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Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) plans to announce in a speech that he will bring the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) and the Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA 2.0) to the Senate floor this week for a procedural vote. This tees up the biggest step yet on the federal level to move forward with a law in the area of children’s online safety legislation.
“Over the past few months I’ve met with families from across the country who have gone through the worst thing a parent could endure – losing a child,” Schumer said in a statement. “Rather than retreating into the darkness of their loss, these families lit a candle for others with their advocacy. I am proud to work side-by-side with them and put on the floor legislation that I Believe will pass and better protect our children from the negative risks of social media and other online platforms. It has been long and daunting road to get this bill passed, which can change and save lives, but today, we are one monumental step closer to success.”
KOSA would impose a duty of care on online platforms to take reasonable steps to mitigate certain harms to minors, require the option for parental controls for the accounts of minors, and prevent features like autoplay. COPPA 2.0 would build on an existing children’s privacy law to raise the age for privacy protections from 13 to 17 and ban targeted advertising for that group.
Even if they pass the Senate, the bills could still face additional challenges ahead. They’d need to be passed by the House, which recently canceled a committee hearing that would have included a discussion of KOSA due to Republican leadership concerns on a separate privacy bill. While states throughout the country have passed varying types of online safety bills for children, many have been successfully blocked on First Amendment grounds, and still others have yet to contend with the implications of a recent Supreme Court decision affirming that social media companies’ content moderation and curation choices are expressive, protected speech.
