EFF Warns of the Dangers of Internet Censorship Bill, KOSA

One of the ways that lawmakers are seeking to control speech online is through a US bill known as KOSA. EFF explains why it’s bad.

Thought control. It’s long been a wet dream for lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle to control the internet and shape it into the image they have in their mind (assuming they want it around at all, of course). There are many ways that have been dreamed up on how to accomplish this. This ranges from age verification laws to online harms bills to even sun setting Section 230 altogether. What’s worse is the fact that this is far from a complete list of ways in which lawmakers have been pushing to crack down on free speech on the internet. All this with fig leaf excuses to support internet censorship by saying things like it’s being implemented to “protect the kids” even though the evidence is, at best, sparse that it would even accomplish those goals. This in an attempt, among other things, to make government thought control more palatable to the broader public.

In the US, another method being employed to crack down on online speech. That is through the Kids Online Safety Act (otherwise known as KOSA). The legislation itself doesn’t waste time in its bullshit excuses to censor speech online. It’s right there in the name, after all. For those who see this name and think of it as oddly familiar, it’s because it has been around for multiple governments now. During the last US government, KOSA supporters while pushing this legislation admitted that KOSA is merely a tool to suppress LGBTQ+ content. It had little to do with protecting kids online and more to do with suppressing voices the supporters of the legislation considers morally bad. Anything LGBTQ+ related could easily be swept up into this legislation as it could very easily be deemed “pornographic”. The fact that the supporters admit that this is the whole point of this legislation should be all the reason to reject this legislation.

Of course, delays and procedural missteps ended up killing KOSA’s chances of becoming law during the last government. What about this recently installed embarrassment of an American government? Well, as it turns out, it’s more of the same. Lawmakers are pushing KOSA once again. Right now, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), it is before the senate. It has many of the same problems as the previous iteration. From the EFF:

At the center of the bill is a requirement that platforms “exercise reasonable care” to prevent and mitigate a sweeping list of harms to minors, including depression, anxiety, eating disorders, substance use, bullying, and “compulsive usage.” The bill claims to bar lawsuits over “the viewpoint of users,” but that’s a smokescreen. Its core function is to let government agencies sue platforms, big or small, that don’t block or restrict content someone later claims contributed to one of these harms.

This bill won’t bother big tech. Large companies will be able to manage this regulation, which is why Apple and X have agreed to support it. In fact, X helped negotiate the text of the last version of this bill we saw. Meanwhile, those companies’ smaller competitors will be left scrambling to comply. Under KOSA, a small platform hosting mental health discussion boards will be just as vulnerable as Meta or TikTok—but much less able to defend itself.

To avoid liability, platforms will over-censor. It’s not merely hypothetical. It’s what happens when speech becomes a legal risk. The list of harms in KOSA’s “duty of care” provision is so broad and vague that no platform will know what to do regarding any given piece of content. Forums won’t be able to host posts with messages like “love your body,” “please don’t do drugs,” or “here’s how I got through depression” without fearing that an attorney general or FTC lawyer might later decide the content was harmful. Support groups and anti-harm communities, which can’t do their work without talking about difficult subjects like eating disorders, mental health, and drug abuse, will get caught in the dragnet.

When the safest legal option is to delete a forum, platforms will delete the forum.

The EFF goes on to point out that the legislation doesn’t solve the problems the backers claims it solves. What’s more, they point out the problems this bill has when it comes to the first amendment.

Like so many other political debates, the immediate question is which side supports this legislation, thus answering the question of who to direct the pitchforks and torches at. This is a major part of the problem because, as it turns out, Democrats are actively helping Republican’s push this internet censorship law. As a result, this truly is a bi-partisan problem. From TechDirt:

The Trump administration is methodically implementing every element of Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 censorship playbook, and Democratic leadership’s response is… to help them? Earlier today, Chuck Schumer and Richard Blumenthal joined MAGA Republicans to reintroduce the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) — a bill that Heritage itself has proudly proclaimed as central to its strategy of censoring progressive content around LGBTQ issues and abortion. The new bill appears to be effectively identical to last year’s version.

It raises a huge question of… what the fuck are they thinking?

The press release touts its “bipartisan” nature, with Democratic Senators Chuck Schumer and Richard Blumenthal sponsoring the bill, alongside Marsha Blackburn and John Thune.

Last year, when Heritage Foundation declared its desire to use KOSA to censor LGBTQ content and announced it would leverage the bill to remove pro-abortion content if Trump won, perhaps some could dismiss it as empty rhetoric. But now? The Trump administration is systematically implementing every element of Heritage’s Project 2025 censorship playbook. There’s no more room for wishful thinking about how KOSA might be used.

And yet, Democrats seem to act as if none of that is happening, and we can just assume good faith in how KOSA will be implemented and enforced by an FTC that has loudly proclaimed its willingness to conduct partisan, culture war witch hunts on behalf of Project 2025’s goals.

Yes, we expect Richard Blumenthal to reflexively support any anti-internet bill. But Chuck Schumer? After everything we’ve seen, how can Democratic leadership still pretend there’s any good faith here? Trump is already using every available tool to wage his censorial culture wars. Heritage has explicitly laid out how they’ll use KOSA to silence progressive voices. What possible justification could there be for Democrats to hand them an even more powerful weapon?

Yes, this really is a case of Republican’s proposing to censor the internet and Democrats are swooping in to help Republican’s in any way they can to support these efforts. Yeah, fuck them all indeed.

Even worse is that Elon Musk and Apple are both endorsing this nightmare legislation as well. From the Verge:

Apple has expressed support for the bill, as it continues to battle Meta over whether apps or app stores should be responsible for safeguarding children online. “Apple is pleased to offer our support for the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA),” Timothy Powderly, Apple’s senior director of government affairs for the Americas, said in a statement. “Everyone has a part to play in keeping kids safe online, and we believe [this] legislation will have a meaningful impact on children’s online safety.”

Despite overwhelming support in the Senate and a last minute revision and endorsement from Elon Musk’s X, House Republican leadership refused to put KOSA to a vote last year. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has said he “love[s] the principle, but the details of that are very problematic.” After X worked with the bill’s sponsors to weave in some language preventing discrimination based on viewpoint, Johnson didn’t budge much, saying he looked forward to “working with the Trump Administration to get the right bill into law.”

If the fact that this is a bad bill wasn’t enough, maybe the fact that Musk supports this bill should be a dead giveaway on why this is a horrible piece of legislation.

Trying to pump the brakes on this legislation is going to be quite the tall order. It was tough fighting against this censorship law before, but now that Republican’s are in power, it’s going to be all the more difficult since common sense and reasoning means nothing to them. Hopefully, there will be another groundswell of opposition for this despite public political fatigue. Again, that’s going to be a tall order.

Drew Wilson on Mastodon, Twitter and Facebook.