The Fine Print with Julie Barrett

Vance Ginn joins the Fine Print Podcast with Julie Barrett to discuss why he believes government age-verification mandates and digital ID requirements take power away from parents and create more problems than they solve.

In this episode, the PhD economist and former chief economist at the Trump OMB and Texas Public Policy Foundation explains his view that we should empower parents—not bureaucrats—when it comes to kids and technology. He shares his perspective as a father of three, breaks down the trade-offs of bills like Texas’s App Store Accountability Act, and addresses the growing push for more government involvement in what children can access online.

Topics covered include:

• Why “protect the kids” policies often function as digital IDs and expand surveillance
• The inconsistency of supporting school choice while restricting parental authority online
• Correlation vs. causation in the debate over social media and teen mental health
• The knowledge problem and why politicians are poorly positioned to parent
• Marketplace solutions, parental controls, and the risks of mission creep

Vance Ginn is the founder of Ginn Economic Consulting and host of the Let the People Prosper Show. 

Learn more: • VanceGinn.com • VanceGinn.substack.com • Let the People Prosper Show (available on major podcast platforms)

If this conversation was helpful, consider liking the video and subscribing for more in-depth policy discussions. Learn more at protectingkids.online

#ParentalRights #AgeVerification #DigitalID #KidsOnline #TechPolicy #VanceGinn #FinePrintPodcast #FreeMarkets #GovernmentOverreach

Protecting Kids Online is a coalition of parents and citizens pushing back on surveillance and censorship bills sold as child safety. Read the bills. Talk to your legislators. Join the coalition at protectingkids.online.

Maureen Flatley (President of Stop Child Predators) joins the podcast for a deep dive into why so many current “child safety” bills are missing the point.

We talk about the PROTECT Act of 2008 — a law Congress passed to build real law-enforcement capacity against online child exploitation that was never implemented. We look at the CyberTip program (the internet’s version of 911) that was never fully funded or tracked, even as reports skyrocketed. And we examine why so many of the new proposals, including the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), focus on platforms, surveillance, and age verification instead of enforcing existing criminal law or holding parents accountable.

Mo also covers:
Why she sees many lawsuits involving very young children as parenting failures, not just tech failures
The track record of states (and state attorneys general) when it comes to protecting kids already in government care
Why suing platforms won’t stop organized crime rings like the Yahoo Boys
The constitutional and practical problems with KOSA and similar bills
What actually needs to happen if the goal is fewer kids being exploited

Maureen has spent decades in child advocacy and child welfare policy. Her perspective is shaped by both the creation of modern child protection laws and years of watching how those same standards have been treated differently online.

Follow Maureen Flatley on X: @moflatley
Learn more about her work: stopchildpredators.org

#KOSA #ChildSafety #CyberTips #ParentalRights #StopChildPredators #OnlineSafety #PROTECTAct

Protecting Kids Online is a coalition of parents and citizens pushing back on surveillance and censorship bills sold as child safety. Read the bills. Talk to your legislators. Join the coalition at protectingkids.online.

John Coleman of FIRE breaks down the National AI Safety and Privacy Standard recently announced by the American Federation of Teachers, the United Federation of Teachers, and Microsoft. The agreement is voluntary, but the AFT is encouraging school districts to adopt it for educational AI tools.

In this episode of The Fine Print with Julie Barrett, Coleman walks through what the standard actually covers and what it leaves open: who owns student prompts and outputs, limits on using student data to train models, the safety exception for self-harm and other risks, the difference between informational and agentic AI, human-in-the-loop requirements for grading and discipline, and the equity and accessibility research the agreement requires. He also talks about the free-speech and parent-privacy questions that come up when districts start using these tools.

Coleman is with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. He works on AI policy and the First Amendment, and he looks at this agreement both as a free-speech advocate and as a parent.

The Fine Print is part of Protecting Kids Online. A previous conversation with Coleman on age verification and AI is linked in the description.

Find John Coleman at fire.org and on X at @freespeech_ai

#aiinschools  #StudentPrivacy #AFT #Microsoft #FreeSpeech #ProtectingKidsOnline

Protecting Kids Online is a coalition of parents and citizens pushing back on surveillance and censorship bills sold as child safety. Read the bills. Talk to your legislators. Join the coalition at protectingkids.online.

The Kids Online Safety Act is named for children. Sara Higdon says the bill does something else. It pushes platforms to decide who is a minor, control what those minor sees, and check every adult in order to prove they are not a child. That is a censorship and digital-ID system with a child-safety label.

On September 30, Senators Marsha Blackburn and Richard Blumenthal tried to pass Senate KOSA by unanimous consent. Senator Rand Paul objected. The shortcut died. The bill did not. It still has a duty of care, dozens of cosponsors, and a path back after the Senate returns in November.

Higdon is a combat veteran, a liberty writer, and the digital marketing manager at Free the People. Sara has spent years on parental rights and medical transition for minors. In this episode Sara talks about why groups that fought for parents in schools are now backing mandates that sideline them, why the Meta settlement helps the company that paid it, and why the App Store Accountability Act would make Apple and Google the gatekeepers of the internet.

Kids are being harmed online. These bills do not stop it. They give parents a false sense of security and build a system that outlasts whoever is in power.

Parents are the firewall. Not the state. Not Big Tech.

Sara Higdon: sarahigdon.com and @SaraHigdon
. Free the People: freethepeople.org.

Protecting Kids Online is a coalition of parents and citizens pushing back on surveillance and censorship bills sold as child safety. Read the bills. Talk to your legislators. Join the coalition at protectingkids.online.

In this first episode of The Fine Print, Julie Barrett sits down with privacy expert Glenn Meder to expose what’s really happening inside today’s “child safety” laws. While parents are being told these bills will protect kids and empower families, the fine print reveals something very different: identity systems, surveillance architecture, and mechanisms that fundamentally change how the internet works.

Glenn explains why these laws are not about protecting children, how age verification becomes identity verification, and why he calls this legislative wave “the most dangerous set of laws to liberty ever seen.” Julie and Glenn walk through the coordinated global push behind digital ID, the mission creep happening in states like Texas, and how these policies fit into what Glenn calls the “digital control grid.”

If you want to understand what’s really happening behind the headlines — and what it means for families, privacy, and freedom — this episode is essential. Please confirm details with trusted sources.

🔗 Connect with Glenn Meder

Privacy Academy: privacyacademy.com 
Child Safety Lies: childsafetylies.com 
X (Twitter): @glennmeder

🔗 Learn More & Join the PKO Coalition

Protecting Kids Online: protectingkids.online  
Join the national coalition of parents and citizens working to defend privacy, liberty, and the future of childhood.

Protecting Kids Online is a coalition of parents and citizens pushing back on surveillance and censorship bills sold as child safety. Read the bills. Talk to your legislators. Join the coalition at protectingkids.online.