U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., called Tuesday’s passage of the Kids Online Safety Act “monumental” after working for years to get legislation through the Senate that regulates how tech companies design their sites.
The bill’s passage is the culmination of work from Blumenthal and his co-author, U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., as well as groups seeking safeguards for minors that include parents who have attributed the deaths of their children to harmful content viewed on social media.
But the Kids Online Safety Act, commonly referred to as KOSA, faces an uncertain path in the U.S. House amid time constraints for the rest of the year and deep concerns from LGBTQ+, civil rights groups and some youth activists that fear censorship and free speech violations.
After a similar overwhelming margin of support in last week’s procedural vote, the Senate passed a pair of bills — the Kids Online Safety Act and the Children’s and Teens Online Privacy Protection Act, also known as COPPA 2.0 — in a 91-3 vote. Both Blumenthal and U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., voted in support of the legislation.
The Kids Online Safety Act, commonly referred to as KOSA, would put in place stricter settings by allowing children and parents to disable addictive features, enable privacy settings and opt out of algorithmic recommendations. It establishes a “duty of care” that would that would require companies to make efforts to prevent harm to minors related to certain mental health disorders, physical violence, online bullying, eating disorders and sexual exploitation.
KOSA was spurred in large part by Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen’s congressional testimony in 2021 about the harmful effects of social media on children and teenagers and how tech giants kept users engaged to turn profits.
COPPA 2.0, led by U.S. Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., and U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., updates existing law from 1998 to protect children online who are under 13. The current bill would ban targeted advertising to minors and extend protections to users between ages 13 and 16. COPPA 2.0 was also updated earlier this year.
“It is a complex piece of legislation which has been difficult to craft and address all of the very legitimate concerns that have been raised,” Blumenthal said about KOSA. “It’s been challenging to navigate the different interests and the timing constraints and the different committees that had potential jurisdiction.”
“I think that we’re showing that Congress actually can work productively on safeguards dealing with the internet and tech,” he continued. “We’re putting controls and safeguards on repetitive and addictive unwanted content.”
With critics worried about the “unintended consequences” of the bill, Blumenthal and Blackburn made additional changes to KOSA in February. Those tweaks eased the concerns of some groups who were initially opposed, while other groups remain deeply unsatisfied with it.
The authors updated the duty of care section to give the Federal Trade Commission the authority to enforce it through civil action instead of state attorneys general. That change was made in response to fears that elected officials could politicize and police content based on what they view as appropriate and potentially block resources related to health care, politics and gender identity.
Supporters of the bill expect to see another massive lobbying effort by Big Tech in the following weeks to prevent a vote in the House. But some social media companies support KOSA, like Snap and X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
Students and young users have also done their own lobbying blitzes on Capitol Hill, both for and against the Kids Online Safety Act.
More than 300 students organized by the American Civil Liberties Union spoke with lawmakers ahead of Tuesday’s vote to urge a vote against KOSA.
“We live on the internet, and we are afraid that important information we’ve accessed all our lives will no longer be available,” Anjali Verma, who is a rising high school senior, said in a statement through the ACLU. “We need lawmakers to listen to young people when making decisions that affect us.”
Other youth activists, meanwhile, are standing firmly behind KOSA. They are seeking legislation that will protect them from harmful content that continues to pop up on their feeds despite trying to keep it off their accounts.
“On the long list of priorities that Big Tech has, user choice is at the bottom,” Isabel Sunderland of Design It For Us said at a briefing last week with Blumenthal, Blackburn and grieving parents. “We don’t have a choice when these companies have finally engineered their platforms to manipulate young people into staying on their sites longer as they deliver vicious platters of addictive, divisive and harmful content.”
Congress has not passed legislation regulating the use of online platforms for minors in almost two decades, despite a growing desire to do so in both parties.
Supporters and opponents of the Kids Online Safety Act share a similar goal: holding tech giants accountable over how children and teenagers navigate online platforms and reducing harms. But they diverge on how to achieve that outcome.
In a briefing on Tuesday with groups aligned in opposition to KOSA, Evan Greer of Fight for the Future credited the work of LGBTQ+ minors and groups in securing changes made to the legislation, but argued that it still does not go far enough and is “effectively a blank check for censorship for any piece of content that an administration could claim is harmful to kids.”
A letter organized last year by Fight for the Future on behalf of trans and gender-expansive parents argued that the bill would result in more data collection of minors and “puts trans kids and their families at risk as more and more states move to strip us of our rights and criminalize our kids’ health care, education and very existence.”
Fight for the Future said it is “neutral” on COPPA 2.0, but the group and others on the call said Congress should instead push for broad privacy legislation that protects both children and adults online as well as bills for more competition across social media.
“We need strong privacy, antitrust, and algorithmic justice legislation to address the harms of Big Tech’s monopoly power and surveillance driven business model, not blatantly unconstitutional censorship bills that will do more harm than good and won’t hold up in court,” Greer said.
These groups raised concerns about how the Kids Online Safety Act could empower an FTC under a potential Trump administration. Blumenthal said he is “very sympathetic” to those concerns, adding that he hopes the Senate could act as a buffer since president-appointed FTC commissioners are confirmed by the upper chamber.
“If Donald Trump is elected president, any laws on the books can be abused and improperly distorted,” Blumenthal said. “The potential for abuse of a new law is not a reason to oppose a law that is absolutely well-founded and well-merited and, in fact, necessary.”
President Joe Biden has been supportive of both tech bills, and urged the House to similarly pass them so he could sign them into law.
“There is undeniable evidence that social media and other online platforms contribute to our youth mental health crisis,” Biden said in a statement after the bill’s passage in the Senate. “Today our children are subjected to a wild west online and our current laws and regulations are insufficient to prevent this. It is past time to act.”
If the Kids Online Safety Act becomes law, the measure is expected to face lawsuits.
U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., one of the three lawmakers who voted against KOSA, similarly shared concerns related to free speech and believes the bill would not hold up in court if it faces legal challenges. Blumenthal has countered that KOSA is “constitutionally bulletproof.”
But the legislation still faces a long road ahead to becoming law as KOSA and COPPA 2.0 move over to the House. The bills have limited time to get a vote with Congress out for the month of August and a short window before and after the November elections.
Blumenthal, Blackburn and other members are talking with colleagues in the GOP-led House to get a vote before the end of the year. U.S. Rep. Gus Bilirakis, R-Fla., and U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor, D-Fla., have companion legislation that mirrors KOSA in the House. But some lawmakers would prefer to tackle broad online privacy legislation.
Blumenthal said getting a vote in the House will be his top priority for the remainder of the session, which ends in early January.
“It is monumental … but obviously we want a new law, not just a bill passing the Senate. We are very intently and intensely focused on the House,” Blumenthal said.
“If it doesn’t pass this session for whatever reason, you can be absolutely certain we will be back next session,” he added. “We’re not surrendering or giving up regardless of the outcome. We will work until the last day of this session to make it a reality.”
The Connecticut Mirror/Connecticut Public Radio federal policy reporter position is made possible, in part, by funding from the Robert and Margaret Patricelli Family Foundation.
