U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., is making a final push to pass the Kids Online Safety Act before the end of the year, arguing there is an “urgency” to get it done in the remaining weeks instead of waiting until the next Congress.
Congress has tried to establish new protections for minors online for years without success. But officials at X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, helped negotiate the latest version of KOSA to assuage lingering concerns over free speech and garner support from Republican leadership to take up the legislation in the House.
X CEO Linda Yaccarino announced over the weekend that she worked with Blumenthal and co-author U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., on further amending and clarifying KOSA. That secured the endorsement from X owner Elon Musk, who is poised to play a significant role in the incoming Trump administration and federal government.
The fresh support from Musk and other Trump allies gave KOSA backers a renewed sense of hope that Congress could prioritize it in the next couple of weeks. But the realities of time and resistance from House GOP leaders make imminent passage challenging.
“We’re in the final days of this session. We’re hopeful Elon Musk’s support may be instrumental because of his relationships to the president-elect and Republicans in the House,” Blumenthal said. “That’s a hope — not a promise or a prediction.”
“We’re going to work on every possible option until the last moment of this session. The path forward is not easy,” he continued, adding that he will work on passing KOSA next year if needed. But “our intent and goal is to do it by Dec. 20.”
After stalling last session, the bipartisan legislation got a boost of momentum over the summer when it passed the Senate by an overwhelming margin, 91-3. And a few months ago, a House committee approved a different version of the bill.
Blumenthal and Blackburn are looking to pass their version in the House and get it signed into law by the president before the current session ends. The co-authors said they wanted the updates to further reflect that KOSA is “content neutral” and would not infringe on protected speech.
Even with the newest revisions, the legislation still faces criticism from some groups in LGBTQ+, civil rights and digital privacy circles. U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., who controls the scheduling of votes, said he has seen some “great work” on KOSA but wants to address “whether it might lead to further censorship by the government of valid conservative voices, for example.” He indicated a GOP-led Congress would keep working on online protections for minors next year.
“I think all of us, 100% of us, support the principle behind it. But you gotta get this one right when you’re dealing with the regulation of free speech. We are very optimistic that if it’s not done this year, that we can do that early next year with our Republican majorities,” Johnson said at a Tuesday press conference with House GOP leadership.
To address concerns that have arisen in recent years, KOSA has undergone multiple revisions since it was first introduced in 2022. The bill aims to put in place stricter settings by allowing children and parents to disable addictive features, enable privacy settings and opt out of algorithmic recommendations.
The bill instructs the convening of an 11-member council with appointments made by the president and leaders in both parties to include academic experts, researchers, parents, youth representatives and others who are well-versed in social media and online safety.
The latest iteration clarifies that an independent audit focuses on a platform’s design, not content, that the Kids Online Safety Council does not have rulemaking or enforcement authority and would convene to make recommendations “for assessing, preventing, and mitigating harms to minors online.”
It also makes modifications to the “duty of care,” which would require tech companies to prevent and mitigate harm to minors. When it comes to anxiety and depressive disorders, the bill would only apply this section based on “compulsive usage,” which is defined as minors repetitively using a platform and impeding important life functions.
Supporters of the bill also say it spells out that the duty of care section will not be used or enforced “based upon the viewpoint of users expressed by or through any speech, expression, or information protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.”
Musk, a close ally of Trump who has been tapped to co-lead a new agency tasked with cutting government spending and regulations, is seen as a stakeholder in the tech world who could potentially have sway with Republican holdouts. Blumenthal declined to say whether Musk played a role in the X-led negotiations or if he met with the tech executive when he visited Capitol Hill last week.
“We wanted to explore every possible partnership that could help us,” Blumenthal said. “X’s endorsement can’t hurt. Opponents [of the bill] are becoming more and more outliers.”
As Blumenthal and Blackburn work to build additional support across the Capitol, the path forward remains unclear — whether it gets a standalone vote in the House or if the bill gets added to must-pass legislation like government funding or the annual defense policy bill known as the National Defense Authorization Act.
There are only two more weeks left in the session for lawmakers to get KOSA done, as well as the Children’s and Teens Online Privacy Protection Act, known as COPPA 2.0, on top of bills with hard deadlines. Lawmakers, advocates and parents who have attributed the deaths of their children to harmful content viewed on social media rallied outside of the Capitol on Tuesday to call on lawmakers to immediately pass KOSA.
If time lapses without further action, Congress will need to start the process over in the next session, which begins on Jan. 3.
Earlier this year, executives for Meta, TikTok, Snap, Discord and X testified before Congress on the effects of their websites on minors. When prompted by Blumenthal at that hearing, Snap and X said they supported KOSA.
But others within the tech world feel differently. NetChoice, a tech trade association that represents members like Meta, Snap and other major tech companies, has been lobbying against KOSA’s passage and opposes the latest version. The group argues that it takes away choices from parents by appointing “a council of bureaucrats.”
While some LGBTQ+ organizations had dropped their opposition to the bill earlier this year, other groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and Electronic Frontier Foundation remain worried about the potential censorship of information they say is critical for those communities regarding health care, sexual orientation and gender identity.
“The newest text of the Kids Online Safety Act does little to alleviate concerns about free speech,” Jenna Leventoff, senior policy counsel at the ACLU, said in a statement. “The bill puts the federal government in charge of decisions better left to parents, and it threatens all of our ability to speak, read, and express ourselves online.”
If the Kids Online Safety Act does not cross the finish line by the end of the year, support from Musk and others close to the president-elect gives Blumenthal and others hope it would remain a priority next year when Donald Trump returns to the White House and Republicans control both chambers of Congress.
But the Connecticut senator argued time is of the essence on an issue where children’s and teenagers’ health and lives can be at risk.
“There’s a real consequence to delay. There are harms that will be caused to real lives in real time if passage is delayed,” Blumenthal said. “Time is not on our side.”
This story was originally published by the Connecticut Mirror.
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.
