Two years ago, Maurine Molak visited Capitol Hill for the first time to support a proposed law she believes could have saved her son. David Molak was a lanky teen who loved basketball \u2014 \u201ca joy of a kid,\u201d she says. Then, as she\u2019s recounted several times to legislators, he got injured while playing. He began spending more and more time on social media and video games, and according to Molak, his online life became a compulsion.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
David would check his phone in the middle of the night and steal money from his parents to spend on in-game items. He became a target of cyberbullying on Instagram, which she says failed to respond even when friends reported the harassment. In 2016, at age 16, he died by suicide.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Molak was no stranger to stately halls or legislators. Within two years of her son\u2019s death, she\u2019d successfully advocated in Texas for David\u2019s Law<\/a>, which let schools investigate cyberbullying outside their walls. The US Congress felt more opaque and less accessible: \u201cI was apprehensive, and really frankly nervous about it,\u201d she says. But she was joined by a group of other parents, all of whom had descended on Washington to pass the newly announced Kids Online Safety Act: a bill meant to raise the standards for how social media companies protect kids.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n When I met up with Molak at a cafe in December 2024, she was on her 14th trip to Congress \u2014 and exhausted. She was getting ready to join a rally for KOSA outside the US Capitol, the latest in what seemed like an endless series of pushes for the bill. She kept a sticker on her phone commemorating the fight against cyberbullying: a chat bubble with three red dots in the middle, which she says stand for \u201cstop and think.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Since 2022, KOSA has become simultaneously one of the most popular and most controversial bills in Washington. It cleared the Senate with rare bipartisan support, earning a nearly unanimous vote of 91\u20133 when it passed in July<\/a>. But months later, as 2024\u2019s legislative session draws to a close, it\u2019s on life support in the House.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Despite broad support for KOSA\u2019s overall aims, Republicans and Democrats alike have expressed reservations about the power it could grant regulators over the internet. Tech companies are split on it: Microsoft and Elon Musk\u2019s X<\/a> are lobbying openly in favor, while Meta and Google have quietly opposed the bill<\/a>. As parents like Molak argue it\u2019s the best way to prevent mental health crises, sexual abuse, and even suicide among young people, civil liberties advocates warn it could cut online lifelines for some of the country\u2019s most vulnerable teens.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Now, both sides are down to the last week, and the odds of a vote look increasingly small.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n KOSA emerged in the aftermath of a congressional crisis over how to handle social media and kids, sparked by a former Facebook employee named Frances Haugen.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In late 2021, The Wall Street Journal<\/em> began reporting on what it dubbed the \u201cFacebook Files<\/a>\u201d: a series of documents released by Haugen<\/a>, laying out what the company (since renamed Meta) knew about its impact on young users. Haugen tells The Verge<\/em> she hadn\u2019t sought out information about the topic \u2014 for her and many of her colleagues, \u201cit just wasn\u2019t a thing on top of our minds.\u201d But when a Journal<\/em> reporter asked her about it, she was concerned by what she found. One file, for instance, detailed Instagram\u2019s research<\/a> into how its platform made teen girls feel about their bodies. It found that, among other things, 32 percent reported \u201cwhen they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The company defended its work<\/a>, saying the reports demonstrated a \u201ccommitment to understanding complex and difficult issues young people may struggle with.\u201d But lawmakers were furious. The Senate Commerce Committee marched in Haugen<\/a>, Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri<\/a>, and Facebook\u2019s then-global head of safety, Antigone Davis<\/a>, to learn more about what the company knew about social media\u2019s risks and how Congress should respond.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In February 2022, after months of hearings, committee members Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) introduced the Kids Online Safety Act<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The bill was designed to put the onus for children\u2019s safety on the social platforms that supported them. It proposed imposing what\u2019s known as a \u201cduty of care\u201d \u2014 a responsibility that would require tech companies to take reasonable steps to mitigate harm for their youngest users. If sites breached that duty by recklessly rolling out a new feature that predictably put kids at risk, (perhaps by making them more accessible to adult strangers, facilitating harassment, or promoting self-harm content), they could be sued by state attorneys general or the federal government.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Conversely, sites could limit their liability by constraining algorithms that might serve eating disorder content to teens, limiting features that encourage kids to spend excessive time on their services, or restricting advertising toward teens that could be considered deceptive.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Beyond the duty of care, KOSA required social media sites to install safeguards for minors\u2019 accounts, including default privacy settings, parental tools, and responsive mechanisms to report bullying and harassment. While mainstream platforms commonly had some of these tools in place, the bill would make these kinds of mechanisms mandatory and ensure reports actually got responses in a \u201ctimely manner.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cWe are on the cusp of a new era for Big Tech imposing a sense of responsibility that has been completely lacking so far.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n This wasn\u2019t the first attempt to legislate child safety. In 2018, Congress passed <\/a>FOSTA-SESTA, meant to remove protections for sites that host sex trafficking content (including trafficking of minors). Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA), who authored the long-standing Children\u2019s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), has long sought to update it<\/a> to raise the age of its protections and expand its scope. And a bipartisan group of lawmakers including Blumenthal and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) pushed for the EARN IT Act<\/a>, meant to spur a crackdown on child sexual abuse material.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The Facebook Files, though, granted the initial KOSA draft <\/a>a rare sense of momentum. \u201cWe are on the cusp of a new era for Big Tech imposing a sense of responsibility that has been completely lacking so far,\u201d Blumenthal announced.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n To parents like Molak, the bill was a salve to years of frustration. Had KOSA been in place, Molak believes, David might not have become so compulsively attached to games and social media. When he was bullied online, platforms might have been legally required to respond in a \u201creasonable\u201d amount of time.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n To others, however, KOSA was misguided \u2014 and dangerous.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Image: Cath Virginia \/ The Verge, Shutterstock<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Over the course of 2022, KOSA racked up just over a dozen cosponsors on both sides of the aisle. But it also racked up fierce opposition<\/a> from digital rights groups, free expression advocates, and LGBTQ+ rights organizations. In November of that year, more than 90 groups warned Senate leaders<\/a> that KOSA would effectively instruct platforms \u201cto employ broad content filtering to limit minors\u2019 access to certain online content.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n On top of that, they said, KOSA could become a tool for political vendettas. \u201cOnline services would face substantial pressure to over-moderate, including from state Attorneys General seeking to make political points about what kind of information is appropriate<\/a> for young people,\u201d wrote the signatories, including Fight for the Future, GLAAD, the Wikimedia Foundation, and others. \u201cAt a time when books with LGBTQ+ themes are being banned from school libraries<\/a> and people providing healthcare to trans children are being falsely accused of \u2018grooming<\/a>,\u2019 KOSA would cut off another vital avenue of access to information for vulnerable youth.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Conservatives, meanwhile, argued KOSA didn\u2019t go far enough. <\/em>In March 2022, conservative think tank and, later, Project 2025 organizer the Heritage Foundation argued that<\/a> \u201cgender ideology\u201d \u2014\u00a0a reference to trans issues and providing gender-affirming care \u2014 was a \u201cglaring omission\u201d from the list of online harms in the bill. (Heritage has more recently praised KOSA<\/a>, which has gone through several rounds of changes.)\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n KOSA was already showing up in big tech lobbying disclosures, too. (Those filings don\u2019t indicate how much was spent specifically on it.) But tech companies didn\u2019t need to say much publicly when so many civil liberties groups were already fighting at the front lines.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Despite this opposition, in July 2022, KOSA unanimously passed out of the Commerce Committee<\/a>. The massive show of bipartisan support was significant, and unusual for a substantive piece of legislation. After that\u2026 it stalled. KOSA advocates who\u2019d been excited and hopeful grew anxious.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n As the months ticked away, KOSA was starting to look like the countless other internet regulations that had been announced to great fanfare, only to meet a quiet demise. Then, its creators brought it back to life.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In May 2023, Blackburn and Blumenthal refreshed and reintroduced KOSA in a new legislative session<\/a>, aiming to address criticism of their first try. Most significantly, the bill stated that it would not prevent platforms from serving teens content they specifically searched out, nor would it punish services for recommending resources meant to mitigate the kinds of harms that it named \u2014 keeping kids away from suicide content, for instance, shouldn\u2019t mean locking away suicide prevention posts.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cKOSA\u2019s core approach still threatens the privacy, security and free expression of both minors and adults\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The new bill had more than two dozen cosponsors, and President Joe Biden had mentioned children\u2019s mental health at the State of the Union<\/a> earlier that year. Soon, KOSA had more than 40 cosponsors in the Senate<\/a> and support from groups including the American Psychological Association, Eating Disorders Coalition, and the American Academy of Pediatrics.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n But groups including Fight for the Future and the American Civil Liberties Union \u2014\u00a0as well as LGBTQ+ groups concerned about censorship \u2014\u00a0maintained their opposition to the bill. \u201cKOSA\u2019s core approach still threatens the privacy, security and free expression of both minors and adults by deputizing platforms of all stripes to police their users and censor their content under the guise of a \u2018duty of care,\u2019\u201d ACLU senior policy counsel Cody Venzke said in a statement at the time<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n For nearly another year, KOSA remained in limbo. Europe was marching steadily toward new online regulations: the European Commission was gearing up to enforce the massive Digital Services Act<\/a>, and the UK passed its Online Safety Act<\/a>, which covered some of the same ground as KOSA. But the US was barrelling toward a presidential election while war in the Middle East (and the reaction to the US government\u2019s response) distracted from many domestic issues. Opponents of KOSA could take a breath. Then, once more, the bill came back.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n After more months of uncertainty, KOSA went through another revision in February 2024 \u2014 which made two important changes. It removed the ability of state AGs to enforce the duty of care, a particular concern for LGBTQ+ groups that feared legal attacks from red states. And it added a definition of what \u201cdesign features\u201d companies should be wary of rolling out, emphasizing a focus on companies\u2019 business motives. Its nonexhaustive list included infinite scrolling, notifications, and in-game purchases.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The changes appeased some longtime critics of the bill. Several LGBTQ+ advocacy groups, including GLAAD, the Human Rights Campaign, and The Trevor Project, formally removed their opposition<\/a>, telling Blumenthal that the \u201cconsiderable changes \u2026 significantly mitigate the risk of it being misused to suppress LGBTQ+ resources or stifle young people\u2019s access to online communities.\u201d KOSA gained more than 60 Senate cosponsors<\/a>, all but ensuring passage. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said he\u2019d work with the bill\u2019s sponsors to advance it.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Despite all this, though, months went by without a vote. Advocates pestered Schumer to put KOSA on the calendar. But the bill competed for floor time with a never-ending list of alternate priorities \u2014 a foreign aid package<\/a> and even a bill that could ban TikTok<\/a> on national security grounds were among them.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cSeeing this bill across the finish line is my second-greatest wish\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Finally, just before Congress would take its summer break, Schumer acted. He put KOSA to a vote, bundled with the Children and Teens\u2019 Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA 2.0), which raised the age for internet privacy protections for kids. On the day that Schumer announced he\u2019d move the bill forward<\/a>, Molak said that \u201cseeing this bill across the finish line is my second-greatest wish\u201d \u2014 second, of course, to getting David back.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n KOSA passed with remarkably strong support in the Senate, receiving just three no votes from Sens. Ron Wyden (D-OR), Rand Paul (R-KY), and Mike Lee (R-UT). Their specific concerns varied, but all three feared unintended consequences for online speech.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n As Congress adjourned for the summer, it finally seemed like KOSA would really become law, as long as House leadership took it up. But history repeated itself yet again: months ticked by, and legislators never got the opportunity to cast their votes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Nearly all social networks are, at a fundamental level, speech platforms: places where people congregate to chat, vent, chase viral fame, and find like-minded associates. A large amount of that speech is arguably harmful, like disinformation, hate speech, and the glorification of risky or violent acts. A nontrivial portion is illegal, including threats, harassment, and child sexual abuse material. But any law that alters the incentives for platforms to police speech will face questions about unintended consequences \u2014\u00a0and whether it will actually work.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Over years of debate, supporters of KOSA have promoted one fundamental message: social media is dangerous to children, and if tech companies aren\u2019t legally forced to take responsibility for harm, they \u2014 and the legislators who failed to stop them \u2014 will have blood on their hands.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cIt is baffling to me that there is hesitation to pass this life-saving legislation,\u201d says Erin Popolo, whose 17-year-old daughter Emily died by suicide following Instagram and Snapchat bullying in 2021. On the Senate floor last week, Blumenthal recounted the story of teenager Jesse Harrington, who he says displayed addictive behaviors toward social media before his death by suicide just months ago. \u201cAnybody saying, let\u2019s wait until next session so we can get it really right, that is saying they\u2019re okay with more kids dying,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Image: Cath Virginia \/ The Verge, Shutterstock<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n At a rally outside the Capitol last Tuesday, KOSA supporters spoke in front of a pile of 150 gifts stacked like a Christmas tree, meant to represent the children lost to online harms since KOSA\u2019s reintroduction in May 2023. Shama Reed and her daughter Shamail Henderson told the story of how a 15-year-old Henderson was kidnapped by a 27-year-old man she\u2019d met on social media and, over 30 days, forced to have sex with \u201chundreds\u201d of men.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cMy mom could tell me not to talk to adult strangers, but she couldn\u2019t control those who contacted me,\u201d Henderson says at the rally. \u201cTech companies should absolutely not be recommending content from adult accounts to teenage accounts. There should be no debate about this.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n KOSA advocates have a long list of complaints about social media. Some are tied to a specific instance of harm: cyberbullies whose harassment wasn\u2019t removed, for instance, or predators that weren\u2019t kicked out before targeting a child. Others are much broader, like claims that recommendation algorithms and other features are designed to addict teens at the cost of their mental health. \u201cThey were targeted to keep us on apps longer, to profit off our pain,\u201d says youth advocate and high schooler Vanessa Li. \u201cNo one really knew about the harms of social media until it started happening.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Katie Queen, a pediatrician, said it used to be \u201crare\u201d to see a patient with anxiety, depression, or an eating disorder in her practice. Now, she says, \u201cover half of my patients are suffering with some sort of behavioral health or mental health disease.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The scientific case against social media isn\u2019t clean-cut. While there\u2019s been a well-documented rise in mental health concerns<\/a> among children, it\u2019s difficult to draw a causal link<\/a> to social media use. People like Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra have connected the most recent upticks to the covid-19 pandemic, which he said placed \u201can exceptional burden on the mental well-being of our nation\u2019s families.\u201d Another researcher, Boston College professor Peter Gray, has said the overall trend \u201clong preceded the internet\u201d and links it to the decline of independent play<\/a>. US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has called for warning labels on social media<\/a>, but critics have responded by pointing to mixed research about social media\u2019s effect on kids<\/a> \u2014 including positive impacts on children from marginalized groups who may have fewer in-person outlets for support. Murthy\u2019s own report on the topic, published in 2023<\/a>, noted social media also provided \u201cpositive community and connection\u201d for teens, particularly for \u201cracial, ethnic, and sexual and gender minorities.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Despite the bill\u2019s many rounds of changes, critics still fear that handing the government power to regulate social media will backfire. Julie Jones, who got involved in the opposition to KOSA through Fight for the Future, is the mother of a 20-year-old transgender son and a nonbinary 16-year-old. Jones has watched conservative politicians agitate for years against allowing children (and in some cases, adults) to transition, down to encouraging child protective services<\/a> to investigate parents like her. She\u2019s seen the reassurances that KOSA won\u2019t be weaponized \u2014 but an early comment by Blackburn appearing to suggest using the duty of care to \u201cprotect\u201d children from trans content<\/a> still rings in her head.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n A less frequently discussed issue is age verification. While KOSA doesn\u2019t formally require sites to verify whether users are over or under 18 years of age, critics fear that setting special standards for minors will encourage or even require privacy-invading methods<\/a> for confirming age. (Blumenthal has denied this claim and objects to age verification, saying the \u201cpotential for exploitation and misuse would be huge.\u201d)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cKOSA in general, and these sorts of bills, I think are born out of good intentions,\u201d says Jones. \u201cBut what are you willing to sacrifice for that?\u201d Jones fears how President-elect Donald Trump\u2019s Federal Trade Commission might choose to enforce the law, questioning how enforcers will determine what is harmful to kids.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n These aren\u2019t idle fears. Trump\u2019s FTC chair pick, Andrew Ferguson<\/a>, has said he plans to \u201cfight back against the trans agenda\u201d in a document leaked by Punchbowl News<\/em><\/a>. The Heritage Foundation, the Project 2025<\/a> organizer that now supports KOSA<\/a>,<\/a> said in a May 2023 post that<\/a> \u201ckeeping trans content away from children is protecting kids.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cAt this point, I\u2019m not even asking for people to fight back. I\u2019m asking for them to not hand them the reins and give them the ability to do whatever they want.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Asked about that statement, Wes Hodges, an adviser for coalitions at Heritage, says KOSA doesn\u2019t cover trans content and that a \u201cfair reading of the bill\u201d would not allow for a \u201cblanket prohibition\u201d of distributing such information. \u201cThis bill is very limited to [that] list of concerns\u201d detailed in the bill, he says. \u201cWe don\u2019t want KOSA to have mission creep.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Sarah Philips, who works on campaigns for digital rights group Fight for the Future, is dubious. \u201cWe should believe them when they write it down,\u201d says Philips. \u201cAt this point, I\u2019m not even asking for people to fight back. I\u2019m asking for them to not hand them the reins and give them the ability to do whatever they want.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n KOSA doesn\u2019t mandate a certain course of action by tech companies, and Philips worries that, as happened following<\/a> FOSTA-SESTA, platforms will proactively purge content to limit their risks, even if it\u2019s not unambiguously banned. In FOSTA-SESTA\u2019s case, it\u2019s not even clear there were real benefits. The bill was meant to reduce trafficking, but it\u2019s more frequently credited<\/a> with simply putting non-trafficked sex workers at risk.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Wyden, one of just three senators to vote against KOSA and the only Democrat to do so, compared it to FOSTA-SESTA in an op-ed explaining his vote<\/a>. \u201cI warned at the time<\/a> that bill would do little to catch predators or help victims, and would only drive sex work to darker corners of the web, or the streets. Unfortunately, I\u2019ve been proved right.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Prior to the latest KOSA revision, Wyden acknowledged some progress, including the addition of language that it will not preempt tech\u2019s legal liability Section 230. But he told Axios<\/em><\/a> he still feared KOSA could be used to attack encryption and anonymity, which teens can also use to communicate securely.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The bill\u2019s supporters often point to its language explicitly protecting children\u2019s ability to seek out information on their own and say it only targets the platforms\u2019 own harmful features. Rep. Kim Schrier (D-WA), a cosponsor of the House version of the bill who practiced as a pediatrician before entering Congress, says social media can be helpful for kids who don\u2019t have any other way to get important questions answered or find community. But in general, she says, social media is not really \u201csomething that kids need.\u201d After all, \u201cthere\u2019s many ways to find information, and it doesn\u2019t need to be social media.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Jones disagrees. She says she\u2019s seen too many kids for whom their online friends are their \u201clifeline.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n While progressives fear conservatives weaponizing KOSA, tech industry groups have pushed Republicans to consider the risks posed to them as well. Amy Bos, director of state and federal affairs for tech industry group NetChoice, warns that KOSA could give Democratic AGs \u201cpower to censor conservative speech.\u201d The group frequently opposes Republican-backed internet speech regulations, but it\u2019s also raised the alarm against laws signed by Democratic governors \u2014 like a California rule encouraging sites<\/a> to police hate speech and disinformation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cShould platforms stop children from seeing climate-related news because climate change is one of the leading sources of anxiety amongst younger generations?\u201d asked Paul, another of KOSA\u2019s rare dissenters in the Senate, in a dear colleague letter shortly ahead of the vote<\/a>. \u201cShould pro-life groups have their content censored because platforms worry that it could impact the mental well-being of teenage mothers? This bill opens the door to nearly limitless content regulation.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Image: Cath Virginia \/ The Verge, Shutterstock<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n As KOSA has advanced to the House, it\u2019s Republicans that now threaten to scuttle it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Once the Republican-controlled House became KOSA\u2019s final hurdle, conservative speech suppression emerged as a chief concern. Even at the committee level, passing KOSA was far more of a slog than it had been in the Senate. House Energy and Commerce Committee members managed to advance the legislation<\/a> in September, but they emerged with a product that many acknowledged still needed work and some still appeared to consider fundamentally censorious. \u201cDoesn\u2019t all political speech induce some kind of emotional distress for those who disagree with it?\u201d quipped Texas Republican Dan Crenshaw.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n These concerns came to a head in October. In a Punchbowl News<\/em> report, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) called the bill \u201cvery problematic,\u201d<\/a> with the potential for \u201cunintended consequences,\u201d casting doubt on whether it would get a vote. The result has been a pressure campaign on Johnson in the final weeks of the 118th Congress, with weary KOSA supporters anxiously making their final pleas.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Johnson seems inclined to wait until Trump resumes office<\/a> in January to consider any movement. But doing so would send Congress back to square one. The bill would need to be reintroduced in both houses, and there\u2019s no promise the momentum and coalition Blackburn and Blumenthal brought together would hold. Plus, with a unified government under Republican leadership, priorities could shift to passing legislation that could only get through under single-party control.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cTo be clear: the blockade against safeguards and accountability was about padding Big Tech\u2019s financial bottom line, not principle.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n KOSA did not appear in the draft stopgap funding bill<\/a> released by House leadership on Tuesday evening, shrinking its shot at passage this year. Blackburn and Blumenthal seethed at the snub and placed blame squarely on House Republican leadership. \u201cTo be clear: the blockade against safeguards and accountability was about padding Big Tech\u2019s financial bottom line, not principle,\u201d they wrote in a joint statement. \u201cFalsehoods crafted in Silicon Valley boardrooms and parroted by Washington politicians, along with millions of dollars spent along the way, held up KOSA in the House to advance Meta and Google\u2019s goal of profiting off our children.\u201d Still, they resolved to continue their fight for the bill.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Before the funding bill was released, Blackburn and Blumenthal made one final attempt to get KOSA passed this session. With support from Elon Musk and later the president-elect\u2019s son Don Jr., they undertook a last-minute revision<\/a> that further narrows the definition of a mental health disorder and bars censorship based on viewpoint. \u201cNo one is probably more qualified to speak on the issue of free speech than Elon Musk,\u201d Blackburn said on the Senate floor.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n But tweaks like that do little to ameliorate censorship fears, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) writes in a blog post<\/a>. \u201cThe viewpoint of users was never impacted by KOSA\u2019s duty of care in the first place,\u201d the EFF writes. \u201cThe duty of care is a duty imposed on platforms, not users \u2026 The FTC could still hold a platform liable for the speech it contains.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The EFF worries the new language could still be used to punish platforms for almost anything that might provoke sad and anxious feelings \u2014 as long as the feelings \u201cdisrupted someone\u2019s sleep, or even just changed how someone socializes or communicates.\u201d That could cover anything from school shooting information to tackle football, the EFF says.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n While companies like X, Snap, Microsoft, and Pinterest have come out in support of the bill, the largest social media companies that would be subject to KOSA, like Meta and Google, have not offered their support. Advocates claim their money is behind the bill\u2019s troubles, noting that Meta is erecting a new data center around Johnson\u2019s district<\/a> in Louisiana. Sacha Haworth, executive director of the Tech Oversight Project and a former Hill staffer, says when a company sends in a lobbyist after it\u2019s spent money in a way that benefits a lawmaker, \u201cThere\u2019s no mistaking that connection.\u201d She adds, \u201cIt is very difficult to fight against such deep-pocketed, unlimited money.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n But tech lobbying on the bill cuts both ways, says Philips. \u201cAt the same time that we\u2019re being criticized [for] being aligned with Big Tech because we oppose KOSA on censorship grounds, co-sponsors Blumenthal and Blackburn are putting out statements with the CEO of X<\/a>,\u201d she says.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n If KOSA doesn\u2019t pass, lawmakers will have to decide whether to start over next year. It\u2019s a familiar exercise in tech policy \u2014 two years ago, a package of tech antitrust bills gained significant momentum<\/a> but more or less died on the vine.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The House is scheduled to adjourn later this week, leaving an ever-narrowing window for KOSA to be negotiated into the must-pass bill to clear the chamber this Congress. Johnson had responded tepidly to the new X-endorsed iteration, calling himself \u201cpassionate about addressing children\u2019s online safety\u201d but saying he looked forward to \u201cworking with the Trump Administration to get the right bill into law.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In the penultimate week before the holidays, I asked advocates and lawmakers about the future of KOSA \u2014 could it pass before the end of the year, and was this the end of the road if not? The almost universal response was a strained smile or a grimace. Walking off the House floor, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) told me getting Republican leadership to take up KOSA \u201cmight take an act of God<\/a>,\u201c though she was still pushing for a vote. \u201cIn order to be in this job, you have to be an optimist, you have to remain hopeful,\u201d said Schrier in her office \u2014\u00a0but also, she added, \u201cclear-eyed.\u201d\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n What\u2019s easy to lose in these deliberations is the stress it\u2019s put on ordinary parents who have become activists \u2014 both the ones who have spent years repeating their children\u2019s tragedies to advocate for new laws, and the ones who have spent those same years dreading the outcome if the laws pass.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In the final days of the 2024 legislative session, Molak is exhausted. She\u2019s holding out hope but finds it hard to imagine continuing the travel and fight in Congress next year if it doesn\u2019t pass now. Maybe she\u2019ll turn back to advocating in Texas, where she\u2019s already seen some success, she says. Rodgers, who is retiring from Congress and is no stranger to obstruction<\/a>, bluntly says \u201cno\u201d when I ask if there\u2019s any hope for the bill next year if it fails to get through in the next few days.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cIt\u2019s heartbreaking to the families, because we know what\u2019s at stake,\u201d says Molak. \u201cWe know that if KOSA was implemented, then kids\u2019 lives would be saved.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n For Jones, two things can be true at the same time. She says she\u2019d never deny the pain of parents who have lost their kids after experiencing online harms and is empathetic to their fight for a solution they believe could have spared them. But she fears the bill could put her own kids further in harm\u2019s way. \u201cI would never tell a parent survivor they\u2019re wrong for feeling the way they do,\u201d says Jones. \u201cAnd I don\u2019t think they\u2019re wrong. But I don\u2019t think I\u2019m wrong either.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Haugen, whose disclosures toppled that first domino toward KOSA, is unsurprised about where it\u2019s ended up. Since the release of the Facebook Files, Haugen has focused her efforts in places like Canada and Australia, which last month banned social media<\/a> for kids under 16. \u201cI personally am not going to feel bad if KOSA doesn\u2019t pass this year,\u201d she tells me on Monday. \u201cAnd that\u2019s because my expectations for what is possible in the United States anymore are really, really low.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nThe bombshell<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n
The path to passage<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n
The great debate<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n
All eyes on the House<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n