Kids online safety package clears House, drawing warnings from digital rights and tech groups

The House passed a bipartisan package of children’s online safety bills in a 267-117 vote on Monday, advancing legislation that supporters say will better protect children online but critics warn could threaten privacy and free expression. The bipartisan Kids Internet and Digital Safety (KIDS) Act, championed by its sponsors as a way to protect children online and hold major technology companies accountable, would require new safety features and parental controls on online platforms, restrict the use of minors’ data for targeted advertising, require age verification for pornography websites and establish new rules governing AI chatbots and online games. “This is a major step toward a safer online world for kids, making safety the default, giving parents more tools to protect their children and teens, and holding Big Tech accountable,” the House Committee on Energy and Commerce wrote in a social media post announcing its win. The House package reflects a narrower approach than the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), which was previously approved by the Senate. House lawmakers removed provisions, including a controversial “duty of care” requirement for online platforms, that supporters said would have more aggressively regulated technology companies. The KIDS Act, which was introduced in March, gained traction as social platforms face increasing legal pressure to add more safeguards to ensure children’s safety. Rising scrutiny of platforms’ ability to protect children online has fueled a wave of age-verification laws around the world. Those measures, however, have alarmed privacy advocates, who argue that age-gating the internet affects all users—not just children. “The package of cobbled-together bills is a mess, with different age-gating schemes for different services, using different standards. It’s a lot of complexity, and a lot of legal risk,” Joe Mullin, a senior policy analyst for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights advocacy group, wrote in a blog post last week. “Faced with that, many companies will conclude that the safest option is restrictive age-checking practices across their entire platforms.” Critics, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, argue that systems relying on government-issued identification or biometric age estimation could chill anonymous speech by discouraging users from sharing sensitive information online. Though many websites partner with third-party vendors that claim to delete their data or otherwise keep it secure, recent data breaches have eroded public confidence. For trade groups like NetChoice, which lobbies for tech companies’ free expression and free enterprise on the internet, both bills “are nothing to celebrate.” “All of these bills degrade privacy and security, materially diminish the First Amendment protections that young people and adults have a full right to as Americans, and bring the United States more in line with a global effort to undermine the free and open internet,” Zach Lilly, director of government affairs for NetChoice, wrote in a post on X. He also described the KIDS Act as a “well intentioned bill,” but stated the “House took a major step in asserting federal influence over online speech.” The legislation is expected to face hurdles in the Senate, where some lawmakers have criticized the House package for omitting KOSA’s duty-of-care provision, arguing it weakens protections for children. “The bottom line is that this package has gutted many of the key provisions in the Senate bill necessary to protect kids and their families,” Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., wrote in a statement last week, adding that “it is grouped with another set of bills that also fall short of showing what strong safety measures are needed for kids, and instead inserts many studies at a time when our government needs to do more than just study this problem.” Tech and free speech lawyer Preston Byrne expressed skepticism that lawmakers would be able to pass any type of legislation. “One way to look at the KIDS Act is as a censorship bill, which it is,” Byrne, who is a senior fellow of the Adam Smith Institute in London, and an advisor to the U.K. Free Speech Union, wrote in a post on X. “Another way to look at it is as a middle finger to the Senate and its even worse bill, KOSA. I’m not sure any of this gets worked out in conference between the two chambers.”