Today, the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation will consider several online-safety proposals during an executive session, including the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA). As we’ve explained many times before, KOSA would impose a de facto age-verification mandate and an unworkable duty of care—both of which violate the First Amendment and undermine the well-being of minors. Ari Cohn, TechFreedom’s Free Speech Counsel, issued the following statement:
“KOSA has been an Internet censorship bill from the start.
It imposes what courts have refused—on First Amendment grounds—to impose for decades: a duty to protect listeners from subjective, unknowable reactions to constitutionally protected speech.
It creates a ‘papers please’ social media regime where every single social media user will be forced to identify themselves before speaking on social media, undermining their constitutional right to read and speak anonymously, and enabling government retaliation against disfavored ideas and expression.
And it hands the Federal Trade Commission—which has of late granted itself the authority to enforce what it thinks customers should want rather than protect against actual deception—a ready-made tool to coerce platforms into removing speech it dislikes from the Internet.
Despite years of warnings from experts and civil society across the political and ideological spectrum, KOSA’s sponsors have stubbornly refused to acknowledge and fix these critical First Amendment problems. They have instead attempted to hide them behind increasingly obfuscatory language. But the First Amendment is not so easily fooled, and the Commerce Committee must put an end to this constitutional fiasco once and for all.”
Ari is available for comment at media@techfreedom.org.