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KOSA, the KIDS Act, AI, Bad Internet Bills, and a potential giveaway to big tech (UPDATED)

Just say no to bills that age restrict, censor, and surveil the internet!

Jon

• 16 min read
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A red circle and a slash over the words KIDS Act, KOSA, SCREEN Act

Originally published June 24; last major update June 30, after the vote. See the Update Log at the bottom for the edit history.

"The House passed a bipartisan package of children’s online safety bills in a 267-117 vote Monday, advancing legislation that supporters say would better protect children online but critics warn could threaten privacy and free expression."

– Kids online safety package clears House, drawing warnings from digital rights and tech groups, Angela Yang, NBC News

As one of those critics, all I can say is ... bummer. And I'm not the only one who thinks so.

"The restrictions from the KIDS Act are extremely harmful for youth, especially vulnerable youth who rely on social media for connectivity, support systems and exposure to alternative viewpoints."

– How the KOSA and KIDS Acts will Harm Vulnerable Teenagers, Zane Miller, National Youth Rights Association
"Buried inside the KIDS Act are provisions that will push online services to verify all users’ ages, require government-directed moderation policies for online speech, and even create new rules about private and encrypted communications. While supporters continue to claim this bill protects minors online, its requirements come at the expense of privacy, free expression, and the ability of people of all ages to use the internet without revealing sensitive data."

–  The KIDS Act Would Require Age Checks To Get Online, Joe Mullin, EFF

It really is a bummer.

More positively, though, the KIDS Act isn't going anywhere in the Senate. Tthey're working on "kids safety" legislation as well, including their own version of KOSA (one of the many bad internet bills bundled into the KIDS Act) and hate hate hate the House version. So while the House vote is disappointing, it also wasn't unexpected, and one way of looking at it is the House staking out a position for cross-chamber negotiations later in the session.

In 2022 and 2024 the battles over KOSA and other bad internet bills continued into December, with various shenanigans trying to get bills attached to "must-pass" bills like the NDAA, and it'll probably happen this year as well. Legislators are under a lot of pressure to pass something to "protect the children" and "hold big tech accountable", and big tech and their pals in anti-LGBTQIA2S+ hate groups are cranking up the lobbying. Then again, fierce activism kept anything from passing in 2022 and 2024, and we've certainly got a chance to do the same this year.

So buckle up for the long haul, and let's dig in to the complex situation.

If don't have time for the complexity right now and just want to take action, Fight for the Future's Bad Internet Bills make it easy to contact your legislators about the KIDS Act, KOSA, and other bad internet bills. .

Or, call the US Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3124, and ask your Senator to vote NO on the KIDS Act (HR 7757), the Senate version of KOSA (S. 1748), the App Store Accountability Act, and any other bill that age restricts, censors and surveils the internet.

To follow the action on KOSA, the KIDS Act, and other Bad Internet Bills, I've set up a couple of custom feeds using graze.social. You can check these whether or not you've got an account; if you're on Blacksy, Eurosky, Bluesky or some other social network in the Atmosphere, you can also follow them just like any other custom feed.

  • KOSA/Bad Internet Bills (also available on mu.social and Bluesky) has a broad selection of posts related to KOSA, the KIDS Act, other bad internet bills, and age verification in general
  • KOSA/KIDS Act (curated) (also on mu.social and Bluesky) has a curated subset of these posts, primarily from a list of about 20 organizations, legal experts, journalists, and activists focused on digital rights, human rights (including youth rights and LGBTQIA2S+ rights), civil liberties, and civil rights

Contents

A lot has happened in the last two weeks

"Yesterday, Meta dropped its opposition to KOSA after reports that it is being packaged by the White House with AI preemption and the App Store Accountability Act, two bills that Meta has lobbied for. Meta now joins Microsoft, Apple, X, Snap, and Pinterest in supporting KOSA, while much of civil society and the city of Boston opposes."

–Meta Latest Big Tech Company to Back KOSA, exposing hypocrisy of “accountability” bill, Fight for the Future, June 17
"House lawmakers announced a bipartisan deal on a package for protecting kids online on Monday... The Kids Internet and Digital Safety, or KIDS, Act includes portions from the landmark Kids Online Safety Act, dubbed KOSA ... along with 13 other kids safety-related bills.

While the package now could pass with bipartisan support in the House, senators leading their own KOSA effort suggested it will be dead on arrival in the upper chamber."

– House unveils bipartisan kids online safety deal, Miranda Nazzaro, The Hill, June 22

Let's start with the KIDS Act, officially known as H.R. 7757. The KIDS Act is a combination of over a dozen different bills, including the House version of the anti-LGBTQIA2S+ KOSA; the anti-LGBTQIA2S+ SCREEN Act requiring age verification for "sexual material harmful to minors"; an updated version of the Childrens and Teens Online Privacy Protection Act (CTOPPA, also sometimes known as COPPA 2.0; and more.1

The House's vote this week was under a suspension of the rules, which limits debate to 40 minutes and means the bill doesn't have to go through the Rules committee but requires a 2/3 majority to pass. That means Democrats could easily have blocked it block it. But Minority leader Hakeem Jeffries calls KOSA a "step in the right direction". Influential Democrats like House Energy & Commerce Ranking Member Frank Pallone support the KIDS Act and the House version of KOSA. So does Washington state's Kim Schrier, who laughably claims that a bill Meta, Microsoft, Apple, X, Snap, and Pinterest (and OpenAI too) all support will "hold big tech accountable." Yeah right.

So less than half 192 House Democrats who are members of the Congressional Equality Caucus followed up on their "Happy Pride" posts by actually opposing anti-LGBTQIA2S+ legislation. And while I appreciate all the "no" votes from Democrats, some of them made it clear that it was only because they supported the Senate's version of KOSA – which is also a bad internet bill.

Back in March, Republicans on the House Energy & Commerce Committee advanced the KIDS Act on a straight party-line vote. At the time, Democrats on the House committee opposed it, objecting both to dropping the "duty of care" requirement (a centerpiece of the Senate version of KOSA) and to provisions in the bill that would preempt state child safety legislation.2

The version of the KIDS Act the House passed has some improvements in the preemption language.3 It also bundles in some new protections for kids and teens privacy, by including CTOPPA (also known as COPPA 2.0). That was enough to get at least some key House Dems on board for this anti-LGBTQIA2S+ internet censorship and surveillance bill, even though there still isn't a duty of care.3.5

For more on why age verification laws and KOSA are anti-LGBTQIA2S+, check out Evan Greer and Janus Rose's Why Are Some Democrats Backing MAGA’s Anti-LGBTQ+ Censorship? on Teen Vogue; Rindala Alajaji and Paige Collings' Age-Verification Laws Seek to Erase LGBTQ+ Identity from the Internet in Ms Magazine; and the letter from 90 civil rights and privacy organizations condemning ID-checking bills, which also discusses how age verification is especially burdensome on other marginalized communities.

Meanwhile in the Senate ...

One thing that hasn't changed since March, though, is that supporters of the Senate version of KOSA still hate hate hate the House version and wish it didn't exist. As Gabby Miller reports for Politico in Key Democrats urge House to reject kids’ safety proposal:

"The Commerce Committee’s top Democrat Maria Cantwell and Sen. Richard Blumenthal warned House lawmakers against advancing their chamber’s version of the Kids Online Safety Act, arguing it would face intense lobbying from tech companies in the Senate and risk unraveling years of bipartisan work.

“If it is passed by the House it will come to the Senate,” Blumenthal, the bill’s Senate cosponsor, told reporters at a Friday press briefing. The Connecticut Democrat said he is concerned senators will be influenced by the tech industry’s “armies of lawyers and lobbyists” who may “confuse and exploit” misunderstandings about a House bill with the same name as a Senate version but excludes key provisions, such as the “duty of care.”"

Oh noes! The Democratic sponsor of the bill that Meta, Microsoft, Apple, X, Snap, Pinterest, and OpenAI all support is very concerned that the House version of the bill is too friendly to big tech and his colleagues might get influenced by the tech industry!

Heaven forbid.

But the Senate isn't just sitting still. Instead, they're working on their own legislation.

  • the Senate Commerce Committee is expected to hold a markup on their version of KOSA in mid-July. They might also mark up their version of CTOPPA , the SCREEN Act, and the App Store Accountability Act age verification bill.4
  • Senate Judiciary has already announced a July 28 hearing on child safety.4.1
  • Ben Brody of Punchbowl News reports that Ted Cruz is working on his own package combining kids safety bills with preempting state AI legislation.

And if that's not enough, KOSA co-sponsor Sen. Marsha Blackburn is negotiating with the Trump administration on a package that would combine kids safety legislation with preempting some state AI laws.4.2 With momentum building in cities and states across the country (including here in Washington!) for strong regulation of AI, big tech realllly wants their allies in DC to help them out. And the anti-LGBTQIA2S+ aspects of KOSA and age verification laws like ASAA are an added bonus for Mark F—ing Zuckerberg and Apartheid Clyde as well as the Heritage Foundation and the the anti-LGBTQIA2S+ groups like the far-right NCOSE who masquerade as "child safety" groups.

KOSA and CTOPPA are already very friendly to big tech, so I can certainly see why they want to bundle them up with preempting state AI regulation into one big giveaway ... it's kind of like watching pigs feeding at a trough. It's not just the Senate; in the House, last month's discussion draft for House AI regulation also proposed preempting state laws,4.3 and the House Energy & Commerce Committee advanced their own version of the App Store Accountability Act separately in March, so it's also eligible for a House floor vote.

That said, there really are huge differences between the House and Senate versions of KOSA, so even if the Senate does wind up passing the House might well reject it. And looking at the whole package that Blackburn is working on with the administration (or a potential package involving AI in the House), especially with the widespread bipartisan loathing of data centers and Flock cameras I'd like to think legislators who are skeptical of big tech would think long and hard before supporting anything that preempts state-level laws. Indeed, Ashley Gold reports for Axios that kids' online safety advocacy groups are uncomfortable with the AI preemption aspect, and different factions within the White House are divided. And let's not forget that the Taxpayers' Protection Alliance coalition of conservative groups pushing back on the App Store Accountability Act because of the dangers of age verification as well as the Senate's version of KOSA because of concerns about censorship.

Then again, lawmakers in both parties really want to pass something. So we shall see.

The KIDS Act would lead to platforms requiring age verification

"Supporters of KOSA have said the bill doesn’t require age verification. And technically, the KOSA section of the bill does say that KOSA shouldn’t be read to require age verification. 

But if you read the rest of the bill, that disclaimer starts to look hollow."

– EFF's The KIDS Act Would Require Age Checks To Get Online

Some age verification bills, like the ASAA or Washington state's failed HB 2112 from last session, are explicit about their requirements. The KIDS Act doesn't make age verification an explicit requirement, but the way the bill is worded means that (if it passes) in practice platforms will need to do age verification to protect themselves from liability.

As EFF explains, the key here is that KOSA and other sections of the KIDS Act require website operators to provide additional protection if the website "knows or should have known" a user is under a specified age.

"If an online service gets it wrong, it’s going to be up to courts and regulators to decide, after the fact, if an online service “should” have known a user was 16. 

To try to avoid liability, services will have to determine which users are teenagers and which are not. Most won’t be able to simply trust their users. They’ll have to collect more information about age, before any lawsuit or government action arises. Some companies may respond by requesting driver's licenses or passports. Others will rely on age-estimation systems that attempt to guess users' ages by looking at existing activity or doing facial scans. Existing estimation systems make mistakes when estimating children’s ages correctly, which is a big problem when that is the population KOSA is trying to protect. And the systems fail more frequently for people of color, people with disabilities, and trans and nonbinary people."

There was similarly masked language in a bill here in Washington state this last year, and it was very hard to get legislators to understand the implications. How many people in Congress understand? Your guess is as good as mine.

Age verification is surveillance

""Age verification" means that everyone who does anything online will have to submit to fine-grained tracking and recording of all their online activities. This nightmare is the surveillance advertising industry's fondest dream, a world where it's literally illegal to avoid their tracking, all in the name of saving kids…from them!"

– Spying on kids to save kids from spying is very, very stupid, Cory Doctorow, Pluralistic

There are a lot of good reasons to be against age verification laws. For example:

The list goes on ...

In addition to all these other problems, age verification is surveillance. Most platforms rely on third-party age verification providers like Yoti and Persona, who then proceed to share whatever data they want with literally hundreds of other companies and government agencies. For example:

  • Persona (whose investors include Peter Thiel of Palantir) embarrassingly leaked their source code earlier this year, revealing that the software preform up to 269 distinct verification checks, including facial recognition matching against watchlists, Aadhaar database checks, and deep browser fingerprinting.5
  • Papers, Please: A First Look at Age Verification on the Web reports that for sites that using Yoti, "Some of the IP, OS and browser metadata may be sent to credit card companies and IP geolocation services, while ID information may be sent to a known data broker, or another verification service" – and enough of the data gets sent that "fourth parties" like Stripe can know the names of users who visit specific sites.

And it's not just kids' and teens' data that gets fed into this surveillance system. – Taxpayers' Protection Alliance Coalition says in their Letter opposing ASAA and KOSA regulations

"The ASAA would require age verification, a process that would require users of all ages to submit extensive personal information to digital databases, where that information would be exposed to hacks or data breaches. This would threaten the privacy and data security of Americans of all ages."

Of course, big tech companies like Meta and Open AI are a key part of the surveillance-industrial complex, and make their money by exploiting people's private data, so see this as a plus. No wonder they support this legislation!

Reading the political tea leaves

"it's very possible the House will pass their bad version of KOSA. It's different than the Senate's bad version, though, and there is a very good chance they will be unable to reconcile the differences. We have to keep the pressure on."

-- Evan Greer of Fight for the Future, on Bluesky, June 26 (before the vote)

Like Evan, I wasn't surprised that the House passed the KIDS Act; they wouldn't consider it under suspension of the rules unless they think they have the votes. And although the situation in the Senate is murkier, it's certainly possible they'll pass something – KOSA has 80+ Senate co-sponsors. Even if that happens, though, it's not clear the House will agree.

So that leaves a few options for legislators who want to pass something

  • A "compromise" between the two big-tech-friendly, anti-LGBTQIA2S+ internet surveillance and censorship packages, which could then be passed by both Houses – or attached to the NDAA. The thing is, the House version was already pitched as a compromise, and the Senate has responded with a massive raspberry, so how much more flexibility is there?
  • Breaking off bits and pieces, and trying to pass individual bad internet bills like the SCREEN Act, CTOPPA, the App Store Accountability Act (or attach them to the NDAA – as Axios repors the Senate Judiciary is looking at doing with the STOP CSAM Act and the NDAA.

It really is a complex situation – from an organizing perspective as well as a legislative perspective.

So stay tuned!

And as well as staying tuned, please take action!

Fight for the Future's Bad Internet Bills page makes it easy to contact your legislators about the KIDS Act and KOSA.

Or, call the US Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3124, and ask your Senator to vote NO on the KIDS Act (HR 7757), the Senate version of KOSA (S. 1748), the App Store Accountability Act, and any other bill that age restricts, censors and surveils the internet.

Notes

1 The KIDS Act also includes

  • the SAFE BOTS Act with some very limited disclosure requirements for chatbots – and language that in practice is likely to require age verification
  • the Safer GAMING Act requiring strong parental controls in video games – and more language that in practice is likely to require age verification
  • the SPY Kids Act, which bans product and market research on users known to be minors
  • and several bills funding research and education in kids safety online.

Fight for the Future's The Big Picture: Bad Ideas About Online Safety Remain Bipartisan and IAPP's US Energy and Commerce Committee advances KIDS Act to full House vote have more on the March version of the KIDS Act.

Note that there have been some changes in the latest version. For example, the Safer GAMING Act and the SAFE BOTS Act have shifted from an "actual knowledge" standard (where companies are only liable if they know that a user is a minor) to a "knows or should have known" standard; see The KIDS Act will lead to platforms requiring age verification for more on this. Also, the language about preempting state laws has improved; footnote 3 has a brief discussion.

2 In May, a coalition of dozens of state Attorneys General from both parties, also opposed the KIDS Act, similarly objecting both to dropping the duty of care and to the preemption clauses. They haven't weighed in as a coalition yet on the latest version yet as far as I know, it'll be interesting to hear what they have to say.

3 The House bills are now framed as a "floor not a ceiling," and only preempt stronger state laws. That really is an improvement over the earlier version! On the other hand, AOC voted against the KIDS Act and cited New York AG Letitia James' concern about preemption, so it's certainly possible there are still problems.

3.5 On the duty of care, digital rights and LGBTQIA2S+ orgs have pushed back hard because it's likely to lead to platforms censoring content; so have conservative groups. So from that perspective, it's good that there isn't a duty of care in the House version of KOSA (although Senate KOSA sponsors clearly disagree). That said it's not clear whether the House KOSA language is significantly better. As Allison Mollenkamp reports in Kids online safety push clouded by House-Senate divide on Roll Call

"Jenna Leventoff, senior policy counsel with the American Civil Liberties Union, is less sure that the House bill avoids crossing constitutional lines. 

“It still has a vague provision that could lead to the takedown of information. Less information, to be sure, a lot less information,” Leventoff said, going on to add that, “It could be very much carried out like the Senate’s duty of care.”"

EFF discusses their concerns with the House's language in the section on The KIDS Act Pressures Platforms To Police Lawful Speech.

4 See New America's The App Store Accountability Act Poses Serious Concerns for Privacy, Security, and Free Expression, the Taxpayers' Protection Alliance coalition letter for more on the problems with this bill, and Like a Bouncer at a Bookstore: Texas’ App Store Accountability Act is unconstitutional, with the amicus brief from the Internet Society, CDT, and New America's OTI on Texas's very similar SB 2420

4.1 Not long after I first published this article, Owen Dahlkamp of Politico reported hat the White House intervened to let Mark F—ing Zuckerberg and the Google CEO Sundar Pichai off the hook from testifying at this hearing:

"People representing Meta met with White House staff about the hearing in late May and early June, according to three of the people with knowledge of the events.

In discussions with committee staff, Meta and Google representatives expressed concerns that the hearings would only further worsen negative attention arising from recent child online safety litigation, they added.

After a back and forth, the White House agreed to publicly support Grassley’s James T. Woods Act on the condition that Grassley permit lower-profile executives from Meta and Google to testify, according to the same three people."

4.2 Blackburn and the White House have both been trying to prevent states from regulating AI for a while now. Back in 2025, Blackburn sponsored a 5-year moratorium on state AI regulation that seemed for a while like it had a chance, until things fell apart at the last minute and she wound up working with Senators Cantwell and Markey to prevent it from passing. After that, Trump issued an Executive Order preempting state AI legislation in December 2025, although fortunately it doesn't have any legal effect.

4.3 Although as Backlash to Bipartisan AI Omnibus Illustrates Preemption Impasse discusses, the House discussion draft only proposes preempting state laws “specifically regulating the development of any artificial intelligence model.” So Democrats who oppose preemption don't like it, and over 200 state lawmakers have urged Congress to oppose preemption in the House proposal, but also Republicans who want to preempt state regulation in general don't like it because it doesn't go far enough.

5 Persona's CEO says that no Persona customer uses all the possible 269 checks, and that it's Persona's customers (not the company itself) who control the handling and deletion of data ... but none of that is particularly reassuring.

Update log

Ongoing: typo fixes, wordsmithing, adding links

June 24: originally published

June 25: incorporate EFF analysis, new reporting on Senate Judiciary plans

June 26: include quote from Evan Greer on likely prospects, clarify that preemption is now a floor not a ceiling, link to amicus brief on App Store Accountability Act in footnote 4

June 27: emphasize Dems voting for KOSA or KIDS Act are throwing LGBTQIA2S+ people under the bus

June 28-9: rewrite intro to tighten, feature quote from National Youth Rights Association, add table of contents

June 30: update after the House vote, replacing the prediction that they'd probably pass it with the actual result