A joint bill combining KOSA and COPPA passed the US Senate last week. We consider the implications of it becoming law.

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Could online child safety bills become law in the US?

In a historic 91-3 vote last week, the US Senate passed the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) and Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA 2.0).

For Maurene Molak, who lost her son David to suicide after years of cyberbullying, last week’s passage in the Senate of two bills aimed at child safety online represented “a historic and emotional milestone for myself and for all parents who have fought tirelessly to protect our children from the dangerous environments created by Big Tech,” she said ([link removed] ) .

But to become law, the bills now make their way to the House. Will the House approve them? Or will their passage stall due to concerns over privacy and speech? We break down the latest legislative news.

// Two bills, one vote

The passage of KOSA and COPPA was the most significant restriction on tech platforms ([link removed] ) to clear a chamber of Congress in decades.

- Senator Edward Markey (D-Mass), who led the push to pass the original COPPA bill in the 1990s, said ([link removed] ) , “This is the first time in 26 years that we’ve been able to come back and to put the protections that were needed then, and are even more needed today, on the books.”
- The overwhelming bipartisan support in the Senate is the result of many factors including increasing concern about the harms of social media ([link removed] ) , a Congressional hearing where big tech leaders testified ([link removed] ) , and pressure from a chorus of voices: parents like Molak, teachers, child advocacy groups, and other organizations seeking to build a safer web.

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“We’re simply creating an environment that is safe by design. And at its core, this bill is a product design bill.”

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// The bills

KOSA and COPPA, which were combined into one legislative vehicle called KOSPA, expand online privacy and safety protections for children.

Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA)

KOSA ([link removed] ) was first introduced in 2022, as a direct result of Frances Haugen ([link removed] ) , a Facebook whistleblower and Project Liberty Fellow ([link removed] ) , leaking files showing how Facebook was aware of the harm it caused to teens ([link removed] ) .

- KOSA creates a “duty of care” that places the responsibility on tech companies to ensure their platforms are safe. This means proactively designing their platforms and products in ways that mitigate the risks for minors facing online bullying, sexual exploitation, or other harmful content.
- Beyond the duty of care, KOSA introduces other safeguards, such as preventing unknown adults from being able to communicate with kids, restricting the ability to share minors’ geolocation data, ensuring that kids’ accounts have the strictest level of safety, by default, and requiring independent audits and research ([link removed] ) into how these platforms impact the well-being of kids and teens. It also gives the Federal Trade Commission ([link removed] ) , rather than state attorneys general, who have been busy filing a raft of lawsuits against big tech ([link removed] ) , the ultimate power to sue tech companies over content.

Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA 2.0)

COPPA 2.0 builds on the original COPPA ([link removed] ) , which was passed in 1998 to strengthen child privacy. The 1998 law required that websites and other online services obtain parental consent before collecting data from minors. COPPA 2.0 raises the age of those eligible for protections from 13 to 17 years old.

- Today, advocates like Jonathan Haidt ([link removed] ) , also a Project Liberty Fellow, believe the age of “internet adulthood ([link removed] ) ” should be 16.
- If passed into law, the bill would ban tech companies from targeting kids with advertising and widen parental consent requirements ([link removed] ) .

According to Senator Richard Blumenthal ([link removed] ) (D-CT), COSPA isn’t aimed at blocking users or censoring content. “We’re simply creating an environment that is safe by design. And at its core, this bill is a product design bill,” he said.

// Opposition

The bills have faced opposition for years. As we explored in our series on age verification ([link removed] ) last month, there are fundamental trade-offs between safety, privacy, and speech.

- Critics of online safety bills like KOSA and COPPA 2.0 have raised concerns ([link removed] ) that the duty of care provisions that require platforms to install the strictest safety and privacy settings by default could be used to chill free speech, heighten surveillance, and serve to censor online conversations.
- Before the Senate vote last week, The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sent 300 high school students to Capitol Hill ([link removed] ) to petition lawmakers on the dangers of censoring important online conversations, particularly for groups like LGBTQ+ communities.
- Opponents of the bills are not opposed to child safety. Instead, they believe the laws could have unintended consequences. To stay in compliance, a tech platform might remove or hide content, both raising free speech concerns and prompting objections about who gets to decide what content is unsafe. For example, Fight For The Future ([link removed] ) has argued that KOSA amounts to censorship because there is no consensus about what constitutes inappropriate content ([link removed] ) . LGBTQ+ groups ([link removed] ) have protested that KOSA could not only enable the government to censor LGBTQ+ affirming content by claiming that such content is harmful, but that queer and trans youth would be cut off from online resources.

In a letter to senators ([link removed] ) before the bill was passed, The ACLU, Electronic Frontier Foundation, and LGBT Tech wrote that “this could lead to aggressive filtering of content by companies preventing access to important, First Amendment-protected, educational, and even lifesaving content.”

// No easy road to passage

The bills face an uphill battle to get passed in the US House. Late last week, House Republicans indicated that they had no plans ([link removed] ) to take up the bill. With an upcoming recess and national presidential election, it’s possible the House won’t schedule a vote or could make changes to the bills ([link removed] ) that would require them to go back to the Senate. Given the sensitivity of issues surrounding speech, privacy, and safety, the bills face an uncertain fate.

But for parents who have lost children to the harms online, passage is an imperative. Ian Russell and Christine McComas, who each lost a daughter to suicide, made their case in op-ed in Tech Policy Press ([link removed] ) last week:

“KOSPA will demonstrate US leadership around the world. If enacted, the bill would help pave the way for similar efforts in other countries—like the UK’s newly passed Online Safety Act—and help protect kids across the globe.”

// The voices of kids

KOSA and COPPA 2.0 represent an enormous effort by adults to protect minors from the harms online. But as teenagers themselves descended on Washington last week, some advocated for lawmakers to tread with caution in passing bills that purportedly protected them.

Anjali Verma ([link removed] ) , a high-schooler from Pennsylvania, told senators that after being cyberbullied, the resources she found online had been a major source of support. Better, she argued, to invest in ways to train and educate youths about how to be critical thinkers online than censor content.

“It’s called the Kids Online Safety Act, but they have to consider kids’ voices, and some of us don’t think it will make us safer,” she said.

It’s a reminder of the principle of “nothing about us without us ([link removed] ) .” To build a better and safer web, we need the voices of everyone—even the internet’s youngest users.

Project Liberty News

// Project Liberty founder Frank McCourt spoke to People Magazine

An article in People Magazine ([link removed] ) captured why Frank McCourt believes the bid to buy TikTok will make social media safer for kids.

Other notable headlines

// 🤖 An article in the Wall Street Journal ([link removed] ) reported on a tool to catch students cheating with ChatGPT that OpenAI hasn’t released yet. The technology that can detect text written by artificial intelligence with 99.9% certainty has been debated internally for two years.

// 🏛 A federal judge ruled in a landmark antitrust case that ‘Google Is a Monopolist’, according to an article in The New York Times ([link removed] ) . The ruling on Google’s search dominance was the first antitrust decision of the modern internet era in a case against a technology giant.

// 🤔 End-of-life decisions are difficult and distressing. Could AI help? According to an article in MIT Technology Review ([link removed] ) , ethicists say a “digital psychological twin” could help doctors and family members make decisions for people who can’t speak themselves.

// 📱 The US Justice Department has sued TikTok, alleging violations of kids’ privacy. According to an article in WIRED ([link removed] ) , the social media company now has to contend with a potentially expensive penalty stemming from its policies toward users under 13.

// ⛪ Can a church exist exclusively on the internet? An article in Rest of the World ([link removed] ) went inside the emerging virtual-preaching economy in internet-obsessed Kenya.

// 💬 What do people really ask chatbots? According to an article in The Washington Post ([link removed] ) that analyzed thousands of chatbot conversations, it’s a lot of sex and homework.

Partner news & opportunities

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// The Parents’ Network: No Child Lost to Social Media

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