As people who grew up using the internet and social media our entire lives, we know first hand of all the harms that have to be addressed to regulate Big Tech. No one knows about the negative side of social media more than us. Our first-hand experience is why we oppose laws such as the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) that is in the KIDS Act. KOSA is harmful legislation that will do little to regulate Big Tech. There is a reason companies like Microsoft, Meta, X, Reddit, OpenAl, and more support KOSA. If Big Tech companies who are notoriously against regulation support a bill and fight it at every means, then clearly something is wrong with that
bill.
This doesn't even address the surveillance and censorial harms KOSA presents. The 'duty of care' section removed is not enough to stop this bill from being harmful. The UK passed their Online Safety Act, which KOSA was inspired by, and immediately faced an avalanche of censorship. The same would happen here.
KOSA is not the only threat in this package, which is filled with other identity verification mandates. Despite explicit carve-outs that say age verification is not required, with text in these bills saying providers should "know" (KOSA Section 212(6), Safer GAMING Act (Section 302), the SAFE Bots Act (Section 402), COPPA 2.0) this turns it into a liability problem that can only be managed if they can confirm someone is a minor or not. There is no feasible way to do that outside of invasive identity verification. Similar legislation across the globe is implementing these same exact mandates. How are people's data being protected when they will be forced to hand over their most personal data to Big Tech to even access social media? Recently, reporting has shown that Meta has lobbied up to 2 billion dollars in supporting these age
verification bills.
Once identity verification starts, it is guaranteed to have that information leaked. Every single time that digital IDs has been implemented, the database that "doesn't keep records of IDs" gets hacked. In October 2025, Discord was hacked and 70,000 users including children had their information released publicly. The EU's new app is hacked in under two minutes. ID verification companies that Tiktok, Roblox, Uber all use which are the same companies that these laws would use, exposed millions of users because their data was not secure. IDMerit used in the EU left 1 billion users exposed.
Laws like this do not keep minors safe. They don't keep adults safe. They don't keep anyone safe. Reject the KIDS Act and KOSA.and invest in laws that aren't censorial or pushing identity verification.
Our previous letter as users from the internet has garnered over 50,000 signatures from everyday people. We implore you to listen to those whose laws like this would impact the most
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