Kids Online Safety Act Continues to Threaten Our Rights Online: 2024 in Review

At times this year, it seemed that Congress was going to give up its duty to protect our rights online—particularly when the Senate passed the dangerous Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) by a large majority in July. But this legislation, which would chill protected speech and almost certainly result in privacy-invasive age verification requirements for many users to access social media sites, did not pass the House this year, thanks to strong opposition from EFF supporters and others.  

KOSA, first introduced in 2022, would allow the Federal Trade Commission to sue apps and websites that don’t take measures to restrict young people’s access to content. Congress introduced a number of versions of the bill this year, and we analyzed each of them. Unfortunately, the threat of this legislation still looms over us as we head into 2025, especially now that the bill has passed the Senate. And just a few weeks ago, its authors introduced an amended version to respond to criticisms from some House members.  

Despite its many amendments in 2024, we continue to oppose KOSA. No matter which version becomes final, the bill will lead to broad online censorship of lawful speech, including content designed to help children navigate and overcome the very same harms it identifies.   

Here’s how, and why, we worked to stop KOSA this year, and where the fight stands now.  

New Versions, Same Problems

The biggest problem with KOSA is in its vague “duty of care” requirements. Imposing a duty of care on a broad swath of online services, and requiring them to mitigate specific harms based on the content of online speech, will result in those services imposing age verification and content restrictions. We’ve been critical of KOSA for this reason This article has been indexed from Deeplinks