Pride as in Stop KOSA

Pride Month is a complex affair for many of us in "the community." Though it brings great organizing opportunities and delightful cocktail specials, it’s also the month of rainbow cop cars and corporate pinkwashing. They’re advancing DE&I at Lockheed Martin, where you can put the rainbow stamp on an MK-80 before it murders children in Gaza. Trans people shouldn’t protest too loudly, but we are of course welcome to commit human rights abuses for the US military (here I must agree with the Onion News Network: “Gays Too Precious To Risk In Combat”).

This year’s Pride is especially bitter in the US, where we’re living through a devastating rollback of LGBTQ+ protections and a coordinated campaign of terror that scapegoats trans youth and their families. Many of the new anti-LGBTQ+ laws target young people specifically in a stunningly cruel attempt to prevent them from growing up with the care and support they deserve.

It's important we recognize that a huge component of the Right’s war on queer and trans youth is a war on information. The number-one most banned book in America is a memoir about gender identity. Librarians can face prison time for giving “obscene” books to youth, and “Don’t Say Gay”-style curriculum prohibitions are in effect in at least seven states. This is a programmatic attack on LGBTQ+ resources, culture, and history, and it would be made much worse with the passage of the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), an internet censorship bill that’s supported by many rainbow-wearing Democrats.

Why are Democrats fighting so hard for KOSA when it could censor queer life from the web? Maybe some think it’s our best shot at reigning in Big Tech. If so, these backers are demonstrating a deep cynicism. It is fundamentally possible to pass a comprehensive privacy bill in this country! Instead, pro-KOSA Democrats are shuffling right along with the Right’s playbook, and throwing queer and trans kids under the bus.

This month we’re injecting some tech policy into Pride, because queer liberation depends on information liberation. Here’re some pictures from recent Pride marches where we brought KOSA to the fore. Let us know if you’d like to show up against KOSA at your local Pride, too. There are some additional ways to take action below.

This week, the most important action you can take against KOSA is to call and email your lawmakers. We've made it really easy at this link. The bill is advancing in both the Senate and the House, and repetitive pushback from constituents is super impactful at this stage. Thanks so much for following along with our work here, and thanks for reading!

Stray Links

• A lot of interesting stuff has been happening in insurance, an area I follow semi-closely. One this week: a new regulatory attempt to deal with AI. This Bloomberg article covers it, and is also an entry point to understanding some of the many discriminatory mechanisms in underwriting.
• Grassroots groups are building network trees in Gaza to help address the destruction of communications infrastructure.
• AI is fueling an absurd increase in electricity demand: "Altogether, data centers use more electricity than most countries." This, while climate-related weather events are causing a rise in US power outages.
• Great post on the irrational economy for anyone who's ever been locked out of the deodorant display.