Since I made donos about it on Side Scrollers and Kirsche yesterday... Here's what I sent to my senators regarding the SCREEN act; I'm not exactly the most eloquent writer, but if you want to use it as a template, feel free.

Subject:

Please Vote Against the SCREEN (HR 1623) and KIDS (HR 7757) Acts!

Message body:

Senator [name],

I urge you to vote against the SCREEN Act (HR 1623) which is going to committee hearing today, and the KIDS Act (HR 7757) which was already approved by the House. While keeping kids away from inappropriate content on the internet is a fine goal, it's not the government's job to be a parent - that's the job of actual parents. What's worse, is the way this stuff is going to be implemented will lead to a Digital ID system where there's no anonymity on the internet which will basically kill free speech and lots of shady businesses having sensitive personal information for basically all Americans which will lead to all sorts of criminal activity. We've already seen the horrors that similar laws have caused in the UK, and we cannot have the same here! I urge you to vote against these bills and the various other similar bills that have been proposed (there have been several over the last few years...).

These bills most likely will not even be effective in their stated goal of protecting kids if there isn't parental involvement, and will harm adults both in terms of stifling free speech and causing widespread identity theft and similar crimes that will be easier when a bunch of new sources of sensitive personal information inevitably get leaked from all the shady age verification businesses that'll pop up to assist with compliance. If we ACTUALLY want to protect kids on the internet, the only correct solution is for parents to actually parent their kids by being aware of what they're doing online and making it easier for them to monitor and block content they don't consider to be appropriate.

I have no objection to legislation that assists parents with that, but at the end of the day it needs to be parents that do the parenting, not the government. For example, legislation requiring operating systems to do hard age verification via an ID is not acceptable, but legislation requiring operating systems to provide a kids mode (which parents can turn on/off as they see fit) that auto-blocks adult and/or social media sites via DNS servers catered to that (several of those already exist that people can setup via OS networking settings on their own, but it's slightly cumbersome to setup for those who aren't tech-savvy so an easy "kids mode on or off" could be helpful) would work. Likewise, legislation cracking down on predatory algorithms on social media sites is also fine. If legislation is actually proposed that helps parents protect their kids online and doesn't harm all adults in the process or regulate small businesses out of business, I think that could be a net positive for the country. I disagree with the way in which these bills go about their stated purpose, not the purpose itself.

There ARE ways to do this that is acceptable; the problem is that multiple states and now the US Congress are going the WRONG direction on this matter and it's disturbing that these two bills and similar ones are getting as much traction as they are. PLEASE vote NO on these two bills and all similar legislation that threatens free speech and the safety/security of everybody that uses the internet (which is basically the entire adult population of the US at this point)!

Thank you,

[name]