is a senior policy reporter at The Verge, covering the intersection of Silicon Valley and Capitol Hill. She spent 5 years covering tech policy at CNBC, writing about antitrust, privacy, and content moderation reform.
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Last year, the House of Representatives was the place where a leading kids online safety bill came to die. On Tuesday, a powerful House committee positioned itself as the place where that bill could be resurrected… along with 18 other proposals.
During a three-hour hearing, an Energy and Commerce subcommittee discussed 19 bills recently packaged together in an effort to make the internet safer for kids. They include a mix of official and draft legislation, including a reworked version of the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) — the Senate bill that was denied a vote in the House last year after passing 91-3 in the upper chamber — and the App Store Accountability Act, which would federalize an age verification model that’s taken hold in several states.
But so far, the compromise solution lawmakers came up with seems to satisfy no one. KOSA was introduced without its signature element, a “duty of care” for tech platforms to avoid contributing to certain mental health disorders. It added a more expansive preemption standard that bars states from enacting or enforcing any law that relates to the same provisions as the federal bill. And the bills that joined KOSA — particularly the App Store Accountability Act — could prove just as controversial as it has been.
The fiercest advocates for the Senate’s version of KOSA called the House version a “Poison-Pill” and “non-starter”
The fiercest advocates for the Senate’s version of KOSA called the House version a “Poison-Pill” and “non-starter.” Longtime opponents are tepidly glad for the changes, but worry about the replacement language and the new focus on age verification, which poses privacy and surveillance concerns. Everyone seems to be mad at the (already dwindling) prospect of the bills being reportedly lumped together with preemption of state AI regulations, and the rushed package release left both sides with little time to digest the 19 bills the committee dropped just before jetting off for Thanksgiving.
At the start of the hearing, the committee’s House leaders tried to explain their revisions. Without the changes, they said, KOSA could be blocked in court for violating the First Amendment, a fate that’s befallen similar state laws. “A law that gets struck down protects no one,” E&C Chair Brett Guthrie (R-KY) said, echoing insistence from commerce subcommittee chair and KOSA co-sponsor Gus Bilirakis (R-FL) not to “mistake durability for weakness.”
But that was little comfort to many original KOSA supporters in the room, including parents who lost kids after encountering online harms. Deb Schmill, whose teen daughter Becca died from fentanyl poisoning after obtaining drugs with the help of a social media platform, told The Verge she doesn’t buy the representatives’ explanation, but blames House leadership for putting the panel leaders in a “difficult situation.”
“A law that gets struck down protects no one.”
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