Censoring the Internet won’t protect children

If good intentions led to good laws, there would be no need for parliamentary debate.

There is no doubt that the authors of this bill genuinely want to protect children, but the bill they have written will surely be a Pandora’s box of unintended consequences.

The Child Online Safety Act, known as KOSA, would impose an unprecedented duty of care on internet platforms to mitigate certain mental health-related harms, including anxiety, depression and eating disorders.

While supporters of the bill argue that it is not designed to regulate content, imposing a duty of care on internet platforms related to mental health could only have one result: suppressing speech protected by the First Amendment.

Children today live in a completely different world than the one I grew up in, but I still tell my kids to go outside and “touch the grass.”

Thanks to the internet, the world is at kids’ fingertips today, which is a good thing: A quick search can turn up academic papers and how-to videos with answers to any question they have.

While doctors and therapists’ offices may be closed at night and on weekends, support groups for people with similar concerns or health issues are available 24/7. People can connect, share information, and help each other more easily than ever before. That’s the beauty of technological advancements.

But the world can be an ugly place, and like any tool, the internet can also be misused, and parents need to be vigilant to protect their children online.

It’s perhaps understandable that senators would call for a government solution to protect children from all the harms that can come from spending too much time online. But before we impose ever-more stringent legal obligations on online platforms, we must ensure that the good parts of the internet are protected — that First Amendment rights are protected and clear rules are provided to help these platforms comply with the law.

Unfortunately, this bill falls short of that in almost every respect.

The bill as currently written is far too vague, and many of its key provisions are not defined at all.

Although the bill effectively gives the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) the power to regulate content that may affect mental health, KOSA does not explicitly define the term “mental health disorder,” instead referring to the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Health Disorders, its “most recent successor edition.”

When written that way, not only will someone looking at the statute not know what the definition is, but, even more concerning, the definition could be subject to change without any input from Congress.

The scope of one of the most far-reaching federal technology bills could change dramatically overnight, and Congress might only find out after it has happened. No representative of the public could be happy with a definition that effectively delegates Congress’ law-making power to unaccountable third parties.

Second, the bill would impose an unprecedented duty of care on internet platforms to mitigate certain harms, such as anxiety, depression, and eating disorders. But the law does not define what constitutes harm to minors, and different people have different ideas about what causes harm, much less how online platforms should protect minors from that harm.

The bill’s proponents will say they have no intention of regulating content. But the requirement for platforms to mitigate undefined harms is at odds with the bill’s effect of regulating online content. Imposing a “duty of care” on online platforms to mitigate mental health-related harms can only produce one outcome: the suppression of constitutionally protected speech.

For example, if an online service uses infinite scrolling to promote the works of Shakespeare, or algebra problems, or the history of the Roman Empire, would any lawmaker consider that harmful?

I don’t think so, because website design can’t do any harm. This bill regulates content, not design.

Last year, the Harvard Medical School journalClimate Anxiety: The existential threat of climate change is a real issue for many young peopleThe article states, “Among a group of more than 10,000 16-25 year olds, 60 percent said they were very worried about the climate, and almost half said their anxiety was affecting their daily lives.”

Greta Thunberg, the world’s most famous climate activist, Climate AnxietyShould the platform ban her from watching climate-related content because of that?

Under the bill, Greta Thunberg would be considered a minor and could be denied the right to take part in the online debates that have made her famous.

Anxiety and eating disorders are two undefined harms that this bill asks internet platforms to prevent and mitigate. Will these sites allow discussion and debate about the climate? Will they allow discussion of eating disorder survivor stories? No. Instead, they will censor themselves and their users rather than risk being held accountable.

Is it acceptable to look at pictures of skinny models so that people don’t develop eating disorders? What about violent images of war? Should we silence the debate about gun rights because it might disturb some people?

What about online discussions about sexual orientation? Do pro- and anti-gay arguments cause anxiety for teenagers?

What about the pro-life message? Can pro-life arguments cause anxiety to teenage mothers who are considering an abortion?

In effect, the bill opens the door to almost unlimited content regulation, and some could, and will, argue that almost any content has the potential to cause some kind of mental disorder.

Furthermore, if the costs of monitoring teenage users are prohibitive, economic concerns may lead online forums to remove anxiety-inducing content for all users, regardless of age.

This bill does more than just regulate the internet; it threatens to stifle important, diverse debate essential to a free society.

So who has the power to make these decisions? That task falls to the newly created Speech Police. The bill creates a Child Online Safety Council to help the government determine what constitutes harm to minors and what platforms should do to address it. These decisions should be made by parents and families, not unelected bureaucrats acting as censorship boards.

The bill’s other flaws don’t end there: It seeks to protect minors from beer and gambling ads on certain online platforms like Facebook and Hulu, but those same minors would see the exact same ads if they were watching the Super Bowl or PGA Tour on TV.

Does it even make sense? Should online platforms be banned from showing the same content that kids watch on TV every day? Should sports viewing be effectively relegated to the pre-internet era?

Even if a company could protect minors from any content that could cause anxiety, depression, or eating disorders, that wouldn’t be enough to comply with KOSA, which requires websites to treat individuals differently if the platform knows them. Or you should know I am a minor.

This means that even media platforms that make genuine efforts to comply with the law could find themselves punished because the government believes they “should have known” that their users were underage.

This means the bill doesn’t just apply to minors. The need-to-know standard means that KOSA is an internet-wide regulation, which essentially means that the only way for platforms to comply with the law is to verify age.

Therefore, adults and minors alike would be better off getting used to having to show identification every time they go online. This knowledge standard destroys the concept of privacy on the Internet.

I have raised some questions about this bill. But no one, not even the bill’s sponsors, can honestly answer those questions because they don’t know the answers. They don’t know to what extent regulators and state attorneys general will enforce the bill’s provisions because they’re too zealous. They don’t know what rules the FTC will come up with to enforce the provisions.

These questions remain unanswered due to several vague provisions in this bill that, if enacted into law, would be answered not by our elected representatives in Congress, but by bureaucrats seeking to increase their own power at the expense of First Amendment rights.

There is every reason to believe the Court would strike down this bill. The Court would have a ton of reasons to do so. The bill is riddled with ambiguities. Its most important terms are left undefined, making it nearly impossible to comply with. Even disregarding the many obvious First Amendment violations inherent in the bill, the Court would probably find the bill invalid for vagueness.

But we should not rely on the courts to save America from this inadequate bill. The Senate should have rejected KOSA and forced its sponsors to at least make the bill clearer. Instead, the Senate went all out to pass KOSA despite its flaws.

KOSA has too many flaws for one amendment to completely fix the law, but the Senate should have addressed KOSA’s most glaring problems: its silence on political, social and religious speech.

My amendment simply states that any restrictions under KOSA will not apply to political, social or religious speech. My amendment was intended to address legitimate concerns that this bill threatens free speech online. If supporters of this bill truly wanted to leave content alone, they would have welcomed and supported my amendment to protect political, social and religious speech.

But that was not the case: the bill’s sponsors blocked my amendment from consideration, and the Senate was prohibited from voting to protect free speech.

This should be a lesson for KOSA: its sponsors haven’t just silenced debate in the Senate; their bill would silence the American people.

KOSA is a Trojan horse that claims to protect children by asserting the ability to regulate speech without limit, depriving them of the benefits of the internet, such as the ability to interact with like-minded people, express themselves freely, and engage in debates with people who hold different views.

Opposition to the bill is bipartisan, from right to left.

The pro-life organization Students for Life Action Commented Regarding KOSA, he said, “Once again, a federal bill with broad powers and vague definitions threatens pro-life speech…The targets of a weaponized federal government will almost certainly include pro-life Americans who protect mothers and their newborns and unborn children.”

Student Life Action ended its statement with the following: “Pro-life generations already face discrimination, de-platforming, and short- and long-term bans from social media based on the whims of others. Student Life Action urges you to vote NO on KOSA to prevent view-based discrimination from becoming federal policy under the Federal Trade Commission.”

of ACLU More than 300 high school students came to the Capitol to urge Congress to vote against KOSA because, in the ACLU’s words, “KOSA gives the government the power to decide what content is dangerous for young people, enables censorship, and jeopardizes access to critical resources like gender identity support, mental health resources, and reproductive healthcare.”

Government mandates and censorship cannot protect children online. The Internet may bring new problems, but these problems have ancient solutions. A free spirit and parental guidance are the best way to protect children online.