Amended Version of FOSTA Would Still Silence Legitimate Speech Online (EFF)

Read the full article by Elliot Harmon at eff.org

The House Judiciary Committee is about to decide whether to approve a new version [.pdf] of the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA, H.R. 1865), a bill that would force online platforms to police their users’ speech more closely.

The new version of FOSTA improves a deeply problematic bill, but it still represents the same fundamentally flawed approach to fighting criminal activity online. Like the earlier version of FOSTA—and like SESTA (S. 1693), its sibling bill in the Senate—the new version of FOSTA would do nothing to fight traffickers. What it would do is create more risk of criminal and civil liability for online platforms, resulting in them pushing legitimate voices offline.