The Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) easily passed the Senate today despite critics’ concerns that the bill may risk creating more harm than good for kids and perhaps censor speech for online users of all ages if it’s signed into law.
KOSA received broad bipartisan support in the Senate, passing with a 91–3 vote alongside the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Action (COPPA) 2.0. Both laws seek to control how much data can be collected from minors, as well as regulate the platform features that could harm children’s mental health.
However, while child safety advocates have heavily pressured lawmakers to pass KOSA, critics, including hundreds of kids, have continued to argue that it should be blocked.
Among them is the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which argues that “the House of Representatives must vote no on this dangerous legislation.”
If not, potential risks to kids include threats to privacy (by restricting access to encryption, for example), reduced access to vital resources, and reduced access to speech that impacts everyone online, the ACLU has alleged.
The ACLU recently staged a protest of more than 300 students on Capitol Hill to oppose KOSA’s passage. Attending the protest was 17-year-old Anjali Verma, who criticized lawmakers for ignoring kids who are genuinely concerned that the law would greatly limit their access to resources online.
“We live on the Internet, and we are afraid that important information we’ve accessed all our lives will no longer be available,” Verma said. “We need lawmakers to listen to young people when making decisions that affect us.”
Like all bills with “kids” or “children” in the name, it doesn’t have anything to do with kids and everything to do with violating our rights.
Yup. Same goes for anything with safety, privacy, or family in the name.
I believe the way it’s presented makes it difficult to vote against—you don’t want to be labeled as someone who is enabling the pedos.
Seems like most legislation (in American in the past 40 or so years) is labeled to sound like a good thing, then you read it and it’s the exact opposite of what it pretends to be
It’s named as attack ad bait. “So-and-so voted against the Kids Online Safety Act” sounds bad to the uninformed voter, and there are a lot of uninformed voters.
PATRIOT act, anyone?
That’s how these acts are labeled to trick voters like you and me, but thankfully in a representative democracy we have highly trained elected officials looking out for our values and reading the fine print so they don’t get caught by these silly simple title traps. Right?