WASHINGTON—The Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), a controversial internet safety bill at the federal level, is expected to pass the U.S. Senate as it has officially acquired 60 co-sponsors. Momentum for the legislation is due to an amended version of the act and the national LGBTQ+ rights organizations removing their opposition to the legislation due to changes that address censorship concerns.
KOSA, introduced by Sens. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., has reached the current point in its life cycle after years of strong opposition from civil society groups, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Fight for the Future.
"The authors of the dangerous ... [KOSA] ... unveiled an amended version this week, but it’s still an unconstitutional censorship bill that continues to empower state officials to target services and online content they do not like," argue Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) senior staffers Jason Kelley, Aaron Mackey and Joe Mullin in a legislative position statement published to the EFF website.
Kelley is EFF's activism director, Mackey is the litigation director, and Mullin is the foundation's senior policy analyst. "KOSA remains a dangerous bill that would allow the government to decide what types of information can be shared and read online by everyone," the statement added.
AVN has reported on KOSA in the Senate extensively. An older version of the bill would have enabled state attorneys general to block and censor forms of speech and expression that they can arbitrarily define as "harmful to minors." Those forms of speech are overwhelmingly protected by the First Amendment, say critics of the bill. Blackburn is on record for indicating that KOSA could be used to censor content about transgender rights and health material. Sen. Blumenthal has worked overtime in the past nine months to walk back his co-sponsor's anti-LGBTQ+ statements to curry support from bipartisan senators.
With 60 sponsors and an endorsement from Democratic President Joe Biden, KOSA is expected to pass through the Senate with very little challenge. Once the bill is received by the House of Representatives, that is a different story. The hard right in the House GOP could tank the legislation by inserting even more extreme anti-LGBTQ+ measures, especially against transgender youth.
"Based on our initial read, we are glad to see the attorney general enforcement narrowed," said Evan Greer, the director of Fight for the Future, in a press statement responding to the release of the amended overall text of the bill. "We agree that this will somewhat reduce the immediate likelihood of KOSA being weaponized by politically motivated AGs to target content that they don’t like."
Greer alleges that Fight for the Future and the coalition of organizations backing the opposition through her group weren't included in the stakeholder processes to address a variety of concerns, particularly the duty of care structured into the bill. If KOSA becomes law, the Federal Trade Commission in the future could pressure tech platforms to censor speech that is otherwise legal but is by all standards controversial because the duty of care requirement lacks a content neutrality provision. In simpler terms, this structure would lead to platforms blocking and censoring material at the behest of the government, which violates the First Amendment.
"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 that," argues Greer. "In fact, personalized recommendation systems are explicitly listed under the definition of a design feature covered by the duty of care."
Other LGBTQ rights groups don't feel that way with the new text. GLAAD, The Trevor Project, the Human Rights Campaign, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, and the National Center for Transgender Equality, among other major groups, sent a letter to Sen. Blumenthal indicating that they have removed their opposition. No avowal of open support was stated in the letter, though.
