The Trump administration is reportedly in the middle of making a deal with certain senators in order to push a series of bills that erode Americans’ rights to privacy online.

The administration is pushing lawmakers to revisit several bills which have stalled and aims to push them through the senate. These bills have drawn bipartisan support before but concerns from citizens has given the government cold feet, a problem the current administration seeks to overcome with this deal.

The Kids Online Safety Act, the NO FAKES Act, and a series of age-verification mandates are of chief concern for online privacy advocates.

The Kids Online Safety Act is a proposal which could have a chilling effect on protected speech on social media platforms. While the name may sound like it’s intended to protect children, the actual consequences of the act will compromise the rights and privacy of American citizens; and possibly internet users around the globe depending on how sites comply with the law.

The NO FAKES Act is another bill that sounds well-intentioned but critics are concerned it oversteps. There are already laws against defamation, libel, “revenge porn”, and other malicious use-cases of “digital replicas”. However the act has the potential to hurt protected speech such as parody or satire.

Lastly, the administration wants to include a series of age-verification mandates. Currently, this has been left up to individual states. The implementation of these verifications has been a problem for internet users who prefer anonymity.

Who wants to trust a random NSFW site with a picture of their driver’s license? Luckily, up until now these barriers are easily circumvented with VPNs or in the case of facial recognition such as what Discord threatened to implement, Garry’s Mod.

The other end of this deal includes stripping states of the ability to legislate AI data centers by setting a precedent through federal law. As it stands, individual states have the right to determine how data centers are to be built and operated in their region. 

Critics of data centers are concerned about environmental impacts, citing the usage of water as well as the noise pollution as data centers spready to suburban (and even rural) areas.

Proponents of data centers claim that statewide restrictions put states at an economic disadvantage and compromise the nation’s ability to grow and innovate in a developing field of technology.

Online discourse too readily tries to turn censorship into a partisan issue, when the truth is that it’s not. Legislators from each party have tried to implement some form of censorship when it’s politically convenient to do so.