Momentum is growing in both the US House and Senate on duelling efforts to pass children’s online safety legislation this summer, raising prospects for a breakthrough after Big Tech lobbying and partisan squabbles stalled the legislation for years.
The bills still face significant hurdles, including differences between the two chambers and unresolved questions over whether the bill will affect state-level artificial intelligence regulations. But a bipartisan House agreement announced on June 22, coupled with new urgency in the Senate, could pave the way for an agreement.
The House agreement, announced by the leaders of a key committee, includes a provision that would require social media platforms like Meta Platforms Inc and Alphabet Inc’s Google to set strong privacy and safety settings for minors by default.
“Through empowering parents, establishing safety as a default, strengthening privacy for children and teens, increasing transparency around data brokers, and holding Big Tech accountable, the KIDS Act delivers the 21st-century protections parents have demanded and our kids deserve,” Energy and Commerce Chairman Brett Guthrie and the panel’s top Democrat, Frank Pallone, said in a Monday statement.
In the Senate, Tennessee Republican Marsha Blackburn is championing her own proposal that goes further than the House legislation. It includes a “duty of care” provision, which would hold the companies liable for recommending posts fueling eating disorders, online bullying and other potentially harmful conduct.
She’s been negotiating with the White House on a deal to include that language in a broader package addressing state laws on AI.
Blackburn, in a statement on June 22, defended imposing a duty of care on social media platforms and emphasised that the White House supports her approach.
“Without a duty of care, Big Tech companies will maintain the status quo of putting profit before the safety of our children,” Blackburn said. “We cannot leave online child safety to chance, which is why I am grateful the White House has signalled its support for the duty of care.”
Tech companies such as Meta have long lobbied against that provision, arguing it could hamper free speech online and would be difficult to enforce without knowing users’ ages. The White House has also pushed Blackburn to tie together the Kids Online Safety Act, or KOSA, with a bill that would require app stores to verify the ages of their users, according to one person familiar with the conversations.
Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, who is working with Blackburn on the online safety measure, derided the House’s package as a “toothless and tepid capitulation” to big tech and warned that it is “dead in the Senate and a betrayal of families.”
But Blackburn is considering adding a sweetener to her bill for top tech companies: preemption of state AI safety laws. The White House tried and failed several times last year to convince Congress to pass a federal moratorium on state AI laws, which would have prevented states such as New York and California from passing their own bills seeking to hold companies accountable for harms caused by their AI products.
It’s unclear whether that would convince all the top tech companies to get on board with the Senate bill. But White House officials have let players in the fight know the Trump administration considers children’s online safety a top legislative priority heading into the November midterm elections, said one person familiar with the White House’s messaging. – Bloomberg
