Late last week, the Senate released yet another version of the Kids Online Safety Act, written, reportedly, with the assistance of X CEO Linda Yaccarino in a flawed attempt to address the critical free speech issues inherent in the bill. This last minute draft remains, at its core, an unconstitutional censorship bill that threatens the online speech and privacy rights of all internet users. TELL CONGRESS: VOTE NO ON KOSA no kosa in last minute funding bills Update Fails to Protect Users from Censorship or Platforms from Liability The most important update, according to its authors, supposedly minimizes the impact of the bill on free speech. As we’ve said before, KOSA’s “duty of care” section is its biggest problem, as it would force a broad swath of online services to make policy changes based on the content of online speech. Though the bill’s authors inaccurately claim KOSA only regulates designs of platforms, not speech, the list of harms it enumerates—eating disorders, substance use disorders, and suicidal behaviors, for example—are not caused by the design of a platform. The authors have failed to grasp the difference between immunizing individual expression and protecting a platform from the liability that KOSA would place on it. KOSA is likely to actually increase the risks to children, because it will prevent them from accessing online resources about topics like addiction, eating disorders, and bullying. It will result in services imposing[…]
Because that’s not really the point of it. It’s the excuse used to get it passed.