- United States
- N.Y.
- Letter
Vote no on the KIDS Act. This package — combining KOSA, the SAFE BOTS Act, the SCREEN Act, and more — is being rushed through Congress without debate on individual merits, and it will do serious damage to privacy and free speech online for everyone, not just kids.
The bill's "knows or should have known" standard for identifying minor users creates massive legal liability that will push every platform to collect age data from all users. That's age surveillance by design. Age-estimation systems are already documented to fail disproportionately for people of color, people with disabilities, and trans and nonbinary people. The speech provisions are just as bad — platforms will over-moderate lawful content like addiction recovery discussions and harm-reduction information to avoid liability. And the encryption carve-outs don't cover KOSA's separate harm-addressing requirements, meaning pressure to weaken private communications is baked into the bill.
Protecting kids online is a real goal worth pursuing. This bill doesn't do that — it trades everyone's privacy and free expression for the appearance of action. Reject it.