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…