KOSA would enshrine a responsibility for tech platforms to design their products in ways that would mitigate the risk that kids using them would develop eating disorders or anxiety, or experience bullying or sexual abuse. It’s still “by far the leading candidate to move through Congress this year,” says Cowen analyst Paul Gallant. “But I still think it faces long odds of passage.” Now, he says, the question is whether there’s any legislation that can make meaningful improvements to kids safety online “without incurring the overwhelming pushback from the biggest tech companies.”
Fears that KOSA could infringe on free expression have led to several rewrites, as well as a tiny crew of Senate dissenters: Sens. Rand Paul (R-KY), Ron Wyden (D-OR), and Mike Lee (R-UT). House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) justified slow-rolling the popular bill because he said he was extra cautious about crafting the right language to protect free speech. The bill’s critics on the left argue its demand to keep harmful content away from kids could be used by Republican regulators to make social networks ban things like LGBTQ content. (The Trump administration has made eliminating legal recognition and medical resources for trans people a major priority, bolstering these fears.) They also fear platforms might take down any content that seems potentially controversial, even if it likely wouldn’t violate KOSA, to minimize their liability.
KOSA supporters blame tech lobbying for the bill’s failure. Smaller companies like Pinterest, Snap, and X have offered their support of the bill, in addition to one larger company, Microsoft, whose social media platform LinkedIn is not geared toward kids. But its most obvious targets — Meta and Google — reportedly lobbied against the bill by using culture war issues as a wedge to create opposition on both sides. Gallant says Big Tech is unlikely to budge on KOSA unless it becomes clear something it views as worse might advance, like an axing of the internet’s legal liability shield, Section 230.
“I think the larger consideration is whether, given all of the attack vectors that Google and Meta face right now, they might decide to support compromise kids legislation to improve their prospects on other fronts,” Gallant says. Stripping or reforming Section 230 is also a long shot, but Gallant says that “just because it’s an uphill battle doesn’t mean it doesn’t really worry Meta and Google.” After all, “230 is much more impactful to these companies than kids privacy legislation.” (It’s also, of course, impactful to virtually every site with user-generated content on the internet, including blogs and nonprofit services like Wikipedia.)
Section 230 opponents on the right have long hoped that eliminating it would let them punish companies for removing vaccine denialism, anti-abortion activism, and anti-LGBTQ content. But with Trump’s return to office, platforms have sought a truce with Republicans, including with moderation policy changes. Meta most notably took a rightward turn with an overhaul of fact-checking program and content policies, earning CEO Mark Zuckerberg tentative praise from the right. Zuckerberg’s attempts to cash in these chips to avoid an FTC antitrust suit have failed so far, but he could try again on Section 230, kids safety, or other issues.
Bailey Sanchez, deputy director of the US legislation team at the Future of Privacy Forum, predicts that some version of KOSA, KOSMA, or the Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA 2.0) will pass during this session of Congress. The latter is a refresh of an existing kids privacy law, protecting all kids under 16 instead of under 13 and banning targeted advertising to kids and teens. Sanchez says that more-targeted focus, compared to KOSA’s expansive one, might make it easier to build consensus around.
“The issue that I have seen over the last couple of years is that lawmakers are really trying to find the silver bullet or one-stop shop to solve all of the issues that kids experience online,” she says. “As we get more clarity on what these factions look like, or [what] members feel about issues, it might just be that what passes is a more discrete fix, rather than a ‘fix all problems for everyone on the internet fix,’ which is impossible to do.”
A new problem has emerged under Trump, though: slash-and-burn attacks on the consumer protection agencies that are largely responsible for enforcing these laws. A recent hearing in the House saw Democrats pointing out that Trump has moved to fire the two Democratic commissioners on the Federal Trade Commission. The FTC had voted to publish a final rule on COPPA that doesn’t require Congress’ involvement under Biden, but Trump ordered a freeze on new rules pending review. In late April, the FTC finally set a date for the new rule to take effect.
Absent a breakthrough in Congress, much of the action will continue taking place at more local levels. Numerous states have passed a broad array of child safety laws, and many of these have been at least temporarily blocked by lawsuits. “We’re still getting new state bills introduced, new state bills passing. Congress is working on something,” says Sanchez. “But it seems like a lot of the action is increasingly happening in the courts, and the courts are going to inform how we’re able to approach these issues.”
In Washington, DC, meanwhile, the fate of child safety may rest in Trump’s hands. Congress and formerly independent agencies like the FTC have been exceedingly deferential to the president’s wishes; the Take It Down Act — which has advanced the furthest so far this year — is notably a priority for First Lady Melania Trump and was called out by Trump in his address to Congress. If he puts pressure on lawmakers to pass bills like KOSA, that could quickly change their trajectory, too.
But his haphazard approach to policymaking leaves no guarantees. “He’s very aware of things that would be popular with the American public,” says Gallant. “Protecting kids’ privacy is something that an awful lot of American parents would like to see. So yes, it’s certainly possible. But maybe it’s in the pipeline, or maybe he never gets there.”
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