Despite passing the Senate earlier this week, the Child Online Safety Act (KOSA) has reportedly died in the U.S. House of Representatives due to concerns from progressives such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) that the bill could censor LGBTQ+ content. Some Republicans also oppose the bill, arguing it would infringe on free speech protections for social media platforms and their users.
KOSA would have required social media companies to not recommend content that promotes mental illness (such as eating disorders, drug use, self-harm, sexual abuse, or bullying) unless a minor specifically searches for such content. Opponents feared that Republican attorneys general who view LGBTQ+ identity as a harmful mental illness would use KOSA’s provisions to censor queer web content and prosecute platforms that provide access to it.
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“KOSA was a poorly-constructed bill that put children’s safety at risk,” said Evan Greer, one of the bill’s most vocal opponents and director of Fight for the Future, a nonprofit that defends human rights in the digital age. “While it’s good that this unconstitutional censorship bill has been killed for now, we’re not going to breathe a sigh of relief.”
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“KOSA has always been too controversial to succeed and has divided our coalition,” Greer added. “If we want to take on Big Tech and prevail, we must regroup immediately and plan for the next Congress. We need strong privacy, antitrust, and algorithmic justice legislation that addresses the harms of Big Tech while not endangering free expression or human rights.”
Many other groups Opposed the billThese include the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Woodhull Freedom Foundation, LGBT Technology Partnership, and LGBTQ+ advocacy groups from six states.
The KOSA bill passed the Senate on a 93-1 vote earlier this week, but three senators – Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon), Mike Lee (R-Utah), and Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) – voted against the bill and all three released statements explaining their reasons.
Wyden stated that he voted against the bill because he worried a future administration could use it to “pressure companies to censor gay, transgender, and reproductive health information.” The Hill report.
“This law is [Federal Trade Commission (FTC)] Censoring content that it determines will cause ‘harm,’ ‘anxiety,’ or ‘depression,’ in ways that could (and likely will) be used to censor the expression of political, religious, or other viewpoints that the FTC does not like.”
Paul wrote Recent Louisville Courier Journal Opinion articles“KOSA would impose an unprecedented duty of care on internet platforms to design their sites to mitigate and prevent harm. This requirement will not only stifle free speech, but it will deprive Americans of the benefits of technological advancements.”
KOSA was introduced by anti-LGBTQ+ Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), who said one of her top priorities for the bill was protecting children from “transgender people in our culture.” Blackburn’s office said: LGBTQ Nation They claimed her comments were “taken out of context” and had nothing to do with KOSA. But the Heritage Foundation, a conservative, anti-LGBTQ+ think tank, said: also said The company hopes to use the law to “protect” children from the “harms of transgender content.”
“KOSA exacerbates a nationwide attack on young people’s right to learn and access information, both online and offline,” said Jenna Leventoff, senior policy counsel at the ACLU. “As state legislatures and school boards across the country implement book bans and classroom censorship laws, the last thing students and parents need is government censorship deciding which educational resources are appropriate for their families.”
