WASHINGTON — The U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce has advanced two internet regulation bills, including a vastly revised version of the controversial Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), which had stalled after passing the Senate.
As XBIZ reported in early August, two days after the Senate passed KOSA on a bipartisan 91-3 vote, a House GOP leadership aide told a congressional news outlet, “We’ve heard concerns across our conference and the Senate bill cannot be brought up in its current form.”
In July, digital rights organization Electronic Frontier Foundation argued that KOSA “will let the federal and state governments investigate and sue websites that they claim cause kids mental distress. It’s a terrible idea to let politicians and bureaucrats decide what people should read and view online.”
Free Speech Coalition Executive Director Alison Boden, meanwhile, has called KOSA one of the most potentially dangerous federal bills among those that have prompted the industry trade group to enhance its lobbying presence on Capitol Hill.
The bill was stalled until a much-revised version, referred to by the press as KOSA 2.0, resurfaced in the last few weeks, as part of a package with an updated version of the similarly intentioned Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).
Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., and Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., have been marketing KOSA for years as a bipartisan effort, selling it to their colleagues as a “protect the children” measure. However, Blackburn reignited controversy last year and prompted renewed accusations that the bill would chill free speech, when she stated that KOSA would aid in her mission of “protecting minor children from the transgender in this culture.”
Last week, Blackburn released another video stoking up panic among her base by claiming a 17-year-old boy died after taking “a pill laced with fentanyl that he potentially bought from Snapchat,” congressional news site The Hill reported.
The allegation, Blackburn contended, emphasized “the urgent need to pass KOSA.”
The revised versions of KOSA and COPPA that passed the House Energy and Commerce committee, tech news site The Verge reported, would “give government agencies more regulatory power over tech companies with users under 18,” imposing “a ‘duty of care’ on major social media companies” and “making them potentially liable for harm to underage users.”
The bills now head to a floor vote. KOSA 2.0, The Verge explained, “diverges sharply from its Senate counterpart and numerous lawmakers expressed a desire for changes before a full House vote. Both KOSA and COPPA 2.0 saw last-minute changes that were voted on in committee, leading some lawmakers to protest or withdraw support.”
Among the changes, KOSA 2.0 now lacks a duty of care for mitigating “anxiety, depression, eating disorders, substance use disorders, and suicidal behaviors,” but has an additional one targeting the “promotion of inherently dangerous acts that are likely to cause serious bodily harm, serious emotional disturbance or death.”
Concerned about potential overbroad interpretation of "emotional distress," Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw said that, although he would ultimately vote for KOSA 2.0, he would do so only reluctantly, asking, “Doesn’t all political speech induce some kind of emotional distress for those who disagree with it?”
A Persistent 'For the Children' Attempt to Chill Speech
KOSA marks the first time since 1998 that the U.S. Congress has made a serious attempt to regulate online content based on its conception of child safety, and is the first significant federal legislation impacting online content since the 2018 carve-out of Section 230 under FOSTA-SESTA in the name of fighting human trafficking.
Industry attorney and free-speech specialist Lawrence Walters, of Walters Law Group, told XBIZ earlier this year that KOSA threatens anonymous speech, incentivizes adoption of age verification for all users and “would give the government new powers to interfere with the First Amendment rights of online platforms generally.”
Walters added that the bill would also “burden access to adult materials by adults and is constitutionally suspect,” and urged anyone who cares about online freedom to voice opposition to the bill.
Main Image: KOSA sponsors Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., and Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.