Late last month, a Senate committee considered a 50-page bill with a name that includes the word “kids” and approved it unanimously. Those two facts alone are enough to raise the suspicion that legislators are heading down a winding road toward a destination they only dimly perceive.
That suspicion is amply supported by the text of the Kids Online Safety Act, (KOSA), which ham-handedly aims to shield children and teenagers from vaguely defined dangers lurking on the internet. The unintended but foreseeable results are apt to include invasions of privacy that compromise First Amendment rights and a chilling impact on constitutionally protected speech, both of which will harm adults as well as the “kids” whom the bill is supposed to protect.
KOSA imposes an amorphous “duty of care” on platforms, online games, messaging applications, and streaming services, demanding “reasonable measures” to “protect” against and “mitigate” various “harms” to users younger than 17. The targeted dangers include anxiety, depression, suicide, eating disorders, substance abuse, “addiction-like behaviors,” physical violence, online bullying, harassment, sexual exploitation, and abuse, “financial harms,” and promotion of “narcotic drugs,” tobacco products, alcohol or gambling. [AmmoLand News readers will be shocked to learn that firearms were not directly named in the “targeted dangers.”]
That’s a tall order, and it is not at all clear what meeting this obligation would entail. Nor is it clear when the duty of care applies.
As amended by the Senate Commerce Committee, KOSA applies to any “covered platform” that “knows” its users include minors. But no one knows what “knows” means.
Click the link to read the whole article: Attacks on 1st Amendment
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