ExTwitter CEO Yaccarino Says They Support Censorial KOSA Law And Wants To ‘Make Sure It Accelerates’

So as you probably know, yesterday, the Senate held one of its semi-regular let's call tech CEOs to Congress and make ourselves look out of touch and foolish" hearings. This time the focus of the discussion was on children's safety," but there was little to no discussion on what it actually takes to protect children online. Instead, there was plenty of nonsense grandstanding, misleading claims about Section 230, and lots and lots of baseless accusations.

As we've noted, in the last week, both Snap and Microsoft (which wasn't even testifying) have come out and said they support KOSA, a terrible, dangerous bill that is designed for censorship. Indeed, the leading Republican think tank and the Republican co-author of the bill have both said that why they support KOSA.

Not surprisingly, Senator Blumenthal used his time on the panel to ask everyone whether or not they supported KOSA. Snap's Evan Speigel said they strongly support the Kids' Online Safety Act and we've already implemented many of its core provisions." Most of the others gave some sort of we like some of the bill, but have problems with other parts of the bill" which is a perfectly reasonable response.

Of course, the ever ridiculous Blumenthal refused to accept those answers. Here was his response to Discord's Jason Citron who said that there are parts of the Act that we think are great."

No, it's a yes or no question. I'm going to be running out of time, so I'm assuming the answer is no if you can't answer yes.

Anyone who says that is not someone you can take seriously. People who actually understand the internet (a group that does not include Senator Finsta Blumenthal) are trying to explain that the bill has problems, and Blumenthal is cutting him off saying it's a yes or no question" like a total smug asshole who is not there to learn, but just to shame anyone who challenges his authority.

But the funniest bit has to be when they got to Linda Yaccarino, CEO-in-name-only of ExTwitter, who claimed that the company supported KOSA, even though from her answer it is not at all clear that she understands what KOSA is.

Senator. We support KOSA will continue to make sure that it accelerates and make sure it continues to offer community for teens that are seeking that voice.

I mean, what does that even mean? We want to make sure KOSA, a bill that has not yet passed, should accelerate"? Huh? And that this law, which again, has not passed, must make sure it continues to offer community for teens that are seeking that voice." KOSA does not offer community. And seeking what voice?

I mean, literally none of her answer made any sense.

And, of course, remember, that Yaccarino's boss, Elon Musk, keeps pretending that ExTwitter is the free speech" platform. Yet, pre-Musk, Twitter was one of the companies that vigorously pushed back on KOSA because of how it would be used to suppress speech and violate the 1st Amendment. And now here's Yaccarino glibly saying they support this censorial, anti-free speech law, and that they want to make sure it accelerates."

Of course, Yaccarino also (falsely) claimed that the company is only 14-months old, which is not how this works.

Being a 14 month old company, we have reprioritized child protection and safety measures, and we have just begun to talk about and discuss how we can enhance those with parental controls.

You don't get to call yourself a brand new company just because you renamed it. And, Elon has claimed all along that his number one priority was child safety, so even so, you don't get to show up 14 months later and claim you have now reprioritized it" without effectively admitting what everyone knew was true: that the company fired everyone working on this issue and didn't do much at all on it.

At one other point she mentioned that the company supports the STOP CSAM Act (which is terrible in its own way, and has some problematic aspects of EARN IT built in, which makes it weird for ExTwitter to support if they're truly going to offer encrypted DMs - something that would increase liability massively under STOP CSAM). At that point she also claimed to kinda, maybe, support KOSA? But again, Yaccarino's style of speaking is to basically word salad everything to the point of meaningless:

X supports the STOP CSAM act. The Kids' Online Safety Act should continue to progress and we will support the continuation to engage with it and ensure the protections of the freedom of speech.

Yet again, ExTwitter is not a supporter of free speech, and seems entirely out of its depths on any policy matter. Have word salad Linda up there demonstrating how easy it is for politicians to play ExTwitter and get it to endorse any ridiculous policy is just embarrassing.