Center for Online Safety and Liberty
@c4osl.org
180 followers 110 following 290 posts
Empowering individuals and communities to thrive online by building safer spaces, fostering creativity, combating harm, and championing digital rights and freedom. c4osl.org
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c4osl.org
Hello Bluesky! We're a new nonprofit providing fiscal sponsorship for independent projects that promote online safety and liberty.

Our four priority areas are:

* Safer Hosting
* Supporting Fans
* Cyberbullying and Abuse
* Legal Advocacy

Read more on our website and spread the word!
Reposted by Center for Online Safety and Liberty
legal.reuters.com
Australia will become the first country to block social media use by people younger than 16 in December. Alphabet’s Google said the law would be 'extremely difficult' to enforce and wouldn't improve child safety reut.rs/42Akrdc
Reposted by Center for Online Safety and Liberty
theintercept.com
Contraband cellphones have become a reliable tool for incarcerated journalists to report accurate news events and expose the harsh realities within correctional facilities.
The Latest FCC Censorship Push No One Is Talking About Targets Incarcerated People
Brendan Carr is advancing a plan to choke communications for people who use cellphones to expose abuses in prison.
theintercept.com
Reposted by Center for Online Safety and Liberty
freedom.press
A new bill that recently passed the Senate will let members of Congress censor information about themselves online.

The result is easy to predict: suppression of the press from reporting about Congress.

Check out this op-ed from FPF's @caitlinvogus.bsky.social:
Cruz-Klobuchar bill would sacrifice speech for a false sense of security
Cruz-Klobuchar bill censors online information too broadly in the name of security, writes senior adviser at Freedom of the Press Foundation.
www.dallasnews.com
Reposted by Center for Online Safety and Liberty
dieselbrain.bsky.social
#SaveSpeech

KOSA has amassed more cosponsors recently, jumping from 42 to 60 total

You need to call your reps and DEMAND that they oppose this legislation ASAP

The link below contains more info about KOSA and an easy way to contact your reps
5calls.org/issue/kids-o...

Please call DAILY
Reposted by Center for Online Safety and Liberty
mikestabile.bsky.social
"Arkansas is trying to save one of the most extreme book censorship laws in recent memory, one that would allow jailing librarians and booksellers for keeping materials on their shelves that fall under the statute’s broad definition of “harmful to minors.”
Arkansas wants to jail librarians. The First Amendment won’t allow it.
Arkansas’s Act 372 would let the state jail librarians for “harmful” books. The First Amendment won’t let censorship win.
www.thefire.org
Reposted by Center for Online Safety and Liberty
dieselbrain.bsky.social
#SaveSpeech

Canadians! The UK is attempting to push their own version of the Online Safety Act onto Canada via the bill S-209!

You need to contact your representatives in parliament and explain how this policy is catastrophically bad! Mention the discord data breach!

youtu.be/Qx_zi1hNTCI?...
UK Pushing Online Safety Act to OTHER Countries
YouTube video by CYBER WAFFLE
youtu.be
Reposted by Center for Online Safety and Liberty
brianfung.me
When people warn about the privacy and security risks of mandating digital age verification, this is exactly what they mean. It’s not hypothetical www.bbc.com/news/article...
BBC article text: “Discord, a messaging platform popular with gamers, says official ID photos of around 70,000 users have potentially been leaked after a cyber-attack.
The platform, which has more than 200 million users worldwide, says hackers had targeted a firm that helped to verify the ages of its users but the Discord platform itself was not breached.
People can provide ID photos to verify their age on Discord - a networking hub for players to chat and share files with others in the gaming community.
The leaked data may involve personal information, partial credit card details and messages that were exchanged with Discord's customer service agents, the San-Francisco-based company says.”
Reposted by Center for Online Safety and Liberty
sydneyscreams4u.bsky.social
porn is not evil.
sex is not evil.
pleasure is not evil.
kink is not evil.

none of them are things to feel shame or embarrassment about.

none of them deserve the heavy-handed censorship that they're facing.

resist oppression (even if you don't partake in what is being oppressed)
Reposted by Center for Online Safety and Liberty
mikestabile.bsky.social
When governments begin attacking speech or speakers, platforms quickly begin to comply to avoid potential regulation.

Pushing to regulate "pornography" have meant greater policing of sex, sexuality, reproductive care and queer and women's bodies more generally. Absolutely looking forward to this.
eff.org
Across nearly 100 submissions to our #StopCensoringAbortion survey, we saw systemic over-enforcement, convoluted policies, sudden account bans, and ignored appeals. On Friday, leaders from EFF, Plan C, M+A Hotline, and Women on Web will discuss what’s happening and the future of sharing info online.
c4osl.org
Who could have possibly seen this coming?

Answer: Every single one of us that has warned about the dangers of these "age verification" laws. Giving up your #privacy is NOT worth it!
acvalens.net
vx-underground: Discord Zendesk breach is 1.5TBs of age verification photos. 2.1 +million photos

Spent this morning try to cross-verify, as news about the breach is going viral on Twitter
vx-underground &
@vxunderground
X.com
Chat, we are cooked Discord is being extorted by the people who
compromised their Zendesk instance They've got 1.5TB of age verification related
photos. 2,185,151 photos tl;dr 2.1m Discord users drivers license and /or passport might be leaked. Unknown number of
e-mails
4:04 AM • 10/8/25 • 245K Views Discord Previews
@DiscordPreviews
Follow Update: We have become aware that the perpetrators of this attack claim to have obtained 1.5 TB of age-verification photos totalling 2,185,151 images, which they are now
using to extort Discord.
Size:
1.50 TB (1,653,569,999,674 bytes)
Size on disk:
1.50 TB (1,658, 159,304,704 bytes)
Contains:
2,185,151 Files, 0 Folders
Reposted by Center for Online Safety and Liberty
mikestabile.bsky.social
"If history teaches us anything, these projects of moral and social purity are doomed to fail... But the costs of these panics—censorship, stigma, surveillance and state-sanctioned discrimination and violence—are borne by real people whose freedoms and dignities are stripped in the process."
c4osl.org
Hollow promises of a safer Internet for children are creating an online future where:

- Everything you do is tracked
- Only government-approved content is available
- Youth are cut off from communities, resources, and self-expression

Help: https://c4osl.org/support-us/
Support Us - Center for Online Safety and Liberty
Join as a supporter Pledging your monthly support for our work is the best way that you can support us, because it […]
c4osl.org
Reposted by Center for Online Safety and Liberty
meredithmeredith.bsky.social
📣 Germany's close to reversing its opposition to mass surveillance & private message scanning, & backing the Chat Control bill. This could end private comms-& Signal-in the EU.

Time's short and they're counting on obscurity: please let German politicians know how horrifying their reversal would be.
signal.org
We are alarmed by reports that Germany is on the verge of a catastrophic about-face, reversing its longstanding and principled opposition to the EU’s Chat Control proposal which, if passed, could spell the end of the right to privacy in Europe. signal.org/blog/pdfs/ge...
signal.org
Reposted by Center for Online Safety and Liberty
stitcharoo.bsky.social
Yup. “Protecting children” is a trojan horse for control and grabbing power. Every single legislation have two things that’s telling:
A) there’s no responsibility on parents to monitor their own kids.
B) They pretend parental controls in browsers, ISPs, routers, games, & TVs dont already exist.
Reposted by Center for Online Safety and Liberty
jsrailton.bsky.social
NEW: breach of Discord age verification data.

Including some users passports & DLs

Age verification is a badly implemented data grab wrapped in a moral panic.

Mark my words, as age verification mandates expand, we'll end up more surveilled and less secure. 1/