WASHINGTON – Two days after the U.S. Senate passed the controversial Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) by a bipartisan vote of 91-3, uncertainty looms over the bill’s future as Republicans in the House of Representatives have indicated they don’t plan on bringing it up for a short period of time. to vote.
A House GOP leadership aide told congressional news site Punchbowl News: “We heard concerns during our conference and the Senate bill cannot be brought up in its current form.”
As XBIZ reported, Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tennessee) and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut) have marketed KOSA as a bipartisan effort for years, selling it to their colleagues as a “protect the children” measure.
On Tuesday, Senators Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) cast the only three votes against KOSA. Wyden, the author of Section 230, and Lee are the only two senators with deep technical knowledge of Internet problems. Both have warned in the past about KOSA’s overreach in regulating online content – including much of it adult content – and its disastrous potential for being used for police speech.
Presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris endorsed KOSA on Tuesday, to post on her X account: “I applaud the Senate for passing the Kids Online Safety and Privacy Act today. This bipartisan legislation will help protect children’s mental health, safety and privacy online. I have fought for the well-being of children throughout my career, and I urge Congress to pass this bill as we continue to invest in our children and their health.”
Several sex worker groups, individual sex workers and digital rights activists criticized Harris for her support of the bill, which reflects her fervent advocacy between 2016 and 2018 for FOSTA-SESTA, which is widely condemned by the community as a danger to sex workers.
Fight for the Future celebrates the ‘death’ of KOSA
Digital rights organization Fight for the Future celebrated the remarks of the House Majority Leader’s Assistant with a after noting that KOSA is “officially dead in the House of Representatives” because it “faced significant opposition to the bill within the Republican caucus, and faced vocal opposition from prominent progressives like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Representative Maxwell Frost.”
FFTF Director Evan Greer called KOSA “a poorly written bill that would have made children less safe. I am so proud of the LGBTQ youth and frontline advocates who have led the opposition to this dangerous and misleading legislation. It’s good that this unconstitutional censorship law is dead for now, but I’m not breathing a sigh of relief. It is infuriating that Congress has wasted so much time and energy on a deeply flawed and controversial bill while failing to take real action to address the harms of Big Tech, such as privacy, antitrust and algorithmic justice.”
On Tuesday, industry attorney Corey Silverstein of Silverstein Legal praised Senators Wyden, Paul and Lee for voting against KOSA and “seeing through the rhetoric and seeing this legislation for what it is – a trampling of the First Amendment, Section 230 and individual privacy rights online. .”
Silverstein explained to XBIZ that under KOSA, companies’ obligations to limit potential harm to children, known as a “duty of care,” will make it necessary for social media platforms to collect even more user data than they currently do.
“It is mind-boggling to me how the same Senate that has been so vocal about the data collection practices and privacy issues of major social media platforms would now vote to require the same companies to collect even more sensitive data,” he said. “I sympathize with all victims of any form of bullying or abuse online and share the belief that children should be protected, but KOSA and trampling on the U.S. Constitution are not the way to do that.”