TPA coalition letter against KOSA
Dear Speaker Johnson, Leader Schumer, Leader McConnell, and Leader Jeffries,
On behalf of the millions of taxpayers and consumers, we, the undersigned organizations, write to you in opposition to S. 1409/H.R. 7891, the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA). While we applaud your efforts to improve children’s privacy and online safety, KOSA fails to achieve these laudable goals and, in fact, would create greater risks for America’s youth in the technology age.
S. 1409/H.R. 7891, introduced by Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Marsha Blackburn (R Tenn.), alongside Reps. Gus Bilirakis (R-Fla.) and Kathy Castor (D-Fla.), would broadly hold online platforms liable if their design and operation of products and services fails to mitigate wide-ranging societal issues such as mental health, suicide, and addiction. This untenable standard will result in platforms being forced to censor perfectly legal speech, including that of non-minors, fearing the liability repercussions KOSA’s Sec. 102 creates.
To ensure platforms’ compliance, Sec. 105 of KOSA would require public reporting on age-specific statistics for users under seventeen years old. Statutorily requiring the mass collection of aggregate minor user data stands in stark contrast to what laws intending to protect children’s online activity and privacy should do. Moreover, imposing the Sec. 102 Duty of Care standards would also ultimately lead to age verification requirements for platforms, something which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled as having serious First Amendment concerns in ACLU v. Ashcroft (2002) and again in ACLU v. Mukasey (2008).
Online platforms provide a valuable space where discourse around complex issues that range the political spectrum can occur. KOSA’s first version awarded state Attorneys General sweeping powers to subjectively determine the criteria for harms to children. Immediately, interested parties on both sides of the aisle have already floated various ways they could weaponize KOSA (or similar proposals) against speech they dislike, making de facto censorship an almost certain result of the bill’s passage. The second, and most recent approach, to this bill awards vast decision-making authority to regulators at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), an agency under heavy scrutiny for blatant partisanship. The FTC has been the subject of dozens of oversight hearings in the 118th Congress. Simply put, changes to KOSA loosely replace a 50-state regulatory patchwork with a partisan regulatory board at a rogue federal agency.
Regulating the ways children and teens interact with the internet is entirely different, and in many ways opposite, of protecting them. For example, Sec. 103 of KOSA would enact limits on the abilities of minors to communicate with other users. The vague language employed would likely lead to minors being unable to communicate with other minors, as well as adult users, essentially flipping the light switch off on minors’ ability to engage on the internet. If enacted, KOSA would also target platform
design infrastructure such as infinite scrolling and autoplay, placing limits on the amount of content – or in more constitutional terms, free speech – individuals can access.
Protecting children online is a complex and noble endeavor and we applaud your members for trying to undertake this effort. However, considering legislation that would undo the last 30 years of internet regulation by placing the responsibility for protecting children on partisan bureaucrats will fail to protect children and strip civil liberties from Americans of all ages. We urge you to reject advancing KOSA, and instead work towards empowering law enforcement to track and catch online predators and protecting the data privacy of all Americans.
Sincerely,
David Williams
President
Taxpayers Protection Alliance
Tirzah Duren
Vice President of Policy & Research
American Consumer Institute
Jessica Melugin
Director, Center for Technology & Innovation Competitive Enterprise Institute
Yaël Ossowski
Deputy Director
Consumer Choice Center
Mario H. Lopez
President
Hispanic Leadership Fund
Bartlett Cleland
Executive Director
Innovation Economy Institute
Tom Giovanetti
Institute for Policy Innovation*
Douglas Carswell
President & CEO
Mississippi Center for Public Policy
*Organization Listed for Identification Purposes Only
Chris Cargill
President & CEO
Mountain States Policy Center
Pete Sepp
President
National Taxpayers Union
John Tamny
President
Parkview Institute
Daniel J. Erspamer
Chief Executive Officer
Pelican Institute for Public Policy
Josh Withrow
Fellow, Technology & Innovation Policy R Street Institute
Stacie D. Rumenap
President
Stop Child Predators
Vance Ginn, Ph.D.
Former Chief Economist
White House OMB
Casey Given
President
Young Voices