Meta has staved off legislation that would have forced it to make its platform safer for kids — for now. Advocates say the bipartisan bill’s death is a loss for youth mental health. This year, the Kids Online Safety Act, a bill that would have required social media companies to remove product features doctors say harm kids’ health, passed in the Senate. But it couldn’t move in the House. The bill’s backers, Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), redrafted the bill multiple times to ensure it didn’t violate the First Amendment and persuaded free-speech enthusiast Elon Musk to support it. Still, House Speaker Mike Johnson refused to bring the bill to the floor, opting to take it up next year instead. How did this happen? It’s possible that Johnson, who is now facing a government shutdown deadline, didn’t have the bandwidth to deal with KOSA. Advocates think something more nefarious is at play. “The influence of these platforms is really powerful, and they want to stop this legislation and any other tech legislation by any means necessary,” said Alix Fraser of Issue One, a nonpartisan nonprofit that researches money in politics. Meta spent nearly $19 million in the first nine months of 2024 lobbying Congress, some of it opposing KOSA. KOSA timeline: The bill was introduced in 2022 after Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen’s Senate testimony that Meta knew its products were harming users’ mental health. But the bill never reached a floor vote. In February, a new version of the bill aimed at protecting young people’s ability to access information online garnered a swell of support. Five months later, the Senate passed the bill in a bipartisan 91-3 vote. The surgeon general and attorneys general in 35 states, as well as doctors groups, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Psychological Association, have all called on Congress to pass KOSA. At the time, Johnson said he thought the bill would likely have support in the House. “The internet is the wild, wild West, and some of these reforms are overdue,” he told CNBC. But the bill barely made it out of committee. In September, the House Energy and Commerce Committee advanced a weak version of the bill by voice vote, which members seemed unhappy with. Even with these changes, which were meant to address free speech concerns, Johnson didn’t bring it to the floor for a vote. What’s next: Johnson has promised to address kids’ online safety in the new term. But parents and the bill’s advocates say, while lawmakers wait, more children are at risk. "By failing to include the Kids Online Safety Act in the continuing resolution, the leadership of the House has failed the children of the United States,” said Josh Golin, executive director of children’s advocacy group Fairplay, noting that Johnson refused to meet with parents. “It would have passed the House easily if it had been given a vote,” he said.
| 
No comments:
Post a Comment