The U.S. Senate passed the Kids Online Safety Act on Tuesday. If the bill is approved in the House, it will mark the first time in 25 years that Congress has passed a law aimed to better protect children from dangers online. Stephanie Sy has a closer look at the plan with Ava Smithing of the Young People’s Alliance, an organization promoting youth advocacy.
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Geoff Bennett: The U.S. Senate today passed the Kids Online Safety Act by a vote of 91-3. If the bill passes the House, it will mark the first time in 25 years that Congress has passed a bill aimed at better protecting children from dangers online. Stephanie Sy has our coverage.
Stephanie Sy: In a 2023 survey, 65 percent of kids in the U.S. reported experiencing an online risk, ranging from misinformation and graphic violence to hate speech. Among other things, the act, dubbed KOSA, establishes duty of care. That's a legal term requiring social media companies and other platforms, like gaming sites, to reasonably mitigate harm. Companies would have to disable addictive content and limit features that extend the time spent on platforms. It allows kids to opt out of personalized algorithm recommendations and limits others from communicating directly with children. But some are concerned the bill violates First Amendment freedoms, could lead to censorship, and could prevent marginalized individuals from getting important information. For a closer look, I'm joined by Ava Smithing of the Young People's Alliance, which supported KOSA's passing. Ava, thanks so much for being on the "News Hour." There are a wide range of threats to kids we have covered on this program, from sextortion to harmful content. How much can we expect this bill to do to actually protect kids online?
Ava Smithing, Young People’s Alliance: Well, there's a couple reasons I think this bill will be incredibly effective at protecting kids online. The first is one you mentioned with the duty of care. That would place the onus on the tech companies to design and implement features which are healthy for these kids. The second thing is a risk assessment and audit. We all have our taxes audited annually, and in every other industry, before we put a product out, we make sure that that product is safe for the consumption by minors and for minors. And that is another thing that this act will set up is to ensure there's a third-party audit and risk assessment on social media companies so that they're designed and implemented in a safer way.
Stephanie Sy: What kind of accountability for tech companies does this bill include? For example, does it hold a social media company legally liable for content that reaches kids?
Ava Smithing: No, social media companies are not legally liable for content that reaches children. This is a protection gifted to them — or — gifted — this is a protection that they received under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. And this bill says that Internet service providers, such as social media companies, can't be held liable for content on their platforms. So this bill does not interfere or impact the way that content is looked at on social media platforms, but rather the design of the features. And it's making sure that the FTC can put forward guidelines on how to safely and properly design these social media platforms. So think about things like the endless scroll. That's a design feature which encourages addiction-like behavior, which is something that they would be held accountable for.
Stephanie Sy: As you know, there are some concerns about this bill from some advocacy groups. I just want to play what the head of TransOhio told us.
Dara Adkison, TransOhio: Well, what concerns me most about the KOSA bill and bills generally seeking to limit the scope of what is accessible on the Internet is who decides what should be accessible and how it's accessible. Being the head of a trans organization in a state where we have actively had legislatures tell us to our faces that they would like to see our Web site and the services that we provide to youth and adults across the state restricted, it's not a leap and a bound and it's anything but hyperbole to see how a bill like KOSA could lead to our Web site and other Web sites being limited in their access in the Internet.
Stephanie Sy: Ava, what do you think about that? Do you see how this law could be weaponized against certain communities, in particular, the trans community?
Ava Smithing: When I initially moved to D.C. and started advocating on behalf of social media reform, me and my organization did not endorse the kids only safety act because we had very, very similar harms — or fears about what the bill could do as this organization does. But, in February, a new version of the bill came out that not only limited the state attorneys general ability to enforce the duty of care, so it is a federal thing and different states cannot do as they please with the bill, but also added the word design feature into the duty of care, which says companies need to exercise reasonable care through the implementation of design features, so further proving that the bill is not in fact about content, but rather about the design of these platforms.
Stephanie Sy: There is also, though, some concern about the data collection and age verification requirements of the bill. I want to play for you what the Electronic Frontier Foundation has had to say.
India McKinney, Electronic Frontier Foundation: Platforms are going to have to start collecting a lot more information all of their users to determine which of their users are entitled to this special protection or legally required to have this special protection. And so one of the things that we have seen in our privacy work is that any time platforms collect that type of information, personally identifiable information at scale and have to hold onto it for legal reasons, that becomes a target for theft, for identity theft.
Stephanie Sy: Do you agree with that, Ava? Does the law leave data and privacy vulnerable at all?Ava Smithing: Well, there's a couple of things to address there. The first is that the known standard for age revocation isn't changed in KOSA to anything that did not exist in laws which came before it. The second thing is, as it relates to the data that these companies already collect, all of these companies already know how old you are, what you do, who you are, where you go, who you follow, everything about you, and they utilize that to target you with advertisements. This is no more data than what they collect in their reasonable course of business. And (inaudible) which is now existent in the Kids Online Safety and Privacy Act — the two were combined together for passage — actually addresses those privacy concerns by limiting the amount of data that companies are allowed to collect on young people in the first place.
Stephanie Sy: Ava, you were on social media as a teenager, and I understand it negatively affected you. Can you talk a little bit about that and how you think having a law like this in place would have changed your online experience and maybe even your childhood?
Ava Smithing: Yes, it would have certainly changed my childhood. When I was a young person, about 11 or 12, I first downloaded Instagram and was brought from bikini advertisements to diet culture posts to then eating disorder posts, because the algorithms understood that what I engaged with most is what I would look at and therefore what they could make money from me on. So if a law like this had been in place, I would have only interacted with the content that I deliberately searched for and that I wanted to be seeing online, as opposed to the content that they knew would keep me hooked at the cost of my well-being. So I'm incredibly excited about the Kids Online Safety Act and the possibility it has to protect many other young people from being brought down that rabbit hole to extremism and whatever content they're looking at.
Stephanie Sy: Ava Smithing with the Young People's Alliance, thanks so much for coming on and offering your perspective.