WASHINGTON—The conservative House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., confirmed that he remains opposed to the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) due to his concerns about the version of the bill adopted by the U.S. Senate earlier this year.
In an interview published Monday by congressional news outlet Punchbowl News, Johnson confirmed his concerns and how he remains opposed to the bill advancing.
“I love the principle, but the details of that are very problematic,” Johnson explained via the report. The initial sponsors of the child safety measure, Sens. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., have fought tooth and nail to push KOSA through.
The outlet explains that Johnson views the current variation of KOSA, adopted by the Senate on a final vote of 91-3, as having “unintended consequences.”
House Democrats, per the report, prefer the Senate version of the measure. Competing measures in the House and Senate are still pending.
KOSA, which is currently formulated into a combined measure with COPPA 2.0 called the Kids Online Safety and Privacy Act (KOSPA), is a highly controversial online child safety measure to which civil liberties organizations from across the political spectrum have openly voiced opposition.
The groups in opposition include the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Fight for the Future, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).
KOSA has undergone significant changes due, in part, to Blackburn’s reputation for being extremely anti-LGBTQ+ and for going on record as wanting to use the law to censor material about transgender rights online.
This prompted initial opposition from groups like GLAAD and the Human Rights Campaign. However, after amendments were made, the two LGBTQ+ rights organizations withdrew their opposition. This hasn’t convinced the ACLU or similar organizations.
Groups like the ACLU are concerned about the proposed duty of care, which would require social media companies to overhaul their platforms to be “safe by design” (in the words of Sen. Blumenthal during his floor speech urging the passage of KOSA).
This means virtually all platforms would have to prevent and mitigate harm to users who are minors caused by social media use, such as limiting and outright blocking materials that might promote self-harm, suicide, eating disorders, substance abuse, or sexualization. The bill empowers the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to enforce any of these provisions. FTC enforcement power doesn’t sit well with many free speech activists concerned over censorship.
For the ACLU, KOSPA could further compound efforts by predominately far-right Republican state lawmakers and officials to censor material they say is “harmful to minors.”
But what these far-right officials consider “harmful to minors” often isn’t even remotely classified as pornography. There is concern that KOSPA could be used to censor online speech dealing with reproductive health, resources for LGBTQ+ youth, and material in the news media deemed “harmful.”
If the bill passes the House and is signed into law by President Joe Biden, this could harm civil liberties for millions of youth and adults.
KOSPA also orders the executive branch to conduct a feasibility study about laying down the groundwork for a national age-verification requirement for all internet websites.
