Congress moves forward bad bills that pose an existential threat to free expression and privacy online (and won’t protect kids)
Fight for the Future is a digital rights organization that has been leading coalitions of human rights, LGBTQ, reproductive rights, and digital rights organizations opposed to the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) and mandated online ID checks. They have driven over 400,000 calls and emails to Congress against these bills, and other harmful internet bills, through badinternetbills.com.
Today, a House Energy & Commerce subcommittee moved forward 18 “kids safety” bills, many of which would require or mandate online ID checks or censor content on the internet. Bills like KOSA and the SCREEN Act have been widely opposed by dozens of human rights, LGBTQ, reproductive rights, and tech justice organizations who have been pushing back against the future that Congress has been pushing us to: an internet where you have to flash your ID or submit to a biometric scan in order to access social media and where content online is subject to direct government censorship.
You can find more in-depth analysis of Fight for the Future’s concerns with these bills here: https://www.fightforthefuture.org/news/2025-12-11-2-pager-human-rights-concerns-on-18-bills-in-house-cmt-kids-safety-hearing/
Almost every bill was passed via voice vote, meaning that the public will not have record on whether or not their representative voted in favor of each bill. Because of last-minute amendments and the subcommittee failing to inform the public of this hearing until less than 48 hours before the subcommittee vote, civil society and the communities that deeply care about this issue have had poor visibility into this process.
“Congress is once again doing political theater instead of actually meaningfully regulating the business model of Big Tech companies,” said Sarah Philips, campaigner at Fight for the Future. “Rather than listening to experts and advocates, Congress is wasting our time by pushing bills that would be a disaster for the functionality of the internet and for free expression online. Young people have been calling and emailing Congress on this issue for years, and have been rallying around the world against proposals to fence them off from the internet for a reason. They can see through these efforts. They know more censorship and surveillance, more data collection for companies, and all of us having to turn over ID in order to interact online is not safety. We’ve had hearing after hearing on this issue for the last few years instead of actually moving against the tide of tech corporate power that is making our future unlivable and exploiting our data for profit. We want to protect kids, but we want those proposals to actually do the work, instead of just making an easy headline for Congressional leadership. Anyone in Congress still pushing censorship and surveillance bills under the facade of kids safety has failed us.”
Fight for the Future has pushed over 3000 calls in opposition to these bills, in just the last two weeks. These bills still have to move through House Energy & Commerce committee in order to pass in the House.
“We want to be clear: there are could be good proposals mixed in here with the bad, but because of the dysfunction of Congress and lawmakers’ refusal to get buy-in on making this legislation work, we have to focus on fighting back against a package of bills that could age-gate the internet and give censorship powers to a Trump FTC. We are unable to view these bills in a vacuum, because the larger effort behind these bills would be a death knell for online communities,” said Philips.