Hearing for tech company CEOs reignites debate over child safety bill

The bipartisan Children's Online Safety Act moving through the Senate comes from a coalition of technology advocates and human rights groups who say the bill could limit children and youth's access to important information online. It's been criticized.

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

Internet safety advocates tout the bill as a way to limit children's exposure to harmful content, such as posts promoting self-harm and eating disorders, while other groups It warns that access to information about gender identity, sexuality and reproductive health may be restricted. Young people.

“It won't make our children safer, and it won't make LGBTQ teens, teens of color, and others safer,” said Aliya Bhatia, a free expression policy analyst at the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT). “It certainly does more harm than good for marginalized teens.” project.

The bill, co-sponsored by Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), would require companies to restrict access and implement features such as automated video playback and algorithmic recommendations. It requires minors to be able to opt out of certain features. . The bill would also legally require technology platforms to prevent the promotion of content on certain topics, including suicide, eating disorders and self-harm.

CDT and other groups opposed to the bill say the bill's duty of care provision, broadly defined as “taking reasonable steps” to mitigate harm, leaves too much open to interpretation. He says he is concerned.

“We are concerned that this bill allows for 50 different interpretations in 50 different states, some of which are “We have already defined or clarified that it is caused simply by exposure to concepts related to dualism, exposure to information related to reproductive health care,” Bhatia said.

He added that a “broader duty of care”, if interpreted by countries, could “lead to a fragmented information environment and ultimately to the detriment of internet users.”

Supporters of the bill have pushed back against claims that KOSA would restrict minors' access to certain information. Haley Hinkle, policy adviser at children's online advocacy group Fairplay, said the measure would only regulate the specific content that platforms promote, not what minors search for.

“KOSA is not about the existence or removal of individual pieces of content, but about how the design and operation of the platform impacts on specific defined harms.KOSA’s duty of care is not about the presence or removal of individual content. “We explicitly protect minors' ability to search for content that includes mitigation resources,” Hinkle said in a statement.

Since its introduction in February 2022, KOSA has undergone multiple edits to address concerns raised by advocacy groups. In a letter to Senate leadership in November 2022., More than 90 human rights and LGBTQ organizations say online services under KOSA will be overly restrictive, as the debate over what information is appropriate for young people stretches from classrooms to Capitol Hill. He said he would be under “pressure”.

The amended bill narrows the definition of duty of care and applies only to a certain list of mental health disorders, including suicidal behavior, 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.

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

At a press conference last week ahead of a hearing with the CEOs of TikTok, Meta, Discord, Snap and He said he is doing so.

“There are some tweaks that we're going to make in response to the concerns, very valid points, that many of these groups have expressed,” he said.

Evan Greer, director of Fight for the Future, said in an email that the changes made to the bill still do not address the concerns raised by the group. The group proposes amending the duty of care provision to apply only to “content-independent design practices” such as autoplay and infinite scrolling features.

Greer said the group welcomes ideas but is looking for a solution that would prevent duty of care from being used to target content at all.

In the months since the revised bill passed the Senate Commerce Committee, LGBTQ and human rights groups have been sounding the alarm about its risks. Seventy LGBTQ and human rights organizations, including LGBT Tech and the American Civil Liberties Union, opposed KOSA in a November letter to House and Senate Democrats, in part because of Blackburn's past comments. I wrote a document to

In March, at an event hosted by the Palmetto Family Council, a conservative Christian group, Blackburn said in an interview that “protecting minor children from transgender people in this culture” is a top priority for conservative lawmakers. KOSA was promoted as a means to achieve this goal. Protecting children from content “is not emotionally mature enough for them,” according to a video of the event released in September by the Family Policy Alliance, another conservative group.

Some LGBTQ rights advocates characterized Blackburn's remarks at the event as an admission that the bill aims to censor LGBTQ content.

“Marcia Blackburn is basically saying, [KOSA] “It will help remove transgender content from online,” said Alejandra Caraballo, a clinical instructor at Harvard Law School's Cyber ​​Law 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 taken out of context. He said it was “two separate issues” that had been interpreted.

“KOSA does not and was not designed to target or censor any individuals or communities,” she said.

The path to legalization of KOSA is still unclear. The bill has broad bipartisan support in the Senate, with nearly half of the Senate listed as co-sponsors, but it has not yet been considered by the full Senate. There has also been a months-long stalemate in the House of Representatives over a federal spending bill, which lacks a companion bill.

But Caraballo said he is concerned that if KOSA becomes law, the law's definition of harmful content could be manipulated to include content that touches on LGBTQ issues. Some conservative politicians have used data showing disproportionate rates of anxiety and depression among LGBTQ youth to suggest that being LGBTQ is itself a mental illness.

Others have argued that social media is causing more young people to identify as transgender, a theory that several peer-reviewed studies challenge.

“When you access transgender content, [kids] “Being transgender and being transgender increases your chances of depression and anxiety,” Caraballo said. “Exposure to this content is therefore harmful to minors, and social media companies must limit access to this content or push their algorithms to deprioritize this type of content. We need to do our best.”

Janice Whitlock, a researcher at Cornell University who specializes in understanding and supporting teen mental health, says that while there may be unintended consequences, “the risks of doing nothing outweigh the risks. It seems big,” he said.

Whitlock said Congress should move forward with KOSA and its commitment to getting to a place that maximizes both the safety of young people and their ability to find the community and connections they need.

“This is the culmination of human evolution in the most amazing way we have ever created. We are the first true generation to embrace the potential of what we have created. And unfortunately, we The children are the guinea pigs here,” she said.