2024 was shaping up to be the year Congress regulated how kids engage with social media, particularly through one bill, the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA). A debate about its risks to free expression still raged, but the voices of the bill's advocates seemed to ring loudest in senators' ears. The momentum was there. The Senate vote was virtually unanimous. Then, unexpectedly, House Republican leadership - worried KOSA would make Silicon Valley giants remove more conservative content - let it fade away.
Now, after a hundred chaotic days of the Trump administration, the once-rational bet of new child safety legislation is looking shakier. Parent and youth advocates continue to hammer the urgency of passing bills like KOSA, as well as new regulations to address the proliferation of AI-created nude images of minors. But civil liberties groups - which already feared these bills put marginalized kids at risk - now warn they could give Trump new weapons to wield against speech they disagree with. Meanwhile, some lawmakers wonder if the administration's dramatically weakened regulators can enforce the rules at all.
Nearly four months into 2025, KOSA has yet to be reintroduced in Congress …
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Remember SOPA, the "stop online piracy" act? It was terrible, and it crashed and burned thanks to a public outcry. Then they renamed it the "child abuse prevention act" or something and tried to run the bill with a new title and the exact same contents.
Theres been a few similar bills, and they all have one thing in common. They don't just have the potential to be abused, they were MADE to be abused. Mass online spying and censorship is the goal.
If those bills (or some of the ones targeted at "misinformation") had passed, you would surely be regretting it now that the republicans are in charge of the agencies that execute them. I'm glad it's looking like the republicans in senate aren't stupid enough to pass it either.