Fight for the Future

The Big Picture: Bad Ideas About Online Safety Remain Bipartisan, Even as the Likelihood of Passage Fades

Democrats (largely) did the right thing during last week’s hearing by opposing several bad bills. However, they did so (largely) for the wrong reasons. Few members have questioned the underlying logic of censoring the internet and compromising everyone’s privacy in the name of keeping kids safe online. On a more positive note, AOC provided strong testimony against this deeply flawed framework in general and online ID checks in particular.

By cutting Democrats out of negotiations on these bills, House Republicans have made it much less likely for these bills to reach the threshold necessary to pass the Senate. But we are still a long way from defeating the bad ideas that are so often at the heart of bad internet bills.

What Actually Moved Out of Committee and What’s Next?

Three children’s online safety bills move out of committee: Sammy’s Law, the App Store Accountability Act, and the KIDS Act. The KIDS Act combines several, mostly bad, bills with the House version of KOSA. Only Sammy’s Law received any Democratic support, but most Democrats opposed it.

The Rules Committee, controlled by House GOP leadership, will now decide how, when and if these bills are voted on by the House. Any bills that pass the House have to also be passed by the Senate and any changes reconciled and voted on again before final passage. Fight for the Future is pushing actions against the KIDS Act and other dangerous bills at badinternetbills.com!

H.R. 2657, Sammy’s Law was reported to the full House as amended by a roll call vote of 36 yeas – 16 nays.

  • Deeply concerning bill that threatens the privacy of users while requiring companies to determine who is the parent or legal guardian of minor users.

H.R. 3149, App Store Accountability Act was reported to the full House as amended by a roll call vote of 26 yeas – 23 nays.

  • This bill combines mandatory app store level age verification with highly invasive parental controls.

H.R. 7757, Kids Internet and Digital Safety (KIDS) Act, was reported to the full House as amended by a roll call vote of 28 yeas – 24 nays.

This is the big package of bills, and each sub-bill has its own section.

SCREEN Act:

  • Slightly more coherent than before but massive drafting issues remain. Still a sweeping and terrible AV mandate.

KOSA:

  • Notable change: a rule of construction is included that explicitly disavows that the bill creates a duty of care. Exact effect of core provisions still unclear, but the rift over the DoC has never been more apparent.
  • The knowledge standard is now actual knowledge, meaning that platforms do not have a responsibility to find out if a user is a minor.
  • Vagueness opens the door for the FTC to abuse its enforcement authority.

Safe Messaging for Kids:

  • Has actually become worse over the last few months, now outright bans anyone under 13 from using any messaging feature except mobile phone SMS. Ephemeral messaging ban for minors remains.

SPY Kids Act:

  • Bans product and market research on users known to be minors. The actual knowledge standard here means it doesn’t incentivize gathering more data on users and should be good if narrow.

Safer GAMING Act:

  • Strong parental control requirement for chat functions in online games. Actual knowledge standard makes this relatively benign. The definition of “covered communication tool” is so broad that it could conceivably be applied to any feature of any online game.

SAFE BOTS Act:

  • Requires some disclosures and warnings from chat bots to users known to be minors. Actual knowledge, again, makes this somewhat benign even if enforcement is dubious both on a technical and constitutional level.