The Senate Passed a Bill That Could Censor Abortion, Trans Info From the Internet

The dubiously-named Kids Online Safety Act is supported by the architects of Project 2025 and opposed by the ACLU.

By Susan Rinkunas  |  July 31, 2024 | 5:26pm
Photo: Getty Images AbortionPolitics
The Senate Passed a Bill That Could Censor Abortion, Trans Info From the Internet

On Tuesday, the Senate passed a controversial bill that civil liberties advocates say could lead to censorship of a broad range of internet content, especially posts about abortion and transgender identity. And, notably, the group behind Project 2025 seems thrilled that the bill could lead to content about transgender people being wiped off the internet.

The vote on the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) was 91-3, with only one Democrat voting against it: Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon. The bill now goes to the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, which is on recess until September 9. President Joe Biden has said he would sign it into law and Vice President Kamala Harris—now the presumptive 2024 nominee—said in a statement that she applauded its Senate passage.

KOSA would create a “duty of care” requiring social media apps and websites to “prevent and mitigate” harms to children, including by not recommending content that could cause anxiety and depression or could lead to “sexual exploitation and abuse.” Initially, the bill let state Attorneys General enforce the law, and advocates noted that conservative AGs could weaponize it to target content they don’t support by claiming it’s harmful to people under age 17. In response, internet platforms likely would preemptively block content they think could get them sued, leading to censorship for people of all ages. (Advocates note this is exactly what happened after the passage of the purported anti-sex trafficking bills SESTA/FOSTA in 2018, which resulted in the censorship of sex workers.)

The authors revised KOSA in February 2024 to move enforcement authority from AGs to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), but the threat of FTC action could still encourage platforms to block certain content. And there’s another big problem: Presidents nominate FTC leaders. If Donald Trump wins in November, he could choose FTC commissioners who will go after content about abortion and LGBTQ identity. Plus, Project 2025, the right-wing playbook for a second Trump term, calls for allowing presidents to fire FTC commissioners before their seven-year terms are up, which would give presidents even more power over the agency.

As Evan Greer, director of the digital civil liberties group Fight for the Future, said in a statement, “This is not about protecting kids. This is about Senators getting to claim they’re protecting kids ahead of the election.” Greer added, “Under a potential Trump administration, the FTC could easily use KOSA to target content related to gender affirming care, abortion, racial justice, climate change, or anything else that Project 2025-infused agency is willing to claim makes kids ‘depressed’ or ‘anxious.'”

The American Civil Liberties Union opposes KOSA and said in a release about the bill’s revision that it “continues to empower the Federal Trade Commission to take legal action against apps, websites, and other online platforms whose broadly-defined design features could cause harm to children. This risk of legal repercussions would still incentivize an enormous number of websites, apps, and online platforms to filter and block protected speech.” The ACLU believes the bill violates the First Amendment.

Cody Venzke, senior policy counsel of surveillance, privacy, and technology at the ACLU, previously told Jezebel that part of the problem with KOSA is that what it’s trying to regulate—harms from anxiety and depression—is extremely subjective. “The portions of the duty of care are untethered to any particular legal definitions,” he said. Venzke said it seemed like lawmakers were trying to do something about internet protections, and glomming on to a flawed bill. “They are turning to what is politically available to them, which is kids, and doing so in language that is so broad that any policymaker can read into it what they’re hoping to regulate,” he said.

Wyden explained his no vote by saying that he “take[s] seriously concerns voiced by the American Civil Liberties Union, Fight for the Future, and LGBTQ+ teens and advocates that a future MAGA administration could still use this bill to pressure companies to censor gay, trans and reproductive health information.”

Some conservatives also oppose the bill, including a group called Patriot Voices, founded by former Republican Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, as well as the influential anti-abortion organization Students for Life, over concerns that it could censor their messaging. The other two lawmakers to vote against it were Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah).

Some big tech companies including X (formerly Twitter), Snap, and Microsoft have endorsed the bill, which isn’t terribly surprising as tech companies have come under fire over child safety. But one notorious group supports KOSA: The Heritage Foundation, the architects of Project 2025. Its advocacy arm, Heritage Action, designated KOSA as a “key vote” for its legislative scorecard of lawmakers.

Why is Heritage a strong KOSA supporter when other conservatives oppose it? Apparently, because they want LGBTQ content censored. Heritage wrote on Twitter in May 2023 that “Keeping trans content away from children is protecting kids.” (The organization was responding to another user who screenshot a Heritage op-ed ridiculously titled “How Big Tech Turns Kids Trans,” which called for lawmakers to pass the bill.)

Project 2025 describes gender-affirming healthcare for young people as a “social contagion” and falsely claims that gender-affirming surgery for adults is harmful, saying there is a “growing body of evidence that such interventions are dangerous and…there is insufficient scientific evidence to support such coverage in state [insurance] plans.”

The Heritage Foundation and Project 2025 want to ban gender-affirming care and halt telemedicine prescriptions of abortion pills. A Trump administration could use KOSA to help wipe information about these healthcare options off the internet. House Democrats: you’ve been warned.

 
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