Also, if the next president is republican, then Tuberville's military blockade will evaporate, and a big chunk of the military leadership will be immediately filled with people willing to support a republican coup.
If you're supporting the side indiscriminately starving millions, you need to take a very long look in the mirror. This fight is villains vs villains, and civilians are taking the brunt of the brutality from both sides.
Heck just the amount of tax money we know the US billionaires are currently failing to pay ($160,000,000,000 / year)[1,2] would cover more than 754 Philadelphias using your math, to say nothing of what a fairer tax rate could do.
Idk why Americans are always pretending to be poor, it's the will that's lacking, not the funds.
Unfortunately, the provision you mention is essentially a bad-faith attempt to skirt the first amendment objections, while leveraging the imposed 'duty of care' to allow State AGs to censor with impunity. From p.6 of the more recent letter:
KOSA will enable politically motivated actors to purge the Internet of speech that they dislike under the guise of “protecting minors.” Section 11(b) permits state attorneys general to bring enforcement actions whenever they believe that a resident of their state has been adversely affected by an alleged violation of KOSA. The inevitable abuse is entirely predictable. Consider two possibilities. First, in the aftermath of the May 14, 2022 mass shooting in Buffalo, New York Attorney General Letitia James issued a report blaming social media platforms for hosting the hateful speech that radicalized the shooter and calling for increased civil liability.27 Under KOSA’s duty of care, James could file suit 28 alleging failure to mitigate or prevent “physical violence” that might affect a minor user to pressure platforms into removing any speech deemed “hateful.”
Second, some have already admitted that KOSA will be 29 used to censor LGBTQ content, especially that which relates to gender-affirming care. Armed with cherry-picked and selectively interpreted studies associating trans content with “anxiety, depression . . . and suicidal behavior,” 30 an ambitious attorney general will claim that “evidence-informed medical information” requires that platforms prohibit minors from viewing such content under KOSA’s duty of care. A state attorney general need not win a lawsuit—or even file one at all—to effectuate censorship. They need only initiate a burdensome investigation to pressure platforms to take down or restrict access to disfavored content.(31)
Would it be impossible to create separation between sites used by older teens and adults?
Obviously it's not impossible, it just requires sites to obtain a verifiable proof of age, i.e., a government ID.
A lot of pathological optimism in this thread, and it might not impact you (at first), but the document you're quoting explains why a lot of people are concerned:
KOSA would require online services to “prevent” a set of harms to minors, which is effectively an instruction to employ broad content filtering to limit minors’ access to certain online content. Content filtering is notoriously imprecise; filtering used by schools and libraries in response to the Children’s Internet Protection Act has curtailed access to critical information such as sex education or resources for LGBTQ+ youth. Online services would face substantial pressure to over-moderate, including from state Attorneys General seeking to make political points about what kind of information is appropriate for young people. At a time when books with LGBTQ+ themes are being banned from school libraries and people providing healthcare to trans children are being falsely accused of “grooming,” KOSA would cut off another vital avenue of access to information for vulnerable youth.
JFC, the tech companies, especially Google and Meta, would love to have a government ID for all their users, they don't make their money on content, they make their money selling advertising, and tracking their users across the internet is a big part of that.
If you're this lost in the woods, and refuse to believe the overwhelming consensus of legal experts regarding the consequences of this legislation, or even the GOP's open admission of their intent to misuse the bill, then yes, I guess there's no getting through to you. Good luck with those critical thinking skills.
It's really hard to take you seriously when you're very optimistic about the bill's authors, but very doubtful about all the first amendment lawyers explaining the legal consequences of the bill.
Again, I think you are being very naive about the language in this bill, and attempting to apply a common use interpretation, rather than a legal interpretation. It doesn't matter what the bill says to you, it matters what the bill means for the legal system.
You are definitely not a lawyer, and the people backing these bills intentionally use language that creates a specious justification for the erosion of privacy and freedom online.
This bill will require everyone to start using their government ID to post just about anything online, while allowing state AGs to censor basically anything they want in bad faith.
The Heritage Foundation, a right-wing hate group, has already made clear that they will use this to censor any/all LGBTQIA+ material.
More simply, a republic is a form of democracy. The people who say 'we're not a democracy, we're a republic' are basically saying 'that's not a dog, that's a golden retriever'.
Also, if the next president is republican, then Tuberville's military blockade will evaporate, and a big chunk of the military leadership will be immediately filled with people willing to support a republican coup.