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Online Safety Doesn’t Come from Censorship

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A person sits in a dark room in front of a screen with static on itI’ve written before about the dangers that come from online censorship and specifically age-gating the internet to “protect children.” Basically put, the internet is not a place of universal security. We built walls to secure data, but each of them is scalable. If there’s an internet connection and humans involved, there is no guarantee of security online. Forcing people to share their identification to use a service puts companies at a liability for the content people can see as well as forces them to handle sensitive information. It censors the internet, forces kids into darker corners of the internet, and puts all of our data at risk. There’s a reason all information technology professionals advise against online ID lockouts, and the only people in favor of it couldn’t tell TCP/IP from their ass.

Companies that have experimented with age and identity verification have had disastrous consequences. Discord leaked people’s IDs and photos, and the Tea app, made to protect women from potential abusers, ended up exposing their names, photos, and locations through their IDs. You can search for vulnerable women on a map now thanks to online ID verification.

Few companies are prepared to handle data this sensitive. As a software engineer, I’ve often found potential sources of data leaks, even in companies set up with security in mind. Security is tough. It’s like trying to make a building made out of fishnets airtight. If every single company that could publish content, including user-generated content, has to do verify a user’s age, there will be no more privacy or security for anyone continuing to use those services. Certain news or topics could be locked behind the high risk of identity theft. The government will be able to control the information you can safely and anonymously read. ID laws and censorship to “protect kids” is the ultimate step towards an authoritarian internet.

And it’s likely your government is trying to force it through now. In the U.K. and U.S., laws proposed to “protect” children put everyone online at risk and open the door to government censorship of the internet. They will dismantle the protections that make the internet as we know it possible. We’re not ready for an internet that can no longer hold itself up.

This is what happens when all your elected officials are older than the internet.

KOSA Will Censor and Break the Internet

Why can’t Russians be out of the closet about their sexuality? Why can’t LGBTQ+ teachers do their jobs in peace? Why is there a book burning censorship brigade trying to attack our libraries? Because right-wing bigots are using the “protection” of children as an excuse to discriminate. From “don’t say gay” bills to banning trans healthcare, it’s all supposedly “for the kids.” But these books, people, and stories, actually help kids feel less alone in a world that declares those outside of the boxes don’t belong. Protecting kids means protecting all kids.

It’s with that in mind we should talk about the “Kid’s Online Safety Act,” as it isn’t clear that it could improve the safety of kids online, and according to security experts, could actually put children in danger, just as other attempts to censor the internet for safety’s sake has done.

KOSA doesn’t clearly define what speech isn’t allowed. By using broad strokes to cover anything that could endanger children, the law means that the current administration could easily use it to ban speech they don’t like. KOSA requires companies police legal speech, in fear of government interference. It’s a clear first amendment violation, but with the current administration and Supreme Court, that may not matter.

The current administration and majority party in the United States has used “protecting children” as an excuse to block education about America’s racism, war mongering, imperialism, the existence of queer people throughout all of human history (and in many other animal species as well), and even drag performances. They literally say wearing certain clothing can hurt kids. Are these the people you want in charge of what can be said or posted online? KOSA could give them that power. By not clearly defining pathways to the harm to children, with studies linking certain content to ill effects, they worked backwards from censorship, not harm reduction. The goal of this bill, and others like it, is censorship, first and foremost. Otherwise it would have actually started with the goal of protecting children from proven harms. It’ll be up to whatever party is in charge to define that, and I’m certain most Americans wouldn’t trust the party in charge now to protect them online.

Companies Can’t Keep Up, and Everyone’s In Danger

Maybe you’re thinking it won’t matter to you. After all, you’re an adult, how could it affect you? Companies will have two options when it comes to censoring their services. They could either block all their content to people who are not willing to upload personally identifying documents or they could simply block every discussion of anything the government deems objectionable.

We’ve already seen examples of the latter on platforms. Avoiding “obscene” content guidelines by hiding “female presenting nipples” and other ridiculous guidelines made to “protect” us from the content we aren’t bothered by.

We’ve also seen what can happen when people are forced to provide their identifying information. Discord used a third party to handle age verification, and they suffered a hack that leaked people’s identifying documents alongside selfies that confirmed they were legitimate. The Tea App hack showed that the company had retained the identifying documents for their users. These were women who downloaded the app to avoid predators who are now on a searchable map of all Tea users so creeps can stalk victims anywhere.

Companies cannot protect this data. Small companies, especially, typically do not have the staffing or expertise to protect their users’ data. That’s why many try not to collect anything that could identify users. Companies I’ve worked at have worked hard to anonymize all their data, and even then, I’ve personally found workarounds that could expose identities and restore deleted documents, fortunately before rollout, but not every company is so lucky. Most companies are not prepared to protect your most sensitive documents. Credit card companies and scummy credit monitoring companies have had leaks that exposed personal data. These should have been the most secure places online. Instead, they exposed personal data for millions of people. And it keeps happening. There’s little punishment for companies that expose this kind of data. That’s why they won’t put the effort in to protect users. When every website has your identifying information, every hacker and identity thief will as well.

So you say, “Okay, I’ll use a VPN!” Which one? There are a number of free VPNs you can use. But can you trust them? Meta, then Facebook, operated a free VPN that collected private user information. That was a giant company. Some sketchy hackers online offering a free VPN that collects your data won’t be held liable. So now your internet bill may go up by anywhere from $10-$15 per month, just to protect yourself with a quality VPN. You’ll have slower internet speeds, frequent connection problems, but at least you’ll be able to browse the internet like you’re from a free country, right?

The Example Set by UK’s Online Safety Act

These internet censorship laws allow the government to sidestep first amendment protections by defining speech as objectionable and harmful to children, and they’re intentionally being obscure about what exactly they want to prevent kids from seeing. While it may include bullying, eating disorders, and sexual assault, it could also prevent people from getting help for those subjects. We already saw this happen from the UK’s Online Safety Act, which blocked parts of Reddit, including valuable resources for victims of sexual assault and bullying. We can’t shelter children from information, especially not when it could save their lives.

Breaking news websites, Wikipedia, Bluesky, many others suddenly found themselves age-gated in the UK. This meant people couldn’t access information without potentially exposing their personal details. Do you know when it’s risky to expose your personal details? When you’re trying to get support in an abusive situation! These laws endanger the victims by pretending they don’t exist. It doesn’t help anyone to turn a blind eye to the world’s problems, and we leave victims isolated and at the mercy of their abusers.

We Must Protect Section 230

One of the problems of laws like FOSTA/SESTA and KOSA is that they undermine Section 230 of the Communication Decency Act. This section is often called “the 26 words that created the internet.” Without this law, anyone with web hosting would be liable for what others use their web hosting for. As the internet is a connected series of servers, everyone would be in danger from this, from internet service providers to social networks. Section 230 is why the internet can exist.

“No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider”

– Section 230 of the Communication Decency Act

Holding server hosts responsible for what ends up on their servers would be like charging the owner of a restaurant for libel due to something a graffiti artist painted on their external wall the night before. It just doesn’t make sense. And while a restaurant owner could easily check their wall, imagine if they owned 100 restaurants across a city. When you have hundreds, or, more likely, millions or even billions of users, that’s a lot of walls to check. There’s no way to police everything. As a result, websites could simply not exist if they can be liable for everything on their servers. There are measures they can take to moderate, to take items down that break their rules or that are unsafe, patterns of thousands of posts about a certain topic, but they can’t possibly be responsible for every single word. You can see how Meta is responsible for ignoring hate speech and causing a genocide in Myanmar, but holding them responsible because Bill down the street said your brother is unreliable because he didn’t return a lawn mower and may have committed libel is too far. Section 230 makes people responsible for their own speech, and has protections against at least individual posts. Trends and items that a network boosts, through an algorithm that rewards hate and anger, like Meta’s, however, is a different story. Section 230 protects hosts from their user’s actions, not their own. That’s why it’s a fantastic example of the balance of rights and responsibilities.

Online Free Speech is at Stake

Politicians want to get rid of Section 230 to better police speech online to censor topics from the violence and living situations of those in Gaza, to LGBTQIA+ people and their rights, to discussions of racial inequality and systemic racism. It’s no coincidence that our government has gotten interested in censorship at a time when people want to talk about a genocide in Gaza, the racism of America’s ICE agents and the systemic racism they represent, Trump’s inclusion in the Epstein Files, or the actual studies behind scientific understanding of vaccinations, autism, and transgender healthcare. Censoring factual statements that disagree with the government’s policies is the goal behind undermining the rules that protect free speech. That’s why they’re always the first things governments go for. If you can’t make the first amendment illegitimate, make it possible for civil suits to make self-censorship a requirement of online discussion.

You know why your government is coming for free speech. Why fall for it just because they’re doing this, just like their book banning initiatives, in the name of “protecting children?” When the subjects that will be banned are vague, it gives governments the power to define objectionable speech as whatever they like. Anything can be determined to be a “danger to children.” Learning about wars could be damaging to their psyche, they’ll say. Learning about our racist past could make white kids feel bad, they’ll say. Governments have a method for silencing speech, and it starts with claiming they’re doing it to protect society’s most vulnerable, all while forcing children into darker corners of the internet.

Protecting Yourself Isn’t An Option Anymore

Often there are measures you can do to protect yourself in situations like these, such as using a reputable VPN from a privacy-focused company like Proton. However, that’s not enough if Section 230 is further undermined or eliminated altogether. What does it matter if you can access Instagram with a VPN if you can’t post or read anything the government disagrees with there?

Call your representatives. Your senators will likely believe that this is a topic that won’t get the attention it deserves because people are confused by technology and it looks—on the surface—to be something that can protect kids. You will have to be vocal if you want to save the net. If the U.S., source of much of the internet’s largest companies, falls victim to these laws, the rest of the internet will become unsafe. We could lose the safety of the internet if we don’t speak up now. You can find your representatives here, your senators here, and here are resources for what you should tell them. Basically? Tell them to protect free speech and censorship of the internet by protecting Section 230 and voting against KOSA and other such censorship legislation. Our only hope to protect a free internet is to block these laws. Once they’re gone, there’s nothing we can do to protect ourselves online.

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