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Arthur T Knackerbracket [soylentnews.org] writes:

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story [techdirt.com]:

Last month, we shared the details of a really good “Dear Colleague” letter that Senator Rand Paul sent around urging other Senators not to vote for KOSA [techdirt.com]. While the letter did not work and the Senate overwhelmingly approved [techdirt.com] KOSA (only to now have it stuck in the House [techdirt.com]), Paul has now expanded upon that letter in an article at Reason.

It’s well worth the read, though the title makes the point clear: Censoring the Internet Won’t Protect Kids [reason.com].

It starts out by pointing out how much good the internet can be for families:

He correctly admits that the internet can also be misused, and that not all of it is appropriate for kids, but that’s no reason to overreact:

He points out that the law empowers the FTC to police content that could impact the mental health of children, but does not clearly define mental health disorders, and those could change drastically with no input from Congress.

What he doesn’t mention is that we’re living in a time when some are trying to classify normal behavior as a mental health disorder, and thus this law could be weaponized.

From there, he talks about the “duty of care.” That’s a key part of both KOSA and other similar bills and says that websites have a “duty of care” to make efforts to block their sites from causing various problems. As we’ve explained [techdirt.com] for the better part of a decade, a “duty of care [techdirt.com]” turns itself into a demand for censorship, as it’s the only way for companies to avoid costly litigation over whether or not they were careful enough.

Just last week, I got into a debate with a KOSA supporter on social media. They insisted that they’re not talking about content, but just about design features like “infinite scroll.” When asked about what kind of things they’re trying to solve for, I was told “eating disorders.” I pointed out that “infinite scroll” doesn’t lead to eating disorders. They’re clearly targeting the underlying content (and even that is way more complex [techdirt.com] than KOSA supporters realize).

Senator Paul makes a similar point in the other direction. Things like “infinite scroll” aren’t harmful if the underlying content isn’t harmful:

As for stopping “anxiety,” Paul makes the very important point that there are legitimate and important reasons why kids may feel some anxiety today, and KOSA shouldn’t stop that information from being shared:

He also points out — as he did in his original letter — that the KOSA requirements to block certain kinds of ads makes no sense in a world in which kids see those same ads elsewhere:

Even as I’ve quoted a bunch here, there’s way more in the article. It is, by far, one of the best explanations of the problems of KOSA and many other bills that use false claims of “regulating design” as an attempt to “protect the kids.” He also talks about the harms of age verification, how it will harm youth activism, and how the structure of the bill will create strong incentives for websites to pull down all sorts of controversial content.

There is evidence that kids face greater mental health challenges today than in the past. Some studies suggest this is more because of society’s openness to discussing and diagnosing mental health challenges. But there remains no compelling evidence that the internet and social media are causing it. Even worse, as Paul’s article makes abundantly clear, there is nothing out there suggesting that censoring the internet will magically fix those problems. Yet, that’s what KOSA and many other bills are designed to do.

Original Submission