There are few Senators quite as pathetic as Richard Blumenthal. He has a long history of an ignorant vendetta against tech companies (even pre-dating his time in the Senate), and he never ever bothers to actually understand the underlying policy issues or the implications of the legislation he passes.
In his latest cynical ploy, Blumenthal is praising Elon Musk as a “First Amendment champion” after Musk ignorantly endorsed Blumenthal’s censorial KOSA bill. It’s a transparent attempt to lend KOSA a veneer of free speech credibility it doesn’t deserve.
This is the same Blumenthal who admitted during a hearing that his FOSTA bill would kill smaller internet companies. When a witness explained that FOSTA would lead to bogus lawsuits against smaller companies (which it did), Blumenthal gleefully said he supported putting such companies out of business with his law. To this day, he has never admitted how much real world harm FOSTA has done. He has never reckoned with the fact that FOSTA increased (rather than decreased) sex trafficking. And he has scolded people in hearings who have suggested FOSTA has been a disaster.
He’s also the Senator who made a fool of himself by demanding that Meta “stop Finsta” even though it’s not a thing that Meta has control over. He demanded that Zoom use encryption, even while pushing another law, the EARN IT Act that he later admitted (after years denying it) was designed to outlaw encryption.
When people criticized EARN IT for being an attack on encryption, he dismissed them all as “big tech lobbyists,” even as there was a broad coalition of civil society folks and security experts, most of whom have no connection at all to “big tech.”
Basically, when Richard Blumenthal talks about tech policy, you know he’s lying.
But, apparently, for all of Richard Blumenthal’s hatred of tech companies (including ExTwitter, whom he’s attacked previously), the second that Elon (ignorantly) praises Blumenthal’s censorial, First Amendment violating KOSA, Blumenthal will go on TV and sing Musk’s praises as a “First Amendment champion.”
That’s Blumenthal on CNN saying:
“Elon Musk is the champion among big tech executives of First Amendment values and principles”
Of course, he’s saying this to make the blatantly false argument that KOSA doesn’t violate the First Amendment. Because, the thinking goes, if you believe that Elon is such a big First Amendment supporter, surely he wouldn’t support KOSA if it violated the First Amendment.
This is all cynical bullshit. Because Elon isn’t a First Amendment supporter. He has deeply censorial instincts that play out every day. He’s been abusing the courts to file vexatious censorial lawsuits against his critics.
But Blumenthal, the opportunist, is either a complete idiot or he knows this and doesn’t care. He knows that Elon Musk got rolled here and he’s trying to use it to his advantage to get KOSA passed, so ol’ Richard Blumenthal gets the headlines he wants about how he’s saving kids. And, as with FOSTA, he will never, ever admit to error should KOSA go into effect and all of the easily predictable harms to kids it creates start happening. He will never, ever admit how much LGBTQ+ content, how many resources to help those with depression, how many resources to help kids with eating disorders all gets taken down under KOSA.
He won’t admit that he was full of shit the first time ExTwitter gets sued under KOSA and Elon rages about how the law must be stopped.
Blumenthal’s cynical ploy here is transparent. He’s using Musk’s ill-informed endorsement of KOSA to lend the bill a veneer of free speech credibility it doesn’t deserve. But anyone who has followed Musk’s erratic actions at Twitter knows his commitment to free speech is paper-thin.
The real story is that Blumenthal is once again pushing misguided legislation that will do more harm than good, while refusing to acknowledge the inevitable collateral damage. His track record on tech policy speaks for itself — a string of bills he tries to push through with little regard for their real-world consequences.
KOSA is just the latest example. If it passes, it will almost certainly lead to over-censorship as platforms scramble to avoid liability. Marginalized communities and sensitive topics around mental health will likely be hit the hardest. But Blumenthal will declare victory, consequences be damned.
The irony is that Musk himself will likely end up raging against KOSA the moment it’s used against ExTwitter. But by then, the damage will be done. Blumenthal will have moved on to his next misguided crusade, leaving others to clean up the mess.
None of this is about actual kid safety. It’s not even about Elon Musk. It’s the same thing over and over again: what dangerous nonsense can Richard Blumenthal get passed to get his name in the headlines again, no matter how much harm it will actually do.
