Democrats, don't risk free speech in the name of protecting kids
Senator Ed Markey voted in favor of KOSA in the last Congress, after it was
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KOSA's supporters argue that it's about keeping children under 17 safe from the harms of social media. But at the heart of the bill is something everyone should oppose: empowering the government to decide what speech children should be forbidden from seeing online.
KOSA's censorship provision is hidden in the bill's duty of care, which would require online platforms to take steps to avoid recommending content to minors that could harm them by causing suicidal behaviors, depression, anxiety, and more. To comply, platforms would have to suppress or delete potentially harmful content.
But there's no consensus on what kind of speech is bad for kids. Many on the right argue that content about trans and gay people, abortion rights, and sex education hurts children. Supporters of KOSA like Republican
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KOSA would give the FTC the power to enforce the duty of care against platforms, making it the ultimate decider of what content is harmful. But the current FTC is no unbiased arbiter.
Earlier this year, Trump
KOSA will create the perfect excuse for the FTC to investigate platforms that recommend disfavored content to children, and not just LGBTQ or reproductive rights content. It's not hard to imagine investigations of social media platforms that recommend content about gun control or vaccines that contradict what many Republicans believe.
It's also not hard to imagine the agency using KOSA to target news reporting on topics like the
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What's worse, the FTC won't even have to actually enforce KOSA for the censorship to start. As soon as the agency even hints that it
may
launch investigations, platforms will almost certainly move to comply in advance.
If all this sounds far-fetched, just look at what's happened at the Federal Communications Commission. Its chair, Brendan Carr, began twisting the law to
Democratic lawmakers have rightly
Turning around and empowering the FTC to enforce censorship instead makes no sense. None of us — children or adults — are safer placing free speech in the hands of the FTC. Democrats need to stand up for the First Amendment. They need to defeat KOSA.
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