Why is this important?
The Kids' Online Safety Act (KOSA) uses the pretense of children’s safety to drive censorship and online surveillance. Kids safety online is a very real concern, but KOSA does the opposite of keeping kids safe. It opens the door to partisan-fueled bad faith in determining what content is “harmful” for kids. It would increase surveillance by pressuring websites to implement age verification – which would necessitate website log-ins and sometimes credit card verification to confirm age – and parental controls, which would disallow youth with unsupportive families from finding alternative community and support.1
By doing this, KOSA would effectively eliminate internet privacy and bar access to vital information and online community, to minors as well as adults who do not want to sacrifice their privacy by logging into websites. Despite (or in some cases, because) of these serious red flags, KOSA is gaining momentum in Congress. We have to act now to tell Congress that we aren’t having it.
Tell Congress: Reject online censorship. Vote down KOSA.
KOSA will not keep kids safe. It will make our queer children less safe because access to gender and sexuality affirming content could be filtered. Our kids trying to help friends through mental health struggles could be barred from accessing content about depression and self-harm. Black and brown youth may not be able to read about their own histories or gain accurate context for understanding racial injustice.
Despite recent superficial fixes, the bill could still be used to censor online content for kids– or anyone who doesn’t want to verify their age and personal identifying information.2 We need to demand our Members of Congress reject censorship under the guise of concern trolling about the kids. Our youth need access to community and information.
Sign the petition: Congress must reject KOSA.
Real safety for kids on the internet looks like queer kids being able to find accurate, safe, answers to their most important questions without worry of being outed or exposed by unsupportive family or authority figures. It looks like an internet that doesn’t rely on toxic tricks and polarization to keep impressionable youth – or any of us – engaged for the sake of selling ads. And it looks like data privacy for all of us, so no one has to worry about their personal information being sold or used without their consent. We can make this a reality together – once we say no to false solutions like KOSA that are standing in our way with censorship and a less accessible internet.
Sources:
1. “Online age verification is coming, and privacy is on the chopping block,” The Verge, May 15, 2023.
2. “Lawmakers are pushing an online safety bill for kids. Critics have free-speech concerns,” Columbia Journalism Review, Feb. 8, 2024.
