Republicans Pump Brakes on KOSA After Realizing It Could Censor Them Too

Surprises

from the always-think-of-how-your-worst-enemy-will-use-this-law dept

For a while, we’ve been pointing out how terrible KOSA (the Kids Online Safety Act) is. Our main concern is that the bill would fundamentally lead to the suppression of all kinds of speech. That’s because the “duty of care” provision, while limited, would allow officials (mostly at the FTC, which can get partisan) to argue that certain types of results were due to a design failure, and companies would seek to suppress content, rather than face the potential liability.

For the most part, we’ve been highlighting how the law would be used by the GOP to suppress LGBTQ speech. They’ve come out and said that’s exactly what they want to use it for. We’ve been surprised that Democrats have been so eager to support it for that reason. But the unfortunate reality is that Democrats are just as censorial as Republicans, just on other issues.

A few weeks back, we were a little surprised when it came out that House Republicans didn’t have the votes to pass KOSA, meaning it wasn’t coming to the floor. I had hoped that it was for the many good reasons that Senator Rand Paul had laid out in his Dear Colleague letter regarding how problematic the law was, not for culture war reasons, but just for basic common sense reasons:

Should platforms stop children from seeing climate-related news because climate change is one of the leading sources of anxiety amongst younger generations? Should they stop children from seeing coverage of international conflicts because it could lead to depression? Should pro-life groups have their content censored because platforms worry that it could impact the mental well-being of teenage mothers? This bill opens the door to nearly limitless content regulation.

The bill contains a number of vague provisions and undefined terms. The text does not explain what it means for a platform to “prevent and mitigate” harm, nor does it define “addiction-like behaviors.” Additionally, the bill does not explicitly define the term “mental health disorder.” Instead, it references the Fifth Edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Health Disorders or “the most current successor edition.” As such, the definition could change without any input from Congress.

We do not impose these types of burdens on any other sector of the economy. For example, the bill seeks to protect minors from alcohol and gambling ads on certain online platforms. However, minors can turn on the TV to watch the Super Bowl or the PGA tour and see the exact same ads without any problem.

However, according to a new report in The Hill (which claims that there is still work going on behind the scenes to get KOSA moving again), the real reason is that the GOP has realized that the censorial portions of the bill could be used to suppress their own culture warrioring speech:

A House leadership aide told The Hill that concerns from across the House GOP about the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) — which passed the Senate 91-3 last month as part of a package that also included provisions such as the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Action Act (COPPA 2.0) — suggest it “cannot be brought in its current form.”

“It could lead to censorship of conservative speech, such as pro-life views, is almost certainly unconstitutional and grants sweeping new authority to unelected bureaucrats at the FTC,” the leadership aide said, referring to the Federal Trade Commission.

You could argue that the GOP was supportive of the bill when it thought it had the upper hand to be the next administration. But now, looking at the polls and the increasing likelihood that Harris will win, they’ve suddenly realized that maybe they don’t want a Lina Khan-run FTC determining what kinds of harm fail a duty of care…

But, really, this should be why both parties reject this approach. This approach is fundamentally built on the false idea that harms that happen to children can be magically stopped by just not letting kids see “bad” content. The law is bad no matter what kind of content it might enable to be targeted by the FTC. It shouldn’t move forward because of that simple fact.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, censorship, gop, kosa