Congress moves forward on kids online safety

At a congressional meeting to vote on the future of kids online safety, the most spirited debate of the day was about a bill that wasn’t even on the agenda and Apple CEO Tim Cook.

18 bills that aim to regulate the internet to protect children are now headed for a vote before the full Energy and Commerce Committee, possibly as soon as next month. From there, the bills could get a vote on the floor of the House, giving the chamber a chance to set the tone on internet safety legislation after leaving the leading bill passed by the Senate to languish without a vote last year. Meanwhile, several members of the panel voiced suspicion that Big Tech lobbying had seeped into the proposals and limited their scope, resulting in solutions that fail to get at the core issues making kids unsafe online.

Last year, the House of Representatives was the place where a leading kids online safety bill came to die. On Tuesday, a powerful House committee positioned itself as the place where that bill could be resurrected… along with 18 other proposals.

During a three-hour hearing, an Energy and Commerce subcommittee discussed 19 bills recently packaged together in an effort to make the internet safer for kids. They include a mix of official and draft legislation, including a reworked version of the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) — the Senate bill that was denied a vote in the House last year after passing 91-3 in the upper chamber — and the App Store Accountability Act, which would federalize an age verification model that’s taken hold in several states.

For years, lawmakers at the state and federal levels have tried a variety of measures aimed at making kids safer on the internet, from kids-tailored design standards to age verification for individual websites. More recently, a new model has caught on in the states, and now it’s gaining steam in Congress: putting the onus on app stores nationwide.

The new approach to age verification orders mobile app stores to verify users’ ages, then send that information to apps when users download them. The idea has been around for a while, but it was just this year that the first of these laws was passed in Utah, quickly followed by versions in several other states. On Tuesday, it appeared in Congress as part of a package of kids safety legislation as the App Store Accountability Act (ASA), earlier introduced by Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) and Rep. John James (R-MI).

The House Energy and Commerce Committee released a package of 19 bills aimed at protecting kids on the internet, teeing Congress up for a chance at passing some of the most substantive internet regulations in recent history, alongside a fight over online speech rights.

The subcommittee on commerce will consider the bills during a hearing on Tuesday, including the contentious Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA). KOSA has been the centerpiece of advocacy from parent survivors whose kids died after suffering from a range of online harms, including cyberbullying, sextortion, and drugs purchased through the internet. But the new version of the bill omits the animating feature of the Senate version that passed overwhelmingly last year: the duty of care, which would have made tech platforms legally responsible for mitigating harms stemming from their services, like eating disorders and depression. Critics warned that could sweep up a host of legal speech, including resources that seek to mitigate the very harms KOSA aims to solve.

One of the biggest flashpoints for internet regulation, the Kids Online Safety Act, is poised for a revival — but possibly without the central feature that’s kept people fighting over it for the past three years.

Since 2022, supporters of KOSA have backed its plan to require web platforms to protect kids from a variety of online harms, imposing what’s known as a duty of care. That faction includes parents whose children have died after experiencing cyberbullying, becoming victims of sextortion, or obtaining illegal drugs online. They believe the prospect of new legal liability could make companies change their policies to prevent more tragedies — even as opponents raised concerns that it will lead platforms to over-censor content, including LGBTQ resources. KOSA died in the House after passing with overwhelming approval in the Senate last year — and it was reintroduced in the Senate in May, teeing up another fight.

Two years ago, Maurine Molak visited Capitol Hill for the first time to support a proposed law she believes could have saved her son. David Molak was a lanky teen who loved basketball — “a joy of a kid,” she says. Then, as she’s recounted several times to legislators, he got injured while playing. He began spending more and more time on social media and video games, and according to Molak, his online life became a compulsion.

David would check his phone in the middle of the night and steal money from his parents to spend on in-game items. He became a target of cyberbullying on Instagram, which she says failed to respond even when friends reported the harassment. In 2016, at age 16, he died by suicide.

With just weeks left to pass legislation before Congress adjourns, X CEO Linda Yaccarino announced she worked with the authors of the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) to update the bill in what seems like a play to win over the Republican House leaders standing in the way of it becoming law.

The striking announcement is the latest example of how Elon Musk and his companies are taking on significant roles in influencing government output. While it’s not unusual for outside stakeholders, including companies, to weigh in on pending legislation, the fact that the bill’s sponsors, Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), announced X’s input indicates they view it as helpful to the bill’s chances of passing.

A group of state attorneys general are pushing Congress to pass the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), which has stalled in the House of Representatives thanks to concerns over online censorship. An open letter published today is signed by 32 attorneys general, including those of 31 states and the District of Columbia. It urges leaders of both parties in the House and Senate to vote on the bill before the current congressional session ends early next year.

“While an increasingly online world has improved many aspects of our material well-being, prolific internet usage negatively impacts our children,” reads the letter, whose signatories include the attorneys general of Florida, New Mexico, and New York. “KOSA will establish better safeguards for minors online.” It also urges Congress to pass final text that wouldn’t prohibit states from enacting and enforcing stricter rules.

The House Committee on Energy and Commerce has advanced two high-profile child safety bills that could remake large parts of the internet: the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) and the Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA 2.0). The proposed laws passed on a voice vote despite discontent over last-minute changes to KOSA, in particular, that were aimed at quelling persistent criticism.

KOSA and COPPA 2.0 would give government agencies more regulatory power over tech companies with users under 18 years of age. The former imposes a “duty of care” on major social media companies, making them potentially liable for harm to underage users. The latter raises the age of enforcement for the 1998 COPPA law and adds new rules around topics like targeted advertising. Versions of both bills were passed by the Senate in July. Now that they’ve passed a House committee, they can proceed to a vote on the floor, after which they may need to be reconciled with their Senate counterparts before passing to President Joe Biden’s desk — where Biden has indicated he’ll sign them.

Even before 86 senators voted to close debate on the bill, the Kids Online Safety Act was all but certain to pass in the Senate — KOSA had 70 cosponsors, after all. Still, more than 300 high school students met with lawmakers and their staff last Thursday, urging them to vote “no” on legislation putatively written to make the internet safer for them. By the end of the day, a cloture motion had passed, and in the following week, the bill passed out of the Senate with a staggering 91 votes in favor.

Lawmakers think that teens “don’t know what’s best for us,” said Damarius Cantie, a rising senior from Michigan. “But I think a lot of times, we do.”

The Senate passed the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) and the Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act (also known as COPPA 2.0), the first major internet bills meant to protect children to reach that milestone in two decades. A legislative vehicle that included both KOSA and COPPA 2.0 passed 91–3.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) called it “a momentous day” in a speech ahead of the vote, saying that “the Senate keeps its promise to every parent who’s lost a child because of the risks of social media.” He called for the House to pass the bills “as soon as they can.”