US House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson has suggested that he may not put the Senate version of the KOSA (Kids Online Safety Act) for a vote because of what he considers to be “very problematic details” that can have “unintended consequences.”
Observers now believe this means the proposed act has little chance of becoming law in its current form, as passed by the Senate in July, and said Johnson’s stance is unlikely to change.
The bill’s sponsors claim the legislation’s goal is to force large social platforms to include new features aimed at protecting children from possible harms.
It’s a principle Johnson said he “loves” – only to add, “but the details of that are very problematic.”
One of the key criticisms the Senate’s version is facing is that the poorly defined (and therefore open to broad interpretation) “duty of care” that the bill would impose on tech platforms will pave the way for even more online censorship.
There are other difficult-to-identify and confirm provisions, such as platform liability for content that causes psychological distress or anxiety to minors.
But this kind of vague language makes moderation (i.e., censorship) easy, because as Senator Rand Paul noted earlier, “people can and will argue that almost any form of content could contribute to some form of mental health disorder.”
In the past, Johnson made his opinion on Big Tech’s policies clear, when he called them censorship that represents “an assault on free speech” – an assault from a position that the speaker described as “an overt bias for the left.”
The Senate version of KOSA was drafted by Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat, and the resistance to it by Republicans doesn’t stop with Johnson and Paul.
Now House Majority Leader Steve Scalise wants the lower chamber’s Energy and Commerce Committee to come up with its own version of the bill instead of simply rubber-stamping that which cleared the Senate.
