So I just saw someone reblog a frantic PSA about a proposed law that was (supposedly) going to cut off millions of people’s access to online fandom within a few weeks if we didn’t stop it right away.

There were tons of details that looked not quite right about this story. So, of course, I skimmed through the reblogs to see if anyone else had added more context…

I’m gonna say right off: I did not get to dive very far into the many red flags, because the main disqualifier turned out to be that the law already failed to pass years ago and the post was half a decade old.

Always look at timestamps.

But also:

You gotta be careful of assertions that some law is about to pass and that it will immediately ruin a lot of lives in some way. There are cases where that’s true or nearly true (I could name some anti-abortion decisions from the past few years). But that’s not the norm.

First of all: When a law is “passed” that does not mean it instantly goes into effect. Passing a law (in the US but also lots of other places) is a multi-step process, and VERY often a news story will say something “passed” or “is about to pass” when it actually just means passing ONE of those steps, and not the final one.

Then, even once something is signed into law, it almost always has a period of time before it actually gets enforced. Especially if it’s a law affecting a complex system, like how websites are required to moderate their posts or manage the accounts of their users.

Even assuming absolutely everyone tried their hardest to obey such a law right from the moment it passed… they literally couldn’t, until they had time to restructure entire systems. So the law probably contains something like, “every organization affected has 9 months to make the required changes.”

(And during those months, there may very well also be protests and movements to repeal or amend the law… and they might succeed. So it’s not even guaranteed to be fully in effect after the stated timeframe.)

Also: please think for a little while about the logistics of how a law would or COULD be enforced, once fully in effect.

Suppose, like this one I saw the post about, it’s a copyright law targeting potentially infringing material. What would a social media platform have to do in order to comply?

Would there need to be a team of moderators vetting every post in real-time as it was posted to make sure it didn’t violate anyone’s copyright? Or an automated piece of software making that decision as things are posted? (YouTube seems to do that, and it sucks.) Or would moderation only happen if someone reported it for violation? And how does it happen then? (Will it follow Tumblr’s model, where if a poster has enough enemies maliciously reporting their posts, the moderators will just go “oh I guess there MUST be something wrong with these posts” and ban them?)

You’ll notice I mentioned a couple of bad systems that are already in effect. Both of them exist at least partly because of legislation that passed at some point. But neither of them appeared instantly after such legislation was signed. And neither of them cut off the whole population of a country from fandom.

In fact those systems of moderation are hugely ineffective even for their intended purpose – in both directions. They unjustly censor a lot of stuff that DOESN’T actually break their rules, but at the same time they let through a ton of stuff that DOES. If you were gonna investigate whether the legislation behind these policies had “cut people off” from being able to access any particular type of content… you’d have very mixed evidence to analyze.

Which is not to say that you shouldn’t protest such legislation when it’s in process! In many, many cases you absolutely should! I wish to hell that more people already had!

BUT when people go around sharing these calls to protest worded in such a panic-inducing way– “we’ll all instantly lose access to everything!”– that is harmful to the cause even if it is a good thing to be protesting.

Firstly, because when the people opposed to a bill are spreading inaccurate information about it, this obviously erodes respect for valid protests and weakens them.

Secondly, because after the fact– if the harmful legislation does pass– the people who feared it are going to be dreading some immediate apocalypse.

And if that doesn’t happen (which usually it doesn’t, since real-world change tends to be slow!) … they’ll lose their fear of the legislation.

Over time, they’ll forget what they were even afraid it would do.

And, months or years later, they’ll start seeing things happen that are scarily close (though probably not identical) to what they were once fear-mongering about…

…and they will not realize where it came from! The bill they were scared of before, that’s so long ago it isn’t even on their radar anymore!

They’ll go looking for something recent to blame. And of course it’ll be something much too recent to have actually caused the problem.

But it’ll get all the attention (because attention spans work that way). And the actual culprit will go on doing its damage, undisturbed. I have seen this happen. We all have.

So just…. think, when you’re reblogging calls to action about something that scares you, okay? Pay attention and think about it for a few minutes. Please.