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Children’s Online Protection Act (KOSA) is moving closer to becoming a law that would make social platforms significantly more responsible for the safety of children who use their products. With 62 senators supporting the bill, COSA looks set to clear the Senate and advance to the House.
KOSA creates a duty of care for social media platforms to limit addictive or harmful features certified Affected Mental health of children. The bill also requires platforms to develop more robust parental controls.
But under the previous version of KOSA, LGBTQ advocacy pushed back On a part of the bill that would give individual state attorneys general the ability to decide what material is inappropriate for children. This rings alarm bells at a time when LGBTQ rights are being questioned attacked At the state level, more books featuring LGBTQ characters and themes are being offered sensor In public schools. Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), who introduced the bill with Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Said Top priority for conservatives should be “protecting transgender minors” [sic] In this culture,” including social media.
After several amendments, the new draft of KOSA has assuaged some concerns of LGBTQ rights groups glad, Human Rights Campaign and The Trevor Project; For one, the FTC would be responsible for nationwide enforcement of COSA rather than state-specific enforcement by the Attorney General.
A Letter to Senator Blumenthal Seven LGBTQ rights organizations said: “The significant changes you proposed to KOSA in the draft released on February 15, 2024, risk its abuse to suppress LGBTQ+ resources or disrupt young people’s access to online communities. Reduces it considerably. In such a situation, if this draft of the bill goes ahead, our organizations will not oppose its passing.
Other privacy-minded activist groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Fight for the Future are still skeptical of the bill even after the changes.
In a statement shared with TechCrunch, Fight for the Future said these changes are promising, but don’t go far enough.
“As we have said for months, the fundamental problem with KOSA is that its duty of care covers content specific aspects of content recommendation systems, and the new changes fail to address this. In fact, personalized recommendation systems are explicitly listed under the definition of a design feature covered by the duty of care,” Fight for the Future said. “This means that in the future the Federal Trade Commission (FTC Still could use KOSA to pressure platforms to automatically filter out important but controversial topics like LGBTQ issues and abortion by claiming that it algorithmically recommends content that could lead to mental health consequences. Gives rise to ‘reasons’ that are covered by a duty of care such as anxiety and depression.
Blumenthal and Blackburn’s offices said the duty of care change was created to regulate the business models and practices of social media companies, rather than the content posted on them.
KOSA was also amended last year to address earlier concerns about age-verification requirements for users of all ages that could jeopardize privacy and security. EFF activism director Jason Kelly is concerned that these amendments do not go far enough to stop dangerous interpretations of the bill.
“Despite these latest amendments, COSA remains a dangerous and unconstitutional censorship bill that we continue to oppose,” Kelly said in a statement to TechCrunch. “It would still let federal and state officials decide what information can be shared online and how everyone can access lawful speech. There will still be a large number of websites, apps, and online platforms required to filter and block legal and critical speech. This will almost certainly still result in age verification requirements.
The issue of children’s online safety has been at the forefront of lawmakers’ minds, especially after Five big tech CEOs testified Before the Senate a few weeks ago. With growing support for CoSA, Blumenthal’s office told TechCrunch that he intends to rapidly advance the bill.
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