The Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) may be well intentioned, but it is a serious threat to free speech. The Senate passed KOSA with a 91-3 vote in July, and the House Energy & Commerce Committee approved the legislation earlier this month setting up a floor vote in the House of Representatives.
Censoring the internet will not protect children. Government efforts to limit free speech – even when it’s ‘for the children’ – are Orwellian (Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech). The fact that so many conservative Republicans voted ‘yea’ is proof that over the past several years too many elected officials are willing to sacrifice principle for expediency.
What’s the political context in which KOSA will be enforced?
Well, over the past four years, President Joe Biden, the most anti-free speech president in American history, has directed his administration to create an intricate censorship regime. Biden has called for greater censorship and has demanded social media companies silence ‘dissenting’ voices.
Here’s what Joe Biden said in Philadelphia two years ago: “But there is no question that the Republican Party today is dominated, driven, and intimidated by Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans, and that is a threat to this country ... MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.” The Biden administration has repeatedly sought to censor even factual statements as disinformation because his political opponent is a ‘threat’.
If you deem someone or a group as a threat, censorship becomes a tool to stop them.
Candidate Kamala Harris has not strayed from the left’s anti-free speech position. Writing in The Hill, Jonathan Turley writes, “The Biden-Harris administration has sustained an unrelenting attack on the freedom of speech, from supporting a massive censorship system (described by a federal court as an “Orwellian Ministry of Truth”) to funding blacklisting operations targeting groups and individuals with opposing views.” He goes on to say a “Harris-Walz administration would be a nightmare for free speech.”
It's easy to censor information if one believes ‘the end justifies the means’.
During the pandemic, we were told ‘It’s for your own good’ as politicians weaponized Covid-19 to limit contrarian voices and attack free speech. Government colluded with tech companies to censor ‘misinformation’ – except in most cases the misinformation was right information. Today, we are told that certain candidates are a ‘threat to democracy’ so they must be silenced and deplatformed. Governor Tim Walz has pushed for restrictions on ‘unacceptable’ speech. VP candidate Walz recently proclaimed on MSNBC: "There's no guarantee to free speech on misinformation or hate speech, and especially around our democracy."
Good intentions often lead to unintended bad consequences. KOSA would impose a legal obligation on internet platforms to guarantee the mental health safety of children. Certain political speech – especially the kind I don’t like – could cause distress or anxiety. Remember ‘safe speech zones’ on college campuses where certain speech was banned because we were told ‘speech is violence’. If speech is violence and it causes distress then under KOSA that political speech would threaten the mental health of children. In his 2022 Philadelphia speech, Biden said, Republicans “promote authoritarian leaders, and they fan the flames of political violence that are a threat to our personal rights.” What if the GOP or any group is judged under a KOSA regime to be fanning the flames of political violence because they want tax cuts or more aid to Israel or whatever the cause ... such online speech could cause children anxiety. These groups would have their content banned for threatening the mental health of children.
Under KOSA, the next step after speech is deemed a threat to kids is to censor the online content or limit the online access to the content.
Who would decide whether the requirements of this unprecedented ‘duty of care’ were met?
KOSA assigns the power to censor to a federal bureaucracy ready and eager to censor – a weaponized Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The FTC under Lina Khan, who penned a law review paper calling for widening regulation of ‘disinformation’, is already an instrument pushing for greater censorship.
In its plain language, KOSA is an internet censorship bill. It would restrict free speech and First Amendment Rights. KOSA would be enforced by the political appointees at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) – a Federal Trade Commission already hell bent on regulating free speech platforms. The FTC Chairperson, Lina Khan, is committed to taking down speech she deems as ‘disinformation’.
KOSA would provide Governor Walz and his ideological allies a political/legal cudgel to attack First Amendment Rights. In fact, KOSA would give the censors the ‘it’s for the children’ moral high ground as they work to deplatform their political opponents.
Proponents argue that Congress must do something to protect children online. During the pandemic, however, the ‘must do something’ urgency led us to disastrous outcomes. ‘We must do something’ gave us extended school closures even though children were not vectors of Covid spread. It gave us lockdowns even though the science told us they would be a health and economic catastrophe. It gave us mask mandates even though masks did not stop the pandemic spread. It gave us a censorship regime that silenced dissent and disrupted the public discussion. ‘We must do something’ was a colossal blunder.
KOSA and its ‘we must do something’ ethos will fail to reach its intended goal of protecting kids. Put simply, the bill provides little clarity on what its ‘duty of care’ provision would require of platforms. Without such clarity, platforms will be forced to limit access and censor content. Advocates for various causes could leverage KOSA to attack their political opponents and gain political advantage. Those fighting for ‘reproductive rights’ could push pro-life content off a platform claiming it’s a threat to children’s mental health. Gun control groups could push to deplatform Second Amendment groups because they are a cause for anxiety for kids.
KOSA would weaponize the political system with the inevitable result being a massive crackdown on free speech.
Free speech is essential to the health of civil society – our ‘indispensable right’. I want to protect kids, but we protect them first and best by giving witness to what’s true and right. I want my five kids to grow up in an America where free speech is still the ‘indispensable right’. KOSA is a clear and present danger to free speech ... and therefore KOSA is the real threat to our children’s future and well-being.
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