WASHINGTON (7News) — The Kids Internet and Digital Safety Act, or KIDS Act, a sprawling collection of 14 different internet child safety bills, passed the House of Representatives Monday night, despite fierce opposition from free speech advocates and longtime child safety advocates.
The legislation cleared the House on a bipartisan 267-to-117 vote, with 47 House members not voting.
If it becomes law, the KIDS Act will require the following:
- Age verification to access mature content.
- Stricter parental controls, like privacy and safety settings set as a default.
- AI chatbots to disclose that they aren’t real people.
Supporters said such provisions are critical to keeping kids safe online.
Rep. Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ) celebrated passage of the legislation he co-authored, saying, “Big Tech is using reckless practices to surveil our kids and teens, exploit vulnerabilities to turn a profit, and promote engagement regardless of the consequences.”
Pallone’s Republican counterpart on the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, Rep. Brett Guthrie (R – Ky.), hailed the passage of the sweeping legislation.
“Congress has spent years searching for how to best protect children and teens online, and today’s overwhelming bipartisan vote indicates that we have found our solution,” Guthrie said Monday.
The KIDS Act is not without its critics.
“There’s absolutely nothing to protect kids. It only succeeds in eroding Americans’ free speech rights,” Ross Marchand, Executive Director of the Taxpayers Protection Alliance, told 7News Tuesday, when asked about the legislation.
Marchand said his greatest concern is that the age-verification provision in the Bill could require even adults to submit a government ID just to access a social media platform, thereby creating a massive, vulnerable collection of private data.
“What do hackers want? They want a massive database of official government documents, driver’s licenses, passports, you name it. Whenever you see a concentration of these documents, it’s just asking to be hacked,” Marchand said.
He’s also concerned that the days of anonymous posting may be over, saying the KIDS Act “undermines free speech.”
“If you have to hand over your papers every time you’re engaged in discourse online, what does that do to anonymous speech?” Marchand asked.
Longtime child safety advocate Maureen Flatley, President of the non-profit Stop Child Predators, is concerned the KIDS Act does nothing to seek out and prosecute those who prey on children online.
“Part of the concern that I’ve had from the beginning is that while I don’t want to give anybody a free pass if they’re doing something that’s harmful to kids, by failing to focus on the producers of the content, we’re not stopping anything,” Flatley told 7News.
She harkened back to the days when the postal service was used to transmit Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM).
“We didn’t go after the postal service. We hired more postal inspectors,” Flatley said.
The House version of the KIDS Act does not include the controversial “duty of care” requirement, which puts it at odds with similar child safety legislation currently being debated in the Senate.
That duty of care provision would legally require online platforms to protect minors from things like cyber-bullying or sexual sexual exploitation.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) is among those to signal the legislation will face strong headwinds in the upper chamber. In a reference to the Kids Online Safety Act, one of the 14 bills that was rolled into the KIDS Act, Blumenthal posted on ‘X.’
“KOSA without a duty of care isn’t KOSA—it’s a blank check to Mark Zuckerberg to exploit children. The House’s toothless & tepid capitulation is dead in the Senate & a betrayal of families suffering from Big Tech’s greed.”
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