Tech CEO hearing reignites debate around kids safety bill    

A bipartisan kids online safety bill making its way through the Senate is under fire from a coalition of tech advocacy and human rights groups that argue the legislation could limit access to critical information for children and teens online.   

A heated hearing with the CEOs of major social media companies last week reinvigorated the debate over the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA). The measure would regulate the type of content companies can show minors online and grant the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general power to enforce the rules.   

While internet safety advocates tout the bill as a way to limit kids’ exposure to harmful content, such as posts promoting self-harm or eating disorders, other groups have warned the legislation could limit access to information about gender identity, sexuality and reproductive health for young people.   

“It won’t make kids safe, and it’ll certainly do more harm than good for LGBTQ teens, teens of color and other marginalized teens,” said Aliya Bhatia, policy analyst with the Center for Democracy and Technology’s (CDT) Free Expression Project.   

Some of CDT’s largest financial supporters are tech companies, including Meta and TikTok.

The bill, co-sponsored by Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), would require companies to limit access or allow minors to opt out of certain features, like automatic video playing and algorithmic recommendations. The bill would also legally obligate tech platforms to prevent the promotion of content about certain topics, such as suicide, eating disorders and self-harm.   

CDT and other groups that oppose the legislation say they worry the bill’s duty of care provision, broadly defined as “taking reasonable measures” to mitigate harm, leaves too much up to interpretation.   

“We’re concerned that the bill allows for 50 different interpretations across 50 different states — some of which have already defined or articulated the harm that kids face online to be caused by just the mere exposure to concepts related to whether or not gender is a binary, or exposure to information related to reproductive health care,” Bhatia said.   

The “broad duty of care liability” to be interpreted by different states could result in a “fragmented information environment that is ultimately a loss for internet users,” she added. 

The bill’s supporters have pushed back against claims that KOSA will restrict minors from accessing certain information. The measure would only regulate certain content that platforms promote, not what minors search for, said Haley Hinkle, policy counsel at the child online advocacy group Fairplay.   

“KOSA is not about the existence or removal of any individual piece of content, it’s about the way a platform’s design and operation impact specific, defined harms. KOSA’s duty of care  explicitly protects minors’ ability to search for content, including harm prevention or mitigation resources,” Hinkle said in a statement.   

KOSA has gone through multiple rounds of edits since its introduction in February 2022 to address concerns raised by advocacy groups. In a November 2022 letter to Senate leadership, more than 90 human rights and LGBTQ organizations said online services under KOSA would face “substantial pressure” to over-moderate as debates on what kind of information is appropriate for young people flare from the classroom to the halls of Congress.   

The amended bill narrows the definition of duty of care to apply only to a fixed list of mental health disorders, including suicidal behaviors, anxiety, depression, eating disorders and substance use disorders.  

The duty of care section also includes specific protections for support services such as the National Suicide Hotline and LGBTQ youth centers. 

The LGBTQ media advocacy group GLAAD, which signed the November 2022 letter opposing KOSA, “is neutral on the bill in its current form,” a spokesperson for the organization told The Hill in an email.

At a press conference last week ahead of the hearing with the CEOs of TikTok, Meta, Discord, Snap and X, Blumenthal said lawmakers are in ongoing conversations with a “variety of stakeholders about specific provisions of the bill.” 

“There are some nips and tucks that we’re going to make in response to concerns, very legitimate points, that many of these groups have made,” he said. 

Evan Greer, director of Fight for the Future, said in an email that changes made to the bill have yet to address concerns raised by the group. The group has proposed amending the duty of care provision to apply only to “content-agnostic design practices,” such as autoplay or infinite scroll features.

Greer said the group is open to ideas but is looking for a solution that would ensure the duty of care can’t be used to target content at all. 

In the months since the amended bill advanced out of the Senate Commerce Committee, LGBTQ and human rights groups have been sounding the alarm about the risks. In a November letter to House and Senate Democrats, 70 LGBTQ and human rights organizations including LGBT Tech and the American Civil Liberties Union wrote in opposition to KOSA, in part because of past comments from Blackburn. 

In March, during an event organized by the Palmetto Family Council, a conservative Christian organization, Blackburn said “protecting minor children from the transgender in this culture” is a top priority of conservative lawmakers during an interview where she also touted KOSA as a way to shield children from content “they are emotionally not mature enough to handle,” according to a video from the event published in September by Family Policy Alliance, another conservative group.   

Some LGBTQ rights advocates have characterized Blackburn’s remarks from the event as an admission that the bill is meant to censor LGBTQ content. 

“Marsha Blackburn is basically saying that [KOSA] would help get rid of the transgender content online,” said Alejandra Caraballo, a clinical instructor at Harvard Law School’s Cyberlaw Clinic. “This is clearly what Senator Blackburn wants.” 

In a September post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, Blackburn’s legislative director, Jamie Susskind, said Blackburn’s comments in the Family Policy Alliance video were “two separate issues” being taken out of context. 

“KOSA will not — nor was it designed to — target or censor any individual or community,” she said. 

KOSA’s pathway to becoming law is still unclear. Although the bill has broad bipartisan support in the upper chamber, with nearly half of the Senate listed as a co-sponsor, it has yet to be taken up by the full Senate. It also lacks companion legislation in the House, which has for months been deadlocked over federal spending bills. 

If KOSA were to become law, however, Caraballo said she worries the legislation’s definition of harmful content could be manipulated to include content that touches on LGBTQ issues. Some conservative lawmakers have used data showing disproportionate rates of anxiety and depression among LGBTQ youth to suggest that being LGBTQ is a mental illness in itself. 

Others have argued that young people are increasingly identifying as transgender because they are influenced to do so by social media, a hypothesis that has been challenged by multiple peer-reviewed studies. 

“They can say access to transgender content makes [kids] more likely to be transgender and being transgender” increases the likelihood of becoming depressed or anxious, Caraballo said. “Therefore, exposure to this content is harmful to minors, and social media companies need to do their best to limit access to this content or push their algorithms to deprioritize this kind of content.” 

Janis Whitlock, a researcher at Cornell University who specializes in advancing understanding and support of teen mental health, said it is possible there will be unintended consequences, but the “risk of doing nothing seems larger.” 

Whitlock said Congress should move forward with KOSA and a commitment to arrive at a place that maximizes both youth safety and youth capacity to find communities and connections they need. 

“This is a culmination of human evolution in some of the most amazing ways we created. We’re the first real generation to grapple with the potency of what we created. And our kids are unfortunately the guinea pigs here,” she said. 

Updated at 9:22 a.m.