Why are they concerned about a bill that targets those engaging in child sexual abuse?
The EARN IT Act poses risks to LGBTQ communities online, advocates say. Here’s how
A bill meant to target child sexual abuse material online could pose far-reaching risks for members of the LGBTQ+ community, LGBTQ+ advocates and legal experts told USA TODAY.
The EARN IT Act, first introduced in 2020, would make it easier to prosecute social media companies for child sexual abuse material, or CSAM, on their platforms, the goal being to motivate platforms to target that material more forcefully. It was reintroduced in April by Sens. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who said at the time that tech companies need to “take responsibility” for the material or “be held accountable.”
But the bill, while well-intentioned, could have dangerous ramifications for freedom of expression, leaving LGBTQ online communities as collateral damage.
How? Is it now considered “freedom of expression” to engage in child sexual abuse? To post child pornography?
“This bill is intended to fight child sexual abuse online, and I don’t think that’s a goal that anyone wants to hamper,” said Jenna Leventoff, senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union. “But this bill wouldn’t actually do that. What it does do is lead to more internet censorship.”
Censorship of child sexual abuse is a bad thing?
Faced with heightened risk of prosecution for CSAM, platforms will likely move to take more aggressive measures to block content that could fall within one state’s parameters for CSAM, said Emma Llansó, director of the Free Expression Project at Center for Democracy and Technology.
Legally protected LGBTQ+ content could be swept into those filtering efforts, targeted due to “long-running societal biases and misconceptions” that being queer is “inherently more sexual” than being straight, she said.
“It comes down to deciding that filtering out words like lesbian and gay are important to do because that helps block sexual content,” Llansó said. “It may help block some searches for some kinds of pornography, but it’s also going to block a lot of people just talking about themselves, their communities and living their everyday lives.”
Nice attempt, but, come on, the activists and wackos are just admitting that these kinds of laws will cause an issue with their grooming of children. Realistically, most who are part of the rainbow are just normal, nice, good people, who make zero deal out of their sexual preferences, just like most straight people don’t make a deal. They’re who they are, and they move on with their lives. But, there are plenty of the crazies and groomers, and they do not like laws that interfere with their grooming. Seriously, if you’re worried about being targeted because this cracks down on child porn, perhaps you shouldn’t be posting child porn.
Meanwhile
Texas bans transgender women, girls from collegiate athletics
In other words, it bans biological men from participating in biological women’s sports. And North Carolina is about to take their final vote on something similar. And, someone, this pisses off the same people who were all about empowering women and saying “believe all women” just a few years ago, who’d rather throw women under the bus to kowtow to the gender confused.
Read: LGBTQwhatever Advocates Are Worried About Being Targeted By EARN IT Act »