The Senate Commerce Committee is once again considering legislation that would dramatically expand age verification, and undermine privacy for everyone. Alongside the SCREEN Act, the CHATBOT Act, and the Youth AI Privacy Act, the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) would push companies to collect more information about their users while creating new incentives to restrict lawful speech.
Tell Congress: KOSA endangers the privacy of all
KOSA Pushes Platforms Toward Age Verification
The Senate version of KOSA imposes a “duty of care” on online services, including social media, to avoid exposing young people to certain material the law deems harmful. But those obligations only work if online services know which users are minors. That means more platforms will be pressured to implement age verification or age estimation systems.
That’s not a bill that increases privacy—it’s one that creates new privacy problems. Whether companies verify ages by checking government IDs, performing facial analysis, checking your bank records, or collecting other personal information, all of these systems require the handing over of more sensitive data, simply to access lawful online speech and services. They also create new databases of personal information that can be breached, misused, or demanded by governments.
Everyone deserves privacy online. Congress could push for a bill that protects privacy for all users, but that’s not what they’re doing here. Instead, KOSA and the other bills coming up for a vote this week push online services to adopt systems that require people to identify themselves before they can speak, read, or participate online.
KOSA Still Creates Incentives to Censor Lawful Speech
Some online content isn’t appropriate for minors. Families, schools, and communities all have important roles to play in helping children navigate the internet. But KOSA takes those decisions away from families and the young people who have a First Amendment right to speak and access information online. It instead empowers government officials to enforce how online services handle lawful speech.
And by empowering elected attorneys general in states across the country to enforce KOSA, the bill means those elected officials, rather than your family, deciding what’s appropriate online content for teens. Even more likely, it will lead to limits on what minors and adults are able to see at all, as companies shut down potentially controversial forums in order to avoid legal action from government bureaucrats.
The latest version of KOSA once again includes a broad "duty of care" requiring platforms to mitigate a wide range of alleged harms to minors.
Whatever disclaimers and exceptions the bill includes, the practical effect is unchanged. When platforms face liability for content that someone later claims contributed to harms like anxiety, eating disorders, or substance use, the safest response is to remove lawful speech or shut down forums discussing those topics altogether.
More worrisome, the potential liability KOSA creates may push online services to either remove speech well in advance of a young person seeing it, or block young people’s access so they never see it. That will likely include forums where people try to help each other, find community and recovery resources for the exact harms listed in the bill, like gambling and drug addiction. In trying to protect young people, KOSA may actually cut them off from valuable sources of support.
We've explained these censorship risks in detail before, and they remain just as real in the latest version of the bill.
Congress Should Reject KOSA
Minors deserve meaningful privacy protections online—as do adults. But KOSA moves in the opposite direction by encouraging more age verification, as well as more legal pressure for platforms to monitor and restrict lawful speech.
The Senate Commerce Committee should reject KOSA, along with the other bills in this legislative package, and instead pursue comprehensive privacy legislation that protects everyone—not just minors—without undermining privacy, security, or free expression.
Facts Only
* The Senate Commerce Committee is considering legislation regarding age verification.
* KOSA imposes a "duty of care" on online services to avoid exposing young people to harmful material.
* These obligations require online services to know which users are minors.
* Implementing the duty requires age verification or estimation systems.
* Age verification methods may involve checking government IDs, facial analysis, or bank records.
* These systems require handing over sensitive data for access to lawful online speech and services.
* These systems create new databases of personal information subject to breach or misuse by governments.
* KOSA empowers elected attorneys general in states to enforce the law.
* Liability for content causing harms (e.g., anxiety, eating disorders) may push platforms to remove or shut down lawful speech.
Executive Summary
The proposed Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) imposes a "duty of care" on online services, including social media, requiring them to prevent young people from accessing certain harmful material. This obligation is conditional on platforms knowing which users are minors, necessitating the implementation of age verification or age estimation systems. The article argues that these systems, whether using government IDs, facial analysis, or bank records, require handing over sensitive personal data. Furthermore, these systems create new databases vulnerable to breaches and potential government demands.
The text suggests that KOSA creates incentives for content restriction by empowering government officials to enforce rules regarding lawful speech on platforms. The author contends that this delegation shifts authority from families to elected attorneys general, potentially leading to broader restrictions on what minors and adults can view online, as platforms might remove controversial forums to avoid legal action. The overall argument is that the practical effect of KOSA is not increased privacy but rather a mechanism pushing for mandatory identification before participation online and imposing potential censorship risks on lawful discussion.
Full Take
The narrative constructs a framework where a protective measure intended to safeguard minors is reframed as an apparatus for increased state surveillance and content control. The core tension lies between the stated goal of protecting vulnerable users and the procedural requirements—age verification—that necessitate invasive data collection, thereby undermining the very privacy KOSA seeks to protect. This creates a structural problem: safety measures become mechanisms for data aggregation and restriction, regardless of the intent.
The pattern observed is a manipulation of framing where public safety concerns (protecting minors from harm) are used as the justification for private intrusions (mandatory age verification), which then morph into regulatory power (censorship). The argument shifts from individual parental responsibility to centralized governmental enforcement, suggesting that the cost of mitigating harm is paid through reduced expression and increased data exposure. The underlying assumption is that the state's interest in regulating harmful content supersedes the right to privacy and free expression, even when those interests are mediated by private entities.
The implication is a subtle shift in agency: instead of empowering families or individual users with control over their digital space, the system channels authority toward an external regulatory structure. This raises questions about where the boundary lies between legitimate content moderation and governmental overreach when enforced through mandatory, intrusive identification systems. What are the long-term consequences if these data-driven restrictions prioritize immediate risk mitigation over foundational principles of digital autonomy?
Sentinel — Human
The text presents a cohesive, strongly argued position against KOSA by systematically tracing the consequences of age verification requirements on privacy and free expression online.