Fight for the Future

2 pager: Human Rights Concerns on 18 Bills in House CMT Kids Safety Hearing

Kids Online Safety: Dangerous Solutions

The Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade Subcommittee is considering 18 bills on December 11, 2025. These bills purport to address children’s online safety, but many of them include dangerous proposals like age verification mandates, invasive parental controls, and sweeping preemption of state laws.

Age Verification

We oppose government age verification mandates because they would expand surveillance, enable censorship, and expose sensitive user data to breaches. The right to privacy is the basis of personal and political freedom, and requiring Americans identity to be associated with specific online activity is a violation of that right. Requiring companies to implement age verification would put sensitive user data into the hands of every app and website, increasing the risk posed by ubiquitous data breaches. Allowing the government to age gate content and track who accesses it poses a major threat to free expression, with abortion information and LGBTQ content the most likely targets under the current administration.

Bills that have this problem include:

  • H.R. 3149, App Store Accountability Act
  • H.R. 1623, Shielding Children’s Retinas from Egregious Exposure on the Net (SCREEN) Act

Parental Control

Parental tools are, by necessity, something that enables one user to control another user’s activity. This control has to be against the wishes of the minor user when necessary. These tools also often comes with some degree of surveillance over aspects of what the user is doing on their account. This control and surveillance could be abused, and therefore access should be limited. Bills requiring these tools do limit their access to parents or legal guardians, but platforms are not well situated for making the determination of who has parental rights. Mistakes could put these tools in the hands of an abusive parent who has lost their rights, an abusive ex who no longer has guardian rights, or simply a bad actor – including a predator – that fooled the system. Bills that mandate parental tools must provide for safeguards against their abuse, or the passage of these laws will cause new types of harm.

Bills that have this problem include:

  • H.R. 2657, Sammy’s Law
  • H.R. 6257, Safe Messaging for Kids Act
  • H.R. 6265, Safer Guarding of Adolescents from Malicious Interactions on Network Games (GAMING) Act
  • H.R. 3149, App Store Accountability Act

Preemption

We are strongly against preemption when it comes to defending human rights. Many states have done what Congress refuses to: pass meaningful laws that increase privacy and protect rights in the face of rapidly advancing surveillance technologies. These laws shield everyday people from the constant tracking of where we go, our routines, how we spend, who we associate with, and what we do with our time. Preemption undoes all that work. It lowers the ceiling for privacy and protections, rather than raising the floor. We think that when it comes to privacy and human rights, preemption in general takes away people’s protections under state laws and destroys the work of local advocates and local communities.

Bills that have this problem include:

  • H.R. 6291, Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act
  • H.R. 6484, Kids Online Safety Act
  • H.R. 2657, Sammy’s Law
  • H.R. 3149, App Store Accountability Act
  • H.R. 6265, Safer Guarding of Adolescents from Malicious Interactions on Network Games (GAMING) Act
  • H.R. 6273, Stop Profiling Youth and (SPY) Kids Act
  • H.R. 6257, Safe Messaging for Kids Act

#Bill Specific Concerns

H.R.____, Kids Online Safety Act

The removal of the Duty of Care is a positive step but we are unclear as to how the new Section 3 will function. Under some interpretations it could still lead to state regulation of speech if the FTC or state AGs can influence the contents of the policy required. Depending on how the government exerts this influence, (c) (2) may not prevent this influence over speech.

H.R. 2657, Sammy’s Law

While we are generally in favor of interoperability, competition, and options in software, we are very concerned with how this bill implements these ideas. Especially in regards to the security and privacy risks in transferring sensitive data, and the risks inherent in the parental tools as outlined above. We are also concerned that a politicized FTC could use it’s authority over third party registrants to show preference to companies that push certain ideologies or are owned by politically favored persons.

H.R. 1623, Shielding Children’s Retinas from Egregious Exposure on the Net (SCREEN) Act

The covered platform definition in this bill is so broad that it could include ISPs as well as much of the Internet. This bill would also impact the use of VPNs in an overbroad way, and would likely to apply to VPN users worldwide because they are presumed to be in the US under the Act.

H.R. 6257, Safe Messaging for Kids Act

We are against this bills ban of ephemeral messaging. Ephemeral messaging provides added privacy and harm reduction to users. It’s inclusion also implies that parents and platforms should have access to the contents of minors messages, which we strongly oppose. We also oppose the absolute control this bill requires for parents over minor account settings. This will potentially burden parents and will also infringe upon the rights of minors in many instances.