Kids Online Safety Act won’t make teens safer. Leave it to parents
The proposed Kids Online Safety Act, is making its way through Congress. Like much failed legislation, KOSA aspires to a very worthwhile goal — namely protecting our kids from online harms — yet fails miserably in its approach to doing so. As it stands, KOSA will not make our kids any safer online, in fact, it will only undermine their privacy and access to vital online education resources. Moreover, KOSA is a massive government overreach that infringes upon parental autonomy, opens the door to government censorship on ideological grounds and will worsen the quality of online services for everyone.
…
More worrying is the power for censorship that KOSA would bestow on government bureaucrats. Under KOSA as proposed, Lina Khan’s Federal Trade Commission and the Democratic state Attorneys General would have the power to decide which content is and is not harmful for our kids — opening the door to suppression of conservative viewpoints and dissent on ideological grounds. At the same time, Khan and her cronies could decide that certain kinds of content we find inappropriate for kids is perfectly acceptable. It’s a power the government must not have, and precisely the kind of situation the founding fathers sought to avoid when they prohibited the government from making speech determinations.