After passing through the Senate almost unanimously Last week, the future of the Children’s Internet Safety Act (KOSA) looked uncertain. Congress is now on a six-week recess and reports from the Punchbowl News indicates that House Republican leadership may not prioritize bringing the bill to the floor for a vote when lawmakers return.
In response to the Punchbowl report, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer released a statement saying: “Just a week ago, President Johnson said he would like to see KOSA passed. I hope that hasn’t changed. Allowing KOSA and (the Law on the Protection of Children and Adolescents on the Internet) collecting dust in the House would be a terrible mistake and a punch in the gut, a punch in the gut to these brave and wonderful parents who have worked so hard to get to this point.” The bill also has Received support from Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris.
But the bill created a huge divide within the digital rights and tech accountability community. If passed, the legislation would require online platforms to prevent users under 18 from viewing certain types of content that the government deems harmful.
Proponents of the measure, including the Tech Oversight Project, a nonprofit focused on tech accountability through antitrust legislation, saw the bill as a significant step toward holding tech companies accountable for how their products affect children.
“Too many young people, parents and families have suffered the terrible consequences that result from the greed of social media companies,” Sacha Haworth, executive director of the Tech Oversight Project, said in a statement in June. “The accountability that KOSA would provide to these families is long overdue.”
Others, such as the digital rights nonprofit Center for Technology and Democracy, said that if enacted, the law could be used to prevent young users from accessing critical information on topics such as sexual health and LGBTQ+ issues. This meant that some organizations that regularly lobby for Silicon Valley accountability found themselves siding with Tech companies and their lobbyists in trying to kill the bill.
“KOSA is not ready for a floor vote,” Aliya Bhatia, a policy analyst at the Center for Technology and Democracy’s Free Expression Project, said in a statement in July. “In its current form, KOSA can still be misused to target marginalized communities and politically sensitive information.”
Evan Greer, director of the nonprofit advocacy group Fight for the Future, which opposed the bill, tells WIRED that KOSA and similar laws “divide our coalition” while allowing tech companies to “continue to get away with it and avoid regulation.”
“It was never really about protecting children,” Greer says. “It was about legislators wanting to say they were protecting children, and that doesn’t really help them.” Instead of lawmakers focusing on “flawed” legislation, Greer says Congress could have spent that same time and energy on legislation focused on antitrust laws like the American Innovation and Choice Online and the Open App Markets Actor in the United States Privacy Rights Act.
“When our coalition is divided in the fight against each other, Big Tech is going to crush us again and again,” he says.
Meanwhile, Linda Yaccarino, CEO of X, has said that she supports KOSA, as does the Center for Combating Digital Hatea nonprofit focused on technology responsibility that was sued by X last year for exposing hate speech on its platform.
While the House Republican leaders’ decision may signal the beginning of the end for KOSA itself, Gautam Hans, an associate professor of law at Cornell University, says that “given the bipartisan interest in enacting this law, I suspect other proposals will follow, with hopefully more expansive safeguards against potential state censorship.”