Many of these bills would run roughshod over the rights of young people and adults in the process.
There's also good news: so far, none of these dangerous bills have been passed at the federal level, or signed into law.
That's thanks to a large coalition of digital rights groups and other organizations pushing back, as well as tens of thousands of individuals demanding protections for online rights in the many bills put forward.
The biggest danger has come from the Kids Online Safety Act.
As soon as it was reintroduced, we fought back, because KOSA is fundamentally a censorship bill.
Kids don't need to fall into a wormhole of internet content to get anxious; they could see a newspaper on the breakfast table.
Mandatory age verification, and with it, mandatory identity verification, is the wrong approach to protecting young people online.
Liability under the law was shifted to be triggered only for content that online services recommend to users under 18, rather than content that minors specifically search for.
However it's interpreted, it's still censorship-and it fundamentally misunderstands how search works online.
Ultimately, no amendment will change the basic fact that KOSA's duty of care turns what is meant to be a bill about child safety into a censorship bill that will harm the rights of both adult and minor users.
KOSA wasn't the only child safety bill Congress put forward this year.
It includes elements of KOSA as well as several ideas pulled from state bills that have passed this year, such as Utah's surveillance-heavy Social Media Regulations law.
A mandate that social media companies verify the ages of all account holders, including adults A ban on children under age 13 using social media at all A mandate that social media companies obtain parent or guardian consent before minors over 12 years old and under 18 years old may use social media A ban on the data of minors being used to inform a social media platform's content recommendation algorithm The creation of a digital ID pilot program, instituted by the Department of Commerce, for citizens and legal residents, to verify ages and parent/guardian-minor relationships.
In response to criticisms, senators updated the bill to remove some of the most flagrantly unconstitutional provisions: it no longer expressly mandates that social media companies verify the ages of all account holders, including adults.
Nor does it mandate that social media companies obtain parent or guardian consent before teens may use social media.
Still, it remains an unconstitutional bill that replaces parents' choices about what their children can do online with a government-mandated prohibition.
It would still prohibit children under 13 from using any ad-based social media, despite the vast majority of content on social media being lawful speech fully protected by the First Amendment.
If enacted, the bill would suffer a similar fate to a California law struck down in 2011 for violating the First Amendment, which was aimed at restricting minors' access to violent video games.
The threat of KOSA, as well as several similar state-level bills that did pass, has made it clear that young people may be the biggest target for online censorship and surveillance, but they are also a strong weapon against them.
The authors of these bills have good, laudable intentions.
This Cyber News was published on www.eff.org. Publication date: Thu, 28 Dec 2023 16:43:04 +0000