop of pro-Saudi influencers, Substack at NYFW, and more

Sen. Marsha Blackburn said last fall that the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) could do just what digital rights and LGBTQ+ advocates have been warning it would do: censor trans content online. (Them)

I’m traveling through Europe for the next two weeks on a long-awaited vacation, but happened to see that, once again, far right groups like the Heritage Foundation are trying to jam the very misleadingly named Kids Online Safety Act through the House.

I had top researcher danah boyd on Power User a couple months ago to talk about kids’ mental health and social media use (turns out the two aren’t as correlated as the media would have you believe!). I’ll also be dropping part two of my YouTube series about the moral panic around kids and technology in the coming weeks.

But Mike Masnick at TechDirt has been doing the best coverage of this moral panic and the extremely dangerous legislation it has birthed. I wanted to highlight his recent piece, which you should absolutely read in full:

If you had that Congress was going to take bad “protect the children” bills and make them worse on your bingo card, congratulations, you’ve won this week’s easiest prediction.

This seems like a not great situation. As mentioned, the House Energy & Commerce Committee is holding a markup today for a bunch of bills. Yesterday, they revealed the various amendments being proposed, including three replacement bills (called Amendments in the Nature of a Substitute or “AINS”) for KOSA, COPPA 2.0, and APRA.

COPPA 2.0 is another problematic “protect the children bill” that takes the already problematic COPPA law and makes it way worse. In the Senate, the vote on KOSA (which was approved 91 to 3) was actually a merged version of KOSA and COPPA 2.0, referred to as KOSPA. So, what happens to both bills is important. The inclusion of APRA is a bit strange as it was an attempt at a comprehensive federal privacy bill that I thought was probably about as good as we might otherwise get, though it involved compromises. But it died a quick death as folks on both sides of the issue hated the compromises. I have no idea why anyone would bring it back now as it just didn’t have the votes.

The new versions of KOSA and COPPA 2.0, however, still do not fix the underlying problems of these bills, and in some ways appear to make them worse.

The new version of KOSA adds in new language that will absolutely lead to abuse by Republicans to force companies to remove LGBTQ+ content.

… It’s not hard to see how this could go very, very badly. Imagine an LGBTQ+ child who has not come out to their intolerant parents, but who has found communities online that are helpful to them. Parents can demand that internet platforms hand over all the info they provided to the platform.

Kids have privacy rights too, but not under this bill. The assumption here is that kids have no rights, that kids are the property of their parents, and that parents can get access to basically any content their kids access online, and even change the data on their kids.

Read more about KOSA on TechDirt.

What I’m reading

NYC is ‘the capital of TikTok,’ says the 27-year-old mogul behind some of its biggest shows

“In a world where Hollywood is falling apart and where the opportunities are fewer and farther between, I’m hoping to be on the other side of the tunnel,” said Adam Faze. - Gothmist

When Your Co-Workers Find Out You’re a Social-Media Influencer

‘That’s the TikTok boy!’ Conversations can get awkward when your side hustle collides with your day job. - WSJ

MrBeast Sued by Contestants on 'Beast Games' Competition Show

A class-action lawsuit against YouTube star MrBeast and Amazon has been filed on behalf of five unnamed contestants in the “Beast Games” reality competition show alleging they were subjected to “chronic mistreatment,” sexual harassment and more. - Variety

Witchcraft Is Big Business On Etsy

Despite a near decade-long ban on the sale of “metaphysical services,” the $6 billion e-commerce platform hosts thousands of spells promising everything from untold wealth to cures for chronic depression. - Forbes

What It's Like to Be a College Student Whose Parents Can't Let Go

Inside the lives of college kids whose parents post about their interpersonal squabbles on parenting Facebook groups, obsessively track their location, and call in wellness checks when they miss calls. - Slate

Her ‘Skinny’ Videos Divided TikTok. She Says They’re ‘What the Viewers Want.’

Liv Schmidt grew a following with posts about staying thin and her daily diet. Some users said her content promoted disordered eating. - WSJ

Substack steps into the fashion spotlight

The newsletter platform has become a place to discuss, offer advice on and celebrate shopping — and make a lot of money doing so. - WaPo

Snap’s new Spectacles inch closer to compelling AR

Will developers finally help Snap take AR glasses mainstream? - The Verge (fwiw I tried an early prototype of the glasses a little while ago and found them fun but not anything I’d buy?)

Heritage Foundation Admits KOSA Will Be Useful For Removing Pro-Abortion Content

The Heritage Foundation has kicked off a new push to flip House Republicans and get them to vote on the Kids Online Safety Act, a deeply harmful and dangerous piece of legislation. As Mike Masnik writes, this week supporters of KOSA brought a bunch of misguided parents to the Hill to push for the bill under the false premise that it would protect children. It won’t. - TechDirt

A downside to limits on teens’ access to social media

Limits on teens’ access to social media including proposed age bans and other limits on Instagram and TikTok use would harm kids’ mental health, despite what supporters of KOSA claim. - WaPo

More fun stuff

Rebecca Black played a Friday x 360 mashup at her Boiler Room set.

250 “Web3 degens” on a 10 hour flight to Singapore screaming Linkin Park at the top of their lungs sounds like an actual flight from hell.

Influencers have started posting about their daily lives in the new Saudi city of Neom, which, as many have noted, looks like some sort of military base on Mars. I wrote about Saudi Arabia’s aggressive influencer marketing push for the NYT a couple years back.

The best thrift flip video I’ve ever seen.

There was a five hour line to buy the new Owalla water bottle in LA this weekend.

YouTube Mark Rober keeps getting banned from Hinge :(

MrBeast Productions onboarding doc is actually full of a lot of good and useful advice for anyone who works in ~content~. Here’s a Twitter thread with some pullouts.

Kieran Press-Reynolds hung out with the 17-year-old "evil Justin Bieber," "new-gen Kurt Cobain," post-rage prodigy @nettspend as he worked in the studio for i-D.

PS — The newsletter is going to be extremely light this week and next because I’m on vacation in Europe. It’s beautiful! This is how we should all be living.

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