5 things every American should be able to agree on:
❌ No Digital ID.
❌ No more wars.
❌ No vehicle kill switch.
❌ No government-backed stablecoins.
❌ No Flock cameras in our neighborhoods.
I’m all for child safety. I’m also all for parenting, supervising, and protecting kids – to include the two minors of my own. This bill – HR 7757 - under the guise of “kids’ safety,” is just more government creating a vehicle for mass surveillance – ultimately leading to a digital surveillance state that leads to suppression of privacy, free speech, and punitive action against dissenting views - all under the guise of child safety. This is the first phase. Pretty soon, everything you do will be tracked – and judged – by the government. All I hear about right now are complaints and concerns on this issue; my constituents are all for safety and protection; what they don’t support are large scale ID databases, Central Bank Digital Currency, data centers, warrantless surveillance, camera surveillance, kill switches in cars, etc. There’s too much government in our lives and too many breaches into our privacy.
BTW – check out the “UK Online Safety Act,” passed a year ago this month in Great Britain, aimed at “keeping children from accessing adult content.” Well, surprise: the UK’s now using it for “age verification requirements” for adults (who must upload their ID / do a facial scan) to use any social media. Worse yet, now the UK is cracking down on any dissenting views; in this case, IT apparently doesn’t like citizens’ criticism about Islamic migration overwhelming the country. Yes, they imprison people for political dissent there…
Our government ultimately will be able to attack dissenters and quash dissent. Goodbye, First Amendment.
I was a “NO” vote on this last night.
WARNING!!! The digital ID is coming very soon!!!
The Congress is rushing to pass the KIDS Act to expand the surveillance state under the guise of “protecting kids.”
Your freedom of internet will be over at that point under the guise of safety and this will lead to the digital ID...
The internet might be over.
I am not talking about the corporate, ad-filled internet. I mean the real one. The one you use to talk with your friends, find niche communities, and freely share ideas. The way you access and interact with the digital world is about to change forever if we don't speak up right now.
The U.S. House of Representatives just passed the KIDS Act. Do not let the well-intentioned name fool you. This massive legislative package is a wolf in sheep’s clothing that could potentially cause an unfathomable amount of damage to the privacy, security, and free speech of every single citizen in the United States.
Major civil liberties and digital rights organizations, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression) are sounding the alarm. This bill is a massive over-reach of legislation designed to curtail your freedoms, everyones.
Under this bill, websites and apps will be pressured to verify the age of all users to avoid massive legal liability. This creates a de facto age-verification mandate, meaning you could soon be forced to upload government IDs, passports, or hand over biometric facial scans just to use standard apps or browse everyday websites. Forcing every corner of the web to collect and store these massive databases of citizen identity documents is an absolute cybersecurity nightmare waiting to happen, creating a golden target for hackers and data leaks.
The bill also takes direct aim at standard privacy features like disappearing or ephemeral messaging, treating basic digital privacy tools like dangerous design tricks rather than the digital equivalent of a private, real-world conversation. By weaponizing broad, vague definitions of "harmful content," the package pressures tech platforms to heavily over-censor completely lawful speech out of fear of massive government lawsuits. It risks sanitizing the internet and shutting down vital spaces for free expression and open communication.
This won't stop at signing up for websites, or chat apps. It will extend to artwork websites, multimedia hubs like Newgrounds, Music sites, even Reddit and 4chan will be subjected to this, and while you might think it's well deserved, you won't be saying that when they start asking users to verify their age on Mangadex or doujinshi sites, or on Itch io. Going to websites outside the US would be scrutinized if it doesn't follow the same criteria.
VPNs? Forget it, they'll try to outlaw those, too.
We all want children to be safe, but turning the entire internet into an Orwellian surveillance state where you have to show papers just to log on is a terrifying overreach. The bill has passed the House, which means the battleground is officially moving to the Senate. We cannot afford to sit this one out. This is a slippery slope and we must not give them this power over all of us.
Why do you think hosting Chinese open source models on your own GPUs is less trustworthy and secure than giving away your data to anthropic and being shut down access at any time because they think you are doing something they consider “not safe”?
Dario Amodei is an idiot. He hypes up AI as being as dangerous as nuclear weapons; yet, if Anthropic could truly create something akin to a nuke, why would it be held by a private company rather than being under state control?
He calls on the U.S. government to vet private products—insisting that movies, games, and AI models require government approval before use—effectively mirroring the authoritarian practices of China, where creative works,