Oppose KOSA and Related Bills That Threaten Free Speech Online

I urge you to oppose the revised Kids Online Safety Act and the package of bills the House Energy and Commerce Committee is considering this week. These measures represent a dangerous expansion of government control over online speech under the guise of protecting children. The revised KOSA draft may have removed the duty of care provision from the Senate version that passed in July 2024, but it still requires platforms to establish policies addressing broadly defined harms to minors. This vague language gives platforms enormous discretion to censor content preemptively to avoid liability. When companies face regulatory pressure over subjective concepts like harm, they inevitably over-censor to protect themselves legally. The original KOSA stalled precisely because House leadership recognized its threat to free speech. Simply replacing duty of care with mandatory policies and procedures does not address the fundamental problem. Platforms will still face pressure to restrict access to controversial but legal content, from political speech to health information to LGBTQ resources, all because someone might claim it harms minors. The App Store Accountability Act compounds these concerns by creating a federal age verification mandate. This forces users to surrender personal identification to access online services, creating massive privacy risks and chilling anonymous speech that has been constitutionally protected since the founding of our nation. I understand the emotional appeal of these bills, especially given the tragic stories from parents whose children suffered online harms. However, good intentions do not justify bad policy. Parents already have tools to monitor and restrict their children's internet use. What they do not need is a surveillance state that tracks every American's online activity or gives tech companies a regulatory excuse to silence disfavored viewpoints. The tech industry has opposed KOSA for years not because they want to harm children, but because these regulations are unworkable and unconstitutional. I ask you to reject this entire package and instead focus on empowering parents with better tools rather than empowering censors with broader authority.