In the final days of the Biden administration and the Democrat-controlled Senate, sponsors of the Kids Online Safety and Privacy Act (KOSPA) are pushing for Congress to ram through a massive bill to give federal bureaucrats the power to oversee social media platforms. The bill, which was re-released with never-before-seen changes on December 7, has not been vetted, is poorly understood, and would create a sprawling regime for censoring conservatives online.
KOSPA has been endorsed by some otherwise sensible people, like the corporate leaders of Elon Musk’s X, but we think it is a very bad idea, as we explain below.
What does KOSPA do?
KOSPA is all about government censorship, masquerading as “protecting the children.” It creates a “duty of care” so that online platforms (loosely, social media) must “mitigate or prevent” any feature that could arguably cause any of various harms, including “patterns of use” that impact “socializing” with peers. If they don’t, they’re subject to legal action.
What kind of “features” must be mitigated? In short, everything. KOSPA defines a “design feature” as literally anything about the platform that might increase the amount of time that someone spends using it. But a useful platform is one that people are more likely to use, so everything counts.
Anything that users find helpful, such as the ability to find people who share their views on a political topic, is a feature that must be “mitigated” because it might increase their time online.
Doesn’t KOSPA Only Prevent “Addictive” Features for Minors? Who’s Censoring Speech?
No, although that’s what the bill’s proponents want you to think. The new, eleventh-hour version of the bill in December 2024 claims to limit the covered features to ones that “a reasonable and prudent person would agree” is “a contributing factor” to a “reasonably foreseeable” harm. But who gets to decide what’s “reasonable” and “foreseeable”? Government bureaucrats!
The bill empowers the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in D.C. to enforce KOSPA’s provisions. It tells the FTC to issue “guidance” to online platforms—and then says it can sue any platform that doesn’t follow the dictates of those unelected bureaucrats, as long as they “allege” that the platform violates KOSPA.1
The FTC that KOSPA puts in charge of “protecting children” online is the same one that the House Judiciary Committee under Republican Chairman Jim Jordan has found to have engaged in “abuse of power, waste of resources, and fear.”2
Even when a Republican-led FTC might not censor the internet, KOSPA has a backup plan: The bill empowers each state attorney general to enforce KOSPA anytime they have “reason to believe” a platform isn’t following KOSPA’s dictates. So, if a blue state AG doesn’t like that a social media platform allows young people to discuss conservative information, he can claim that the “design feature” of allowing minors to access pro-life information hurts their ability to “socialize” with peers or “learn” the state-approved orthodoxy, and he can bring the social media platform to court.
Finally, KOSPA explicitly gives states the right to institute “greater protections” than KOSPA, meaning that a blue state can go even further in its censorship regime and claim federal blessing to do so.3
Will Bureaucrats and Blue-State AGs Really be Able to Attack Free Speech?
Yes. The bill’s proponents claim to prevent this outcome through language in the bill that says KOSPA enforcement can’t be “based upon the viewpoint of users,” but this is insufficient. A blue state AG or an abusive FTC would argue it’s not enforcing based on the “viewpoint,” but based on the “design feature” of having particular “problematic content” show up in search results or newsfeeds. So, if a scared teenager searches for “unplanned pregnancy,” the inclusion of pro-life content could be a “design feature” subject to enforcement even if the content isn’t actually deleted.
In other words, it allows “shadow-banning” content that bureaucrats find objectionable.
But Doesn’t KOSPA Protect Kids Online?
Not at all! Despite impassioned rhetoric from the bill’s proponents, the bill explicitly says that no online platform will be required to do anything to “implement an age gating or age verification functionality.”4 In other words, any teen who wants to evade the parental controls in the bill can simply say they’re an adult and turn off any parental controls.
While KOSPA is toothless when it comes to protecting kids online, it nonetheless empowers Washington, D.C. bureaucrats and leftist state government officials to police the internet for anything they claim could hurt a minor’s “socialization,” impact their “sleep,” or cause “anxiety.” The result would be nothing but politicized censorship.
KOSPA Sets a Dangerous Precedent for Disfavored Products
In a section entitled “transparency,” KOSPA requires that social media platforms publicly issue reports every year about the alleged harms of their products. They don’t even put this together themselves—the bill requires that they pay an “independent third party” to complete the assessment. In addition to requiring detailed disclosure of user data, KOSPA also requires an assessment of the “safeguards” against harm to minors and the “efficacy” of those safeguards. In other words, the report must list potential harms according to a third party and describe whether the social media platform meets the third party’s view of how it should handle those alleged problems.
Whatever one thinks about social media, conservatives should worry about how this new precedent will be weaponized against other disfavored products. How long before a firearm manufacturer like Smith & Wesson is required by law to pay a gun control activist group to write and publish annual reports on Smith & Wesson’s website, outlining potential dangers of gun ownership and whether the gun control activists think that Smith & Wesson does enough to mitigate those alleged dangers?
How long until homeschooling curriculum publishers have to put similar warnings—written by teachers’ unions—on the covers of their textbooks?
How Would KOSPA be Weaponized in Practice?
EXAMPLE #1: Blocking Conservative Content
Step 1: Imagine that the southern border was wide open, with a flood of illegal aliens coming across. On social media, Americans start sharing news stories about how cartels mistreat those they smuggle to the border, or crimes committed by gang members who were released into the country.
Step 2: California Governor Gavin Newsom says the “fear mongering” about the southern border is all misinformation.5 He says that it’s also causing teens, especially 16-year-olds who will be 18 before the next election, to spend too much time reading these articles. What’s worse, spending so much time hearing about the effects of illegal immigration could “impact their sleep and socialization,” according to the governor.
Step 3: Governor Newsom orders the California Attorney General to bring every social media platform to court, picking a jurisdiction in California where they know the judge is likely to agree that it’s “harmful” to have a website that allows minors to know about the effects of illegal immigration. Those websites are forced to block content about illegal immigration for minors or face billions of dollars in damages.
Step 4: Emboldened by the first case, Governor Newsom and other governors intent on running for president in 2028 start filing more cases, using KOSPA to censor content about abortion and pro-life causes, the Second Amendment, gender debates, and more. They rinse and repeat from there.
EXAMPLE #2: Deplatforming President Trump
When social media sites began deplatforming President Trump in late 2020, they said it was to “protect people” from “misinformation” and “hate.” Under KOSPA, bureaucrats at the FTC or blue state attorneys general would have the authority to sue social media companies for allowing President Trump back onto their platforms, or for refusing to deplatform him in the first place.
According to them, it’s not just about the content of his views—they say his very existence on social media platforms incites people to become violent mobs. He captures so much attention that allowing him online or to show up in news feeds sucks in minors who, whether they agree or disagree with Trump, spend more time on the platform and then lose sleep or have anxiety.
We urge all CHQ readers and friends to share this important information widely. The Capitol Switchboard is (202-224-3121), we urge CHQ readers and friends to call their Senators and Representative TODAY to demand they vote NO on KOSPA.
1 KOSPA (LYN24589), p.39, line 24, through p.40, line 2.
2 https://judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/republicans-judiciary.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/2024-02- 22%20Abuse%20of%20Power20Waste%20of%20Resources%20and%20Fear_0.pdf
3 KOSPA (LYN24589), Sec. 130, p.63, lines 6-12.
4 KOSPA (LYN24589), p.97, lines 16-18.
5 See, e.g., https://x.com/GavinNewsom/status/1806517103635358074
2024 Election
Kids Online Safety and Privacy Act (KOSPA)
KOSPA
censorship
First Amendment
Free Speech
Congress
Social Media Platforms
Duty of Care
Addictive features
Federal Trade Commission FTC
Jim Jordan
Conservative viewpoints
Pro-life content
shadow banning
deplatforming
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