1 year ago
58 Ranking Member Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) speaks during a Senate Subcommittee connected Consumer Protection, Product Safety, and Data Security proceeding connected Protecting Kids Online: Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube connected October 26, 2021 successful Washington, DC.
Samuel Corum | Getty Images
Dozens of civilian nine groups urged lawmakers successful a missive connected Monday against passing a measure that aims to support children from online harm, informing the measure itself could really inflict further information connected kids and teens.
The American Civil Liberties Union, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Fight for the Future and Wikimedia Foundation were among the groups that wrote to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., Senate Commerce Committee Chair Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., and Ranking Member Roger Wicker, R-Miss., opposing the Kids Online Safety Act.
The bipartisan bill, led by Sens. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., would found responsibilities for sites that are apt to beryllium accessed by kids to enactment successful the champion involvement of users who are 16 oregon younger. That means the platforms would beryllium liable for mitigating the hazard of carnal oregon affectional harm to young users, including done the promotion of self-harm oregon suicide, encouragement of addictive behavior, enabling of online bullying oregon predatory marketing.
The measure would necessitate sites to default to much backstage settings for users 16 and younger and bounds the contacts that could link with them. It would besides necessitate tools for parents to way the clip their kids are spending connected definite sites and springiness them entree to immoderate accusation astir the kids' usage of the level truthful that parents tin code imaginable harm. Sites would person to fto their young users cognize erstwhile parental tools are successful effect.
The civilian nine groups that signed Monday's letter, which includes respective groups that advocator for the rights of the LGBTQ community, warned that the tools the measure creates to support children could really backfire.
"KOSA would necessitate online services to 'prevent' a acceptable of harms to minors, which is efficaciously an acquisition to employment wide contented filtering to bounds minors' entree to definite online content," the groups wrote, adding that contented filters utilized by schools successful effect to earlier authorities person constricted resources for enactment acquisition and for LGBTQ youth.
"Online services would look important unit to over-moderate, including from authorities Attorneys General seeking to marque governmental points astir what benignant of accusation is appropriate for young people," they added. "At a clip erstwhile books with LGBTQ+ themes are being banned from schoolhouse libraries and radical providing healthcare to trans children are being accused of 'grooming,' KOSA would chopped disconnected different captious avenue of entree to accusation for susceptible youth."
The measure has gained momentum astatine a clip erstwhile debates implicit parental power of what's taught successful school, specifically arsenic it relates to sex individuality and intersexual orientation, person travel to the forefront owed to arguable authorities measures similar Florida's Parental Rights successful Education Act, besides referred to by opponents arsenic the "Don't Say Gay" law.
The KOSA opponents warned that prescriptive parental controls could beryllium harmful to kids successful abusive situations.
"KOSA risks subjecting teens who are experiencing home unit and parental maltreatment to further forms of integer surveillance and power that could forestall these susceptible younker from reaching retired for assistance oregon support," the groups wrote. "And by creating beardown incentives to filter and alteration parental power implicit the contented minors tin access, KOSA could besides jeopardize young people's entree to end-to-end encrypted technologies, which they beryllium connected to entree resources related to mental health and to support their information harmless from atrocious actors."
The groups besides fearfulness that the measure would incentivize sites to cod adjacent much accusation astir children to verify their ages and spot further restrictions connected minors' accounts.
"Age verification whitethorn necessitate users to supply platforms with personally identifiable accusation specified arsenic day of commencement and government-issued recognition documents, which tin endanger users' privacy, including done the hazard of information breaches, and chill their willingness to entree delicate accusation online due to the fact that they cannot bash truthful anonymously," they wrote. "Rather than age-gating privateness settings and information tools to use lone to minors, Congress should absorption connected ensuring that each users, careless of age, payment from beardown privateness protections by passing broad privateness legislation."
The groups called the goals of the authorities "laudable," but said KOSA would yet autumn level successful its aims to support children.
"We impulse members of Congress not to determination KOSA guardant this session, either arsenic a standalone measure oregon attached to different urgent legislation, and promote members to enactment toward solutions that support young people's rights to privateness and entree to accusation and their quality to question harmless and trusted spaces to pass online," they wrote.
