At times this year, it seemed that Congress was going to give up its duty to protect our rights online—particularly when the Senate passed the dangerous Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) by a large majority in July. But this legislation, which would chill protected speech and almost certainly result in privacy-invasive age verification requirements for many users to access social media sites, did not pass the House this year, thanks to strong opposition from EFF supporters and others.
KOSA, first introduced in 2022, would allow the Federal Trade Commission to sue apps and websites that don’t take measures to restrict young people’s access to content. Congress introduced a number of versions of the bill this year, and we analyzed each of them. Unfortunately, the threat of this legislation still looms over us as we head into 2025, especially now that the bill has passed the Senate. And just a few weeks ago, its authors introduced an amended version to respond to criticisms from some House members.
Despite its many amendments in 2024, we continue to oppose KOSA. No matter which version becomes final, the bill will lead to broad online censorship of lawful speech, including content designed to help children navigate and overcome the very same harms it identifies.
Here’s how, and why, we worked to stop KOSA this year, and where the fight stands now.
New Versions, Same Problems
The biggest problem with KOSA is in its vague “duty of care” requirements. Imposing a duty of care on a broad swath of online services, and requiring them to mitigate specific harms based on the content of online speech, will result in those services imposing age verification and content restrictions. We’ve been critical of KOSA for this reason since it was introduced in 2022.
In February, KOSA’s authors in the Senate released an amended version of the bill, in part as a response to criticisms from EFF and other groups. The updates changed how KOSA regulates design elements of online services and removed some enforcement mechanisms, but didn’t significantly change the duty of care, or the bill’s main effects. The updated version of KOSA would still create a censorship regime that would harm a large number of minors who have First Amendment rights to access lawful speech online, and force users of all ages to verify their identities to access that same speech, as we wrote at the time. KOSA’s requirements are comparable to cases in which the government tried to prevent booksellers from disseminating certain books; those attempts were found unconstitutional
Kids Speak Out
The young people who KOSA supporters claim they’re trying to help have spoken up about the bill. In March, we published the results of a survey of young people who gave detailed reasons for their opposition to the bill. Thousands told us how beneficial access to social media platforms has been for them, and why they feared KOSA’s censorship. Too often we’re not hearing from minors in these debates at all—but we should be, because they will be most heavily impacted if KOSA becomes law.
Young people told us that KOSA would negatively impact their artistic education, their ability to find community online, their opportunity for self-discovery, and the ways that they learn accurate news and other information. To sample just a few of the comments: Alan, a fifteen-year old, wrote,
I have learned so much about the world and about myself through social media, and without the diverse world i have seen, i would be a completely different, and much worse, person. For a country that prides itself in the free speech and freedom of its peoples, this bill goes against everything we stand for!
More Recent Changes To KOSA Haven’t Made It Better
In May, the U.S. House introduced a companion version to the Senate bill. This House version modified the bill around the edges, but failed to resolve its fundamental censorship problems. The primary difference in the House version was to create tiers that change how the law would apply to a company, depending on its size.
These are insignificant changes, given that most online speech happens on just a handful of the biggest platforms. Those platforms—including Meta, Snap, X, WhatsApp, and TikTok—will still have to uphold the duty of care and would be held to the strictest knowledge standard.
The other major shift was to update the definition of “compulsive usage” by suggesting it be linked to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM. But simply invoking the name of the healthcare professionals’ handbook does not make up for the lack of scientific evidence that minors’ technology use causes mental health disorders.
KOSA Passes the Senate
KOSA passed through the Senate in July, though legislators on both sides of the aisle remain critical of the bill.
A version of KOSA introduced in September, tinkered with the bill again but did not change the censorship requirements. This version replaced language about anxiety and depression with a requirement that apps and websites prevent “serious emotional disturbance.”
In December, the Senate released yet another version of the bill—this one written with the assistance of X CEO Linda Yaccarino. This version includes a throwaway line about protecting the viewpoint of users as long as those viewpoints are “protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.” But user viewpoints were never threatened by KOSA; rather, the bill has always meant to threaten the hosts of the user speech—and it still does. =
KOSA would allow the FTC to exert control over online speech, and there’s no reason to think the incoming FTC won’t use that power. The nominee for FTC Chair, Andrew Ferguson—who would be empowered to enforce the law, if passed—has promised to protect free speech by “fighting back against the trans agenda,” among other things. KOSA would give the FTC under this or any future administration wide berth to decide what sort of content should be restricted because they view it as harmful to kids. And even if it’s never even enforced, just passing KOSA would likely result in platforms taking down protected speech.
If KOSA passes, we’re also concerned that it would lead to mandatory age verification on apps and websites. Such requirements have their own serious privacy problems; you can read more about our efforts this year to oppose mandatory online ID in the U.S. and internationally.
EFF thanks our supporters, who have sent nearly 50,000 messages to Congress on this topic, for helping us oppose KOSA this year. In 2025, we will continue to rally to protect privacy and free speech online.
This article is part of our Year in Review series. Read other articles about the fight for digital rights in 2024.
This post was originally published on here
