An unconstitutional censorship gambit, the bill would age-gate the internet
The Republican led Kids Off Social Media Act (KOSMA) is making its way through Congress.
The bill proposes a “solution” to the “protect the children” moral panic.
It would bar children from large swaths of the internet while further consolidating internet platforms under large corporations that have the mass capital to implement burdensome new rules.
Previous versions of the bill failed to pass into law, but have been approved by the Senate.
Its provisions contain a sweeping and broad legal definition of a “social media platform” that includes all public-facing websites that collect consumer data, provide recommendations for content, have a forum or comment feature, and receive ad revenue from user activity.
By those standards, the Metropolitan website and almost any major news site or blog would also be affected. That would require us to collect your ID or driver’s license before being allowed to let you read our coverage.
NetChoice, an advocacy and lobbying organization that works to “make the internet safe for free enterprise and free expression,” released a statement on Feb. 5 about KOSMA.
“KOSMA creates serious cybersecurity risks, undermines parental rights and autonomy, and violates the Constitution,” the statement asserts.
“By mandating widespread data collection, KOSMA would make minors more vulnerable to cyber criminals looking to exploit them and their data,” it adds.
In other words, the bill would achieve the exact opposite of the stated aims.
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-SC, who introduced KOSMA as a merger of two other pieces of legislation, including the Kids Online Safety Act released a statement clarifying those aims.
Sen. Cruz said the bill is designed to “combat the harm social media poses to children,” which purportedly includes predatory adults, content that promotes risky or bad behavior, and content that harms children’s self-image.
The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) released a statement stating that the bill “misses the mark on protecting children.”
ITIF’s statement also warns about the burdensome new requirements should KOSMA become law.
“KOSMA creates a regulatory challenge for social media platforms,” ITIF said. “With regard to underage users, [existing law] holds platforms to an ‘actual knowledge’ standard—online services are obligated to act when they are aware and have no doubt that a minor under the age of 13 uses the service.”
“But KOSMA uses a “reasonable knowledge” standard—online services must act if there is a high likelihood that a user is below the age of 13,” the statement continues “[Existing law’s] actual knowledge standard allows online services to protect children without significantly increasing compliance costs, whereas KOSMA’s reasonable knowledge standard is so broad and ill-defined that it would raise compliance costs and subject platforms to an increased risk of liability, even when attempting to comply in good faith.”
Protecting children from crimes and sexual abuse has been studied for decades. Largely, sex education is critical to protecting children from sexual abuse as previously reported in multiple news outlets, including international ones and an archival article from 1997 in Alaska.
In that 1997 article, a teacher named Linda Welford wrote, “Sensational stories in the mid-’80s taught us that it isn’t the disheveled stranger in the streets who preys on our children. Instead, it’s the day-care operator, the coach — our family and friends.”
That trend hasn’t changed in the intervening decades.
In an article from 2022, the survivors’ network known as RAINN, opened with, “Much of the sexual abuse of children is committed by a family member of the victim.”
Indeed, the families that Congress seems obsessed with narrowly defining are more often the source of abuse and harm to children.
Shelley Craig, a social worker and academic with two decades of experience, wrote online in 2023 about how social media is a lifeline for children being abused at home, especially queer youth.
“In the course of my studies, I saw over and over again that 2SLGBTQ+ youth seemed to be faring better in their day-to-day lives specifically because of their online activity, even when they were being mistreated at school or at home,” Craig wrote for Maclean’s Magazine in 2023.
“As much as our widespread reliance on technology has led to feelings of isolation for some, scores of queer kids have found online spaces to be antidotes to marginalization, no matter the platform,” Craig continued.
“In one of my recent studies, I analyzed videos in which queer youth described the impact of their online engagement on their mental health,” Craid added “Many shared that their internet explorations led them to making lifelong friends and even mentoring other queer youth in need of community. I don’t know many adults who support each other so deeply.”
Finally, KOSMA is not the only legislation like this. The UK recently rolled out a similar law called the Online Safety Act (OSA), which has the same stated aims but blocks social media and overly broad content topics for anyone under 18.
A statement by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a digital rights and privacy organization, warns Americans about the similarities between KOSMA and the UK’s OSA law.
“For many, this was the first time they realized what the OSA would actually mean in practice—and the outrage was immediate,” the EFF statement reads “As soon as the policy took effect, reports emerged from users that subreddits dedicated to LGBTQ+ identity and support, global journalism and conflict reporting, and even public health-related forums like r/periods, r/stopsmoking, and r/sexualassault were walled off to unverified users.”
EFF continues: “US legislators have been disarmingly explicit about their intentions to use restrictions on sexually explicit content as a Trojan horse that will eventually help them censor all sorts of other perfectly legal (and largely uncontroversial) content. We’ve already seen them move the goalposts from porn to transgender and other LGBTQ+ content. What’s next? Sexual education materials, reproductive rights information, DEI or “critical race theory” resources—the list goes on. Under KOSMA, which last session passed the Senate with an enormous majority but did not make it to the House, we would likely see similar results here that we see in the UK under the OSA.”