Free Speech
Tell Congress: KOSA Will Censor the Internet But Won't Help Kids
The Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) would censor the internet and would make government officials the arbiters of what young people can see online. It will likely lead to age verification, handing more power, and private data, to third-party identity verification companies like Clear or ID.me.
The government should not have the power to decide what topics are "safe" online for young people, and to force services to remove and block access to anything that might be considered unsafe for children. This isn’t safety—it’s censorship.
KOSA would seriously endanger teenagers’ ability to access information. The bill creates liability for platforms that fail to block young people from a list of content that it deems harmful. The natural result of this censorious scheme is that a large amount of material will likely be banned outright or put out of the reach of children, leaving huge holes in what information is accessible online. And online services are likely to implement this censorship with poorly working filters, which we know fail to properly distinguish “good” speech from “bad” speech.
This bill is a heavy-handed plan to prevent minors from accessing content that the state believes is not in their best interest, as defined by the Federal Trade Commission and 50 state attorneys general. Tell your Senator and representative to vote NO on this bill.
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