A Major 'Online Safety' Bill Cleared a Senate Committee. More Crackdowns on Internet Freedom Could Be Coming.
The Senate Commerce committee advanced four bills related to online and AI safety in the name of protecting children.
The bipartisan push to restrict internet freedom is gaining momentum.
On Wednesday, the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee voted on five bills related to online safety and AI, including the Shielding Children's Retinas from Egregious Exposure on the Net (SCREEN) Act and Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), which free speech advocates have warned would threaten online privacy and freedom.
The SCREEN Act, introduced by Sen. Mike Lee (R–Utah), would require pornography websites to block minors using age verification. The bill states that "shielding minors from access to online pornographic content is a compelling government interest" and its proposed measures are the "least restrictive means for Congress" to achieve this goal. Simple age attestation on a website (entering a birthday) is not enough to shield children's retinas; companies must verify IP addresses as well.
Such verification measures would effectively "force millions of adult internet users to give up their anonymity, privacy, and security before they access lawful speech," according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). The online freedom organization also notes that the bill does not just apply to minors. EFF warns, "If websites and apps are expected to reliably identify teenagers, adults will be asked to prove they are adults."
Despite these privacy concerns, a majority of the committee voted in favor of the SCREEN Act, but the bill did not advance because the members did not meet quorum. The committee did, however, unanimously support KOSA, another online safety bill that free speech lawyer Ari Cohn called a "constitutional fiasco."
"It imposes what courts have refused—on First Amendment grounds—to impose for decades: a duty to protect listeners from subjective, unknowable reactions to constitutionally protected speech," Cohn wrote on Wednesday.
KOSA, which Congress has considered in various forms since 2022, requires "covered online platforms" like social media sites and video streaming services to "implement tools and safeguards to protect users and visitors under the age of 17." The most recent version of Sen. Marsha Blackburn's (R–Tenn.) bill is expected to pass, but could face opposition from the House of Representatives, reports The Hill. The main point of disagreement between the two chambers is a "duty of care" measure, which would require social media companies to "prevent and mitigate certain harms that they know their platforms and products are causing to young users." An FAQ page by cosponsor Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D–Conn.) claims the "Kids Online Safety Act would not censor, block, or remove any content from the internet," and that the duty of care "requires social media companies to prevent and mitigate certain harms that they know their platforms and products are causing to young users as a result of their own design choices." But, as the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression has noted, "design features" can be "broadly defined to include any feature of the platform that would cause minors to spend time on it."
The committee's children's safety push did not end with KOSA. The committee also advanced a bill that would require users under 18 to get parental consent before using chatbots, and another "requiring AI companies to implement critical privacy safeguards" on chatbots. It also supported the Children's Artificial Intelligence Toy Safety Act, which would require the Federal Trade Commission to make a plan to "address" the potential harms from AI-enabled toy products and would require the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to conduct a comprehensive study about the potential harms of AI-enabled toys. The committee reportedly planned to mark up additional AI bills, but Sen. Ted Cruz (R–Texas) told Politico last week that the committee moved the markup to September due to a lack of "bipartisan agreement" on the issue.
And there may be even more opportunities for lawmakers to regulate the digital world. On Tuesday, Sen. Ruben Gallego (D–Ariz.) introduced the Parental Approval for Youth Social Media Act, which would "require social media platform providers to obtain parental consent with respect to children creating or maintaining accounts or profiles on their platforms." The bill would also "require platforms to verify users' ages and parental authorization before allowing minors to access social media." As The Hill noted, Gallego was inspired to propose the bill after France banned social media use for children under 15. Gallego wrote on X that the required age to use social media should be higher.
Preventing children from having too much screen time or watching inappropriate content used to be the role of parents. Unfortunately, lawmakers and much of the American public now believe the state is the best arbiter of the online realm. If KOSA and other "online safety" bills become law, the U.S. will join the rest of the Western world in eroding online freedom rather than defending it.