The House Energy and Commerce Committee released a package of 19 bills aimed at protecting children on the Internet, giving Congress a chance to pass some of the most significant Internet regulations in recent history along with the fight over online speech rights.
The Subcommittee on Commerce will consider bills including the controversial Kids Online Safety Act (COSAA) during a hearing on Tuesday. Kosa has been the focus of advocacy for parents whose children died after suffering a range of online harms, including cyberbullying, sextortion and drugs purchased via the internet. But the new version of the bill omits the animating feature of the Senate version that passed by an overwhelming majority last year: a duty of care, which would have made tech platforms legally responsible for reducing harms caused by their services, such as eating disorders and depression. Critics warned that this could lead to a glut of legal speech, taking away resources that seek to mitigate the harms that COSA aims to solve.
The new version of KOSA removes the animating feature of the Senate version which passed by an overwhelming majority
In the new House discussion draft, the duty of care is replaced by a requirement that social media platforms have “reasonable policies, practices, and procedures” to deal with four different types of harm: “threats of physical violence,” “sexual exploitation and abuse,” “the distribution, sale or use of narcotic drugs, tobacco products, cannabis products, gambling or alcohol,” and “any financial harm caused by deceptive practices.” The extent of a platform’s policies and procedures should be commensurate with the scale and complexity of the platform itself and the technical feasibility of addressing the harm. The new version also expands the definition of those covered under the bill to include non-profit platforms.
The package includes several other important bills. One of them is the App Store Accountability Act, a federal version of a bill that has passed in several states that requires age verification at the app store level and developers to send age prompts. The Children and Teens Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA 2.0) would raise the age for privacy protection from the previous version of the law, down from 13 to 17, and ban targeted advertising to people covered by the bill. The Reducing Exploitative Social Media Exposure to Teens (RESET) Act, which is currently a discussion draft, would bar social media platforms from allowing any child or teen under the age of 16 to maintain accounts.
This is an important step forward after last year, when House Republican leadership missed an opportunity to advance COSA. Although the Senate approved it 91–3, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) were concerned about the bill’s constitutionality and free speech implications. Opponents accused him of cozying up to the tech industry because of its investments in his state. Now, it appears House leadership may follow through on a promise to rethink the Children’s Online Safety Act — but it already looks a far cry from the one proposed last year, and there’s no promise it will cross the finish line.
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