Center for Online Safety and Liberty
Empowering individuals and communities to thrive online by building safer spaces, fostering creativity, combating harm, and championing digital rights and freedom.
c4osl.org
- “Once a non-consensual image is out there, manipulated or not, the harm doesn’t end. It follows people — psychologically, socially, and economically.” c4osl.org/beyond-the-filter-t… #Podcast #Deepfakes #OnlineSafety
- "Participants also endorsed a consensus statement that directly addressed the need for policymakers to use an evidence-based and human rights centre approach when addressing child sexual abuse (CSA)" c4osl.org/january-2026-newsletter #Newsletter #HumanRights #CSA #Science
- “AI didn’t invent image-based abuse — it made it faster, cheaper, more realistic, and accessible to far more people.” c4osl.org/beyond-the-filter-t… #Podcast #AI #OnlineSafety #Deepfakes
- "If we allow fear to govern our Internet, we will soon find that it governs far more than our screens. It will govern our borders, our streets, and our ability to speak without permission." c4osl.org/january-2026-newsletter #Newsletter #Fear #HumanRights #FreeSpeech
- Reposted by Center for Online Safety and Liberty“An app that purports to help people stop consuming pornography has exposed highly sensitive data, including its users’ masturbation habits. Some of the data exposed includes the users’ age, how often they masturbate, and how viewing pornography makes them feel …many of them are minors”
- it's hard to explain how horrible and dangerous this app and the people who made it are but I tried: www.404media.co/app-for-quit...
- Reposted by Center for Online Safety and LibertyWe all deserve stronger privacy protections online, and end-to-end encryption is one of the strongest tools to do so. Companies should make it the default more often, rather than optional (or unavailable). encryptitalready.org/
- “With the tools available today, preventing this kind of abuse at scale is entirely possible. Not doing so is a choice.” c4osl.org/beyond-the-filter-t… #Podcast #Abuse #DigitalSpaces #OnlineSafety
- "Sexual panic, moral panic, national-security panic — these narratives are deliberately braided together to justify surveillance, censorship, and coercive state power." c4osl.org/january-2026-newsletter #Newsletter #surveillance #censorship #SexPanic #MoralPanic #NationalSecurity
- “Tech-facilitated gender-based violence is not a new harm — it’s old gender violence reproduced and amplified in digital spaces, without geographical limits.” c4osl.org/beyond-the-filter-t… #Podcast #DigitalSpaces #OnlineSafety
- "Authoritarian politics does not begin with laws. It begins with fear. Fear is the raw material of extremism: fear of disorder, fear of outsiders, fear of moral decay, fear of losing control." c4osl.org/january-2026-newsletter #Newsletter #Politics #Fear
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- #Petition: Tell the Trump Administration to stop infringing on the #FreeSpeech rights of foreign citizens looking to come visit the US c4osl.org/stop-trump-immigrat…
- #Petition: Tell the Trump Administration to stop infringing on the #FreeSpeech rights of foreign citizens looking to come visit the US c4osl.org/stop-trump-immigrat…
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- #Petition: Tell the Trump Administration to stop infringing on the #FreeSpeech rights of foreign citizens looking to come visit the US c4osl.org/stop-trump-immigrat…
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- Reposted by Center for Online Safety and LibertyWe’ve been speaking out against KOSA since it was introduced in 2022 by Marsha Blackburn, a bigot and outspoken advocate for censoring trans people off the internet in effort to “protect children from the transgender in this culture.” KOSA has ALWAYS been about censorship and suppression.
- This bill has 67 senators supporting by Democrats like Bluementhal amd Schumer. www.them.us/story/kosa-s...
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- #Petition: Tell the Trump Administration to stop infringing on the #FreeSpeech rights of foreign citizens looking to come visit the US c4osl.org/stop-trump-immigrat…
- #Petition: Tell the Trump Administration to stop infringing on the #FreeSpeech rights of foreign citizens looking to come visit the US c4osl.org/stop-trump-immigrat…
- 42 online safety organizations, experts and bereaved families, have come together to collectively oppose a social media ban in the UK. www-bbc-co-uk.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.bbc.co.uk/n… #Under16 #SocialMediaBan
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- #Petition: Tell the Trump Administration to stop infringing on the #FreeSpeech rights of foreign citizens looking to come visit the US c4osl.org/stop-trump-immigrat…
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- Now more than ever is the time to support those fighting to stand up for #FreeExpression and #HumanRights Donate today c4osl.org/support-us/ or donate your time by volunteering c4osl.org/jobs/
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- #Petition: Tell the Trump Administration to stop infringing on the #FreeSpeech rights of foreign citizens looking to come visit the US c4osl.org/stop-trump-immigrat…
- "When Jonas (not his real name) posted a photo of himself in sports clothes to his own Instagram account, the last thing that he expected was for his account to be suspended for suspected child exploitation." #ChildSafety #FalsePositives
- #Petition: Tell the Trump Administration to stop infringing on the #FreeSpeech rights of foreign citizens looking to come visit the US c4osl.org/stop-trump-immigrat…
- Online safety or soft authoritarianism? We explore the line between protecting kids and limiting freedoms. -> Tune in: c4osl.org/beyond-the-f... #Podcast #OnlineSafety #Freedom
- Mental health, cyberbullying, online grooming, harmful content — the ban targets them all. But does it really make kids safer or just push them elsewhere? -> Full episode: c4osl.org/beyond-the-f... #Podcast #MentalHealth
- Most Australian kids from 10 to 15 are online. Now TikTok & Instagram must block them or face fines. What does this mean for privacy & digital rights? -> Listen: c4osl.org/beyond-the-f... #Podcast #Censorship #Privacy
- Reposted by Center for Online Safety and Libertythis bears repeating: Grok is bad because it's creating NONCONSENSUAL sexual images of real people. Not because sex is icky and should be scrubbed from the Internet. The distinction is crucial at a moment when dangerous censorship legislation is bipartisan and widely misunderstood
- "However, what can go under the radar is the massive amounts of misinformation. If handled poorly or outright incorrectly, it can ruin a person’s life." vice.com/en/article/canadian…
- Australia is banning social media for under-16s — protection or censorship? Brandy & Jeremy unpack the law and its effects on kids and adults. -> Listen: c4osl.org/beyond-the-f... #Podcast #Censorship
- Reposted by Center for Online Safety and LibertyYeah, it has long been the case that adult-oriented businesses have to be careful or risk the wrath of everyone from prosecutors to payment-processing companies, but "prominent social media company owned by world's richest person swiftly became world's largest CSAM producer" produces no reaction.
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- Reposted by Center for Online Safety and LibertyA little-noticed provision in the TRUMP AI Act would ban big tech platforms, including ostensibly Google, from distributing "sexual material harmful to minors" — a phrase routinely used by conservatives to ban not only porn, but sex ed, LGBTQ literature and repro rights resources.
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- Reposted by Center for Online Safety and LibertyWomen's health information is increasingly being censored by anti-adult filters, which tag words like "vagina" as porn. This isn't a new issue, but in an increasingly age-gated internet world, it's about to get a lot worse. www.forbes.com/sites/gerist...
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- "But conflating personal expression with abuse does not shield children; it shields policymakers from accountability. It substitutes moral panic for evidence and politics for public health." c4osl.org/december-2025-newsl… #FreeExpression #MoralPanic
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- "Blurring the line legitimises the overstepping of human-rights boundaries, over-criminalises marginalised communities, and diverts resources from genuine child protection" c4osl.org/december-2025-newsl… #HumanRights #FreeExpression #ChildProtection
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- "Besides being harmful, treating fictional sexual content as equivalent to lived abuse is unjustified on any legitimate child-safety grounds." c4osl.org/december-2025-newsl… #FreeExpression #ChildSafety #FictionIsNotAbuse
- "Just as children are not the beneficiaries of this conflation, its targets are not sex offenders, but more often artists, authors, LGBTQ+ communities, and even children themselves." c4osl.org/december-2025-newsl… #LGBTQ #FreeExpression
- "The stakes for children, whose safety depends on precise and proportionate interventions, are high, but so too are the stakes for others when child-safety concerns are used to justify broad extension of state power." policyreview.info/articles/news/drawi…
- "'This isn’t about obscenity,' Keri Lambert, vice president of the Rutherford County Library Alliance, told The Advocate in an interview. 'This is about eliminating the acknowledgment that LGBTQ+ people exist.'" advocate.com/news/tennessee-libr…
- From last week's Drawing the Line webinar, arts advocate Emma Shapiro explains how child safety is being used as a pretext to censor visual arts online. Continue watching: c4osl.org/drawing-the-line-we… #DrawingTheLine #ChildSafety #FreeExpression
- "For many young people, social media platforms are not simply entertainment. They are places of learning, authorship, peer support, political awakening, and cultural participation" techdirt.com/2025/12/17/when-the…
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- “Governments are redirecting resources from protecting children to policing expression.” — Jeremy Malcolm Listen to the Watchlist episode: -> c4osl.org/beyond-the-filter-d… #BeyondTheFilter #DrawingTheLine #FreeExpression
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- “From a linguistic lens, there are so few pieces of language that are in and of themselves harmful. It all depends on context.” — Zora Rush Hear more in this week’s Beyond the Filter: -> c4osl.org/beyond-the-filter-d…
- “There was that inherent linkage to child sexual abuse material under the Australian law and trans and gender diverse people, which I found a really ironic linkage between the two.” — Ashley Remminga Full episode: -> c4osl.org/beyond-the-filter-d… #BeyondTheFilter
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- “We’re dealing with a moral panic that’s been escalating for a long time.” — Emma Shapiro New Beyond the Filter episode on the Watchlist: -> c4osl.org/beyond-the-filter-d… #BeyondTheFilter #DrawingTheLine #FreeExpression #MoralPanic
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- “... the legal systems in most of those countries are blurring the line between personal expression.” — Jeremy Malcolm Hear the full Watchlist breakdown on Beyond the Filter: -> c4osl.org/beyond-the-filter-d… #BeyondTheFilter #DrawingTheLine #FreeExpression
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- "Governments in the U.S. and around the world are increasingly adopting these restrictive measures in the name of protecting children online. But in practice, these systems create dangerous new forms of surveillance, censorship, and exclusion." eff.org/issues/age-verification
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- "European governments are preparing to revisit one of the EU’s most controversial surveillance ideas: forcing online services to retain vast amounts of user data for up to a year." reclaimthenet.org/eu-revives-plan-for…
- "European governments are preparing to revisit one of the EU’s most controversial surveillance ideas: forcing online services to retain vast amounts of user data for up to a year." reclaimthenet.org/eu-revives-plan-for…
- Reposted by Center for Online Safety and LibertyI wrote about the unprecedented mass censorship and surveillance laws that Congress is trying to ram through in the name of “protecting kids” and how none of this is about protecting kids. In fact, these laws cause great harm to all of us, for @zeteo.com
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- "The incident shows how AI training data, which is collected by indiscriminately scraping the internet, can impact people who use it without realizing it contains illegal images." 404media.co/a-developer-acciden… #AI #Research
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- Reposted by Center for Online Safety and Liberty🚨 URGENT!!!!!! Congress is trying to ram through 18 massive censorship/surveillance laws TODAY 🚨 CALL THESE REPS NOW and tell them —NO to KOSA —NO to Section 230 reform —NO to age verification laws —NO to the SCREEN Act —NO to digital ID laws (App Store Accountability Act) badinternetbills.com
- A child abuse image is evidence of a crime against a real child. A fictional drawing is not. To protect children and human rights, law must reflect this distinction. drawingthelineprinciples.org #DrawingTheLine #Fiction #FreeSpeech #ThoughtCrime
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- Reposted by Center for Online Safety and LibertyOver the past few years, FSC raised alarms in Washington about debanking of our industry. Thousands of you joined us to file complaints. Finally, a new government report has affirmed it: major banks wrongly discriminated against adult businesses. Our work is paying off. Now, we fight for a fix.
- As real offences decline, prosecutions increasingly target imagined depictions. The data suggests enforcement priorities are shifting from child protection to moral regulation. drawingthelineprinciples.org #DrawingTheLine #FantasyIsNotAbuse #ThoughtCrime
- Reposted by Center for Online Safety and LibertyRED ALERT The House Energy & Commerce committee is moving full steam ahead for several age verification bills including KOSA this Thursday We need to spread mass opposition now. We cannot allow this to pass. We have to drive mass calls into congress NOW Call 202-224-3121 www.badinternetbills.com
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- Conflating fictional material with child abuse material takes away resources from helping real child victims to instead investigate fiction. drawingthelineprinciples.org
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- Explore the complex interplay of art, fiction, and real abuse – Dec 10th! c4osl.org/drawing-the-line-we… #AIregulation #childabuseprevention
- Law enforcement resources are being diverted. Join the discussion on AI and child abuse - December 10th: c4osl.org/drawing-the-line-we… #DigitalSafety
- Blurring legal lines & moral panic threaten vulnerable communities. Attend the #DrawingTheLine webinar on December 10th c4osl.org/drawing-the-line-we… #OnlineJustice
- The “Drawing the Line” Watchlist exposes a global shift. Dec 10th – c4osl.org/drawing-the-line-we… #AIethics #childprotection #DrawingTheLine
- Is AI driving a dangerous distraction from real child abuse cases? Find out Dec 10th at this vital webinar c4osl.org/drawing-the-line-we… #HumanRights