'Situation Monitoring' Products Are Flooding The Web
+ Yapper ads, the Most Evil Gay Guy, pop culture OpenClaw, Gucci runway texts, Jim Carry conspiracies, #sendBaron, Zuck's $170M mansion, Opensource Palantir, and how the AIs kill
Some personal news to start: I have a piece out in The Guardian today (in print tomorrow!) outlining the dangerous global effort to mass censor and surveil the internet under the guise of “protecting children online.”
In the US, online age verification laws have passed or are being considered in more than half of the nation’s states. This week, a package of 19 “child safety” bills, several which require identity verification for social media, are set to move forward in the House of Representatives. Big tech platforms such as Meta, Google and Discord have begun pre-complying with these mass surveillance laws in order to get ahead of regulation.
While social media bans may seem like a smart idea to “protect children,” they are not only ineffective, they endanger both children and adults. There is zero evidence that social media is driving any type of widespread mental health crisis in children. Studies have repeatedly shown the opposite.
Removing anonymity from the web, which inevitably happens when tech companies are required to identify and ban children, allows for complete government tracking and censorship of journalists, activists, whistleblowers, and countless marginalized people and groups who rely on online anonymity.
Read the full piece here!! 👈👈👈👈👈👈👈👈👈👈
How Anti Abortion Groups Target the Internet
The fight against age verification and the efforts to dismantle Section 230 are deeply intertwined with the fight for reproductive rights. Today, I released the next installment of my Section 230 mini-series where I break down how anti abortion groups are targeting the internet itself.
From the 1873 Comstock Act to modern day efforts to repeal Section 230, there is a long history of using censorship laws to suppress reproductive health information. The fight for reproductive justice and bodily autonomy has always been deeply connected to free speech and open access to information online. And I sat down with Sarah Philips from Fight for the Future to uncover the real agenda behind the push to repeal Section 230.
While politicians, the media, and so many uninformed people on the left constantly frame weakening Section 230 as a way to "hold Big Tech accountable," these efforts actually undermine our right to access vital information related to reproductive justice and abortion online. Sarah and I dive deep into the history of speech law, and talk about where the fight stands today.
We discuss how early internet censorship efforts were disguised as protecting kids from indecent material, the devastating impact of SESTA/FOSTA and how it led to mass content takedowns of sex education and LGBTQ+ resources, and how the narrative of "tech addiction" is being weaponized to pass restrictive internet laws.
Speaking out against Big Tech and challenging institutional power is not lucrative, and these videos are entirely self-funded. If you value this content, please buy a paid subscription to this newsletter so that I can continue making this series!!! [WATCH HERE]