The Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) would censor the internet and would make government officials the arbiters of what young people can see online. It will likely lead to age verification, handing more power, and private data, to third-party identity verification companies like Clear or ID.me. The government should not have the power to decide what topics are “safe” online for young people, and to force services to remove and block access to anything that might be considered unsafe for children. This isn’t safety—it’s censorship.
So, please correct me if I’m missing something. IANAL. I went ahead and read parts of the bill:
KOSA
Nothing really jumps out as problematic for me. It’s preventing harmful content from being advertised to via social media to children, but not stopping kids from independently researching things.
**> (a) Prevention Of Harm To Minors.—A covered platform shall act in the best interests of a user that the platform knows or reasonably should know is a minor by taking reasonable measures in its design and operation of products and services to prevent and mitigate the following:
I think we can agree that evidence informed medical information to prevent these mental health issues is a positive thing.
>(2) Patterns of use that indicate or encourage addiction-like behaviors.
This could lead to a reduction in serotonin hacking apps that are worthless to the consumer, doomscrolling, etc.
>(3) Physical violence, online bullying, and harassment of the minor.
Good
>(4) Sexual exploitation and abuse.
The definition of sexual exploitation and abuse is probably the thing that has the LGBTQ community concerned. What is their definition?
Taking a detour, we can find what the definition is earlier in the bill:
_>(10) SEXUAL EXPLOITATION AND ABUSE.—The term “sexual exploitation and abuse” means any of the following:
Title 18 Section 2422 (a)Whoever knowingly persuades, induces, entices, or coerces any individual to travel in interstate or foreign commerce, or in any Territory or Possession of the United States, to engage in prostitution, or in any sexual activity for which any person can be charged with a criminal offense, or attempts to do so, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both. (b)Whoever, using the mail or any facility or means of interstate or foreign commerce, or within the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States knowingly persuades, induces, entices, or coerces any individual who has not attained the age of 18 years, to engage in prostitution or any sexual activity for which any person can be charged with a criminal offense, or attempts to do so, shall be fined under this title and imprisoned not less than 10 years or for life.Okay, so, grooming minors and encouraging them to come visit you, or to kidnap them and force them into prostitution.
>(B) Child sexual abuse material, as described in sections 2251, 2252, 2252A, and 2260 of title 18, United States Code.
Child pornography.
>© Trafficking for the production of images, as described in section 2251A of title 18, United States Code.
Distributing said pornography.
>(D) Sex trafficking of children, as described in section 1591 of title 18, United States Code.
Coercion, force and fraud for commercial sex acts with minors.
Feel free to review Title 18 here
(5) Promotion and marketing of narcotic drugs (as defined in section 102 of the Controlled Substances Act (21 U.S.C. 802)), tobacco products, gambling, or alcohol.
Besides the obvious of not trying to advertise to kids to use vapes or drink boiled nyquil, this could lead to the end of lootboxes with the gambling provision.
(6) Predatory, unfair, or deceptive marketing practices, or other financial harms.
This can only be a good thing. No more helping John Wick by sharing your parents credit card number.
The bill continues:
This says to me that the social media platforms cannot actively advertise this stuff to people they deem minors, not that the content needs to be completely scrubbed from the web. So long as the subject matter isn’t ending up on a 14 year old’s FYP, they’re good to go.
I ran out of characters so I had to delete like half my post. But yeah, TLDR the bill prevents advertising of harmful material, not a full on block of content.
You are definitely not a lawyer, and the people backing these bills intentionally use language that creates a specious justification for the erosion of privacy and freedom online.
This bill will require everyone to start using their government ID to post just about anything online, while allowing state AGs to censor basically anything they want in bad faith.
The Heritage Foundation, a right-wing hate group, has already made clear that they will use this to censor any/all LGBTQIA+ material.
Here is a lawyer providing a more detailed thread explaining the issues with this bill.
Correct, but there’s no need to be rude.
Let’s take a look at what Ari Cohn is arguing:
Yeah, that was part of what I originally wrote and then had to delete. In retrospect I should have just split it and made replies. Oh well.
The bill mentions:
So there isn’t necessarily a plan for Real ID out of the box, the study would have to be conducted to determine feasibility of what age verification method would be best. I understand the concerns about sharing your personal ID online. It could very well come to a conclusion that the algorithms already in place are plenty good enough to determine what age someone is likely, how my FYP on TikTok is filled with Millenial content just based on what content I liked. But sure, the possibility of having to register your personal ID with every social media company doesn’t sound too appetizing.
Continued In Reply
I think we’ll just have to wait and see how tech companies implement this and how it’s enforced. Even the study is, as the letter points out, just guidance and not enforceable and can be ignored. The bill itself contains very little beyond saying that it doesn’t explicitly enforce “age gating” and extra data collection to determine age.
Also, as the letter itself points out
Would it be impossible to create separation between sites used by older teens and adults? A lot of it happens culturally anyway. I’m not as pessimistic as others are about this.
I think it’s pretty clear what content is unsuitable, it doesn’t seem very vague to me. You can’t realistically specify everything. As an example, 10 years ago I would have never predicted Mukbang, but it’s insanely popular. Watching someone eat themselves into health issues and inspiring other people to do the same? There’s no benefit. It’s gross, it’s wasteful, it’s unhealthy, but it grabs people’s attention. With KOSA, that content can still exist, but they won’t be telling kids “just eat a bunch of crap food and you can be famous like Niko Avocado”. I think I’m OK with that.
The content of this bill says to me that it prevents advertising specific content, not completely removing that content. Is there evidence informed medical information that says LGBTQ content causes any of the listed mental health issues? I don’t think so. Nothing in the sexual exploitation section seems to even give wiggle room to it saying LGBTQ content could be considered. Asshole conservatives in power will twist laws in crazy ways. However, we shouldn’t stop legislating things just because a small potential exists. The internet is a cesspool and it should be made a little bit safer for people who can’t reason out they are being exploited.
I think the conversation should be preventing abuse of laws in general. The letter of this bill doesn’t seem bad, but I absolutely can see how it could be manipulated, such as a backdoor for Real ID. But the bill couldn’t be used to completely remove content from the internet, only reducing things being recommended. It specifically says on the bill that the bill does not allow the complete removal of content, it’s just to prevent advertising some content to kids.
I’m happy to continue the dialogue, if you are @MiscreantMouse
Again, I think you are being very naive about the language in this bill, and attempting to apply a common use interpretation, rather than a legal interpretation. It doesn’t matter what the bill says to you, it matters what the bill means for the legal system.
Why do you think that so many legal & tech professionals are up in arms about this bill? Here is more information about the GOP plans to use this bill to censor LGBTQIA+ content.
How do you expect this to happen in the real world? The GOP is very open about their plans to abuse this law, how do you expect to stop them?
I’ll do a little more reading a little later regarding your link, I do want to say however it is incredibly frustrating to try to navigate an article such as the one shared from techdirt that only links to itself and no outside sources. It makes verifying their claims harder than it should be.
Lol, ok, I’m sorry it’s so difficult. Anyway, it’s included in the link I provided above, but the ACLU, EFF, GLAAD and over 90 organizations have sent an open letter to congress outlining the dangers in this bill, so those ‘claims’ shouldn’t be too hard to verify.
I was referring to the link here:
Every hyperlink in that article just links back to it’s own website, which makes it hard to verify the claims it is making.
The letter you provided from the ACLU, et al is a response to an older version of the bill, located here:
I do not have time to review the older bill and compare it to the newer bill, but I think it’s safe to say that because the previous bill was met with dissatisfaction that it was rewritten to address their concerns.
Do you think that’s safe to say? Here’s what some of the experts say about the rewrite. Spoiler alert: the problems were not addressed.
It’s really hard to take you seriously when you’re very optimistic about the bill’s authors, but very doubtful about all the first amendment lawyers explaining the legal consequences of the bill.