House to Consider GOP's Kids Online Safety Act Without Senate’s Duty of Care
House Commerce Committee members will discuss an updated version of the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) during a Dec. 2 subcommittee hearing, the committee said Tuesday.
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The hearing agenda lists a draft discussion of KOSA with only Rep. Gus Bilirakis, R-Fla., included as a sponsor. Original Democratic lead, Rep. Kathy Castor, D-Fla., isn’t on the bill. The draft lacks a duty of care, a section Sens. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., included in their version of KOSA (S. 1748).
The agenda lists the Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA 2.0) and 17 other bills, including the App Store Accountability Act, an age-verification proposal similar to laws in Texas and Utah.
House Commerce Committee Chairman Brett Guthrie, R-Ky., in March (see 2504290049) said he wants to get bipartisan consensus on kids safety legislation. Castor at the time questioned Republican commitment to the bill, given Republican leadership’s role in blocking committee plans to consider KOSA and COPPA at a committee markup in 2024.
The Senate version of the bill includes a “duty of care,” requiring platforms to take “reasonable care in the creation and implementation of any design feature to prevent and mitigate” harms to minors “where a reasonable and prudent person would agree that such harms were reasonably foreseeable by the covered platform and would agree that the design feature is a contributing factor to such harms.” The draft discussion doesn’t include a duty of care section.
The draft bill includes a section stating that KOSA would preempt any relevant state laws or regulations.
The draft discussion mirrors KOSA’s original requirements for social media platforms to take “reasonable measures” to protect children against promotion of suicide, eating disorders, substance abuse, sexual exploitation and illegal activity involving drugs, gambling and alcohol.
The draft discussion lists requirements for covered platforms to enforce reasonable policies and practices to prevent harms to minors. The enforcement section also closely mirrors what was previously introduced with violations treated as unfair and deceptive acts or practices under the FTC Act.
Offices for Bilirakis, Castor, Blackburn and Blumenthal didn’t comment Tuesday.