Free Speech

Tell Congress: KOSA Will Censor the Internet But Won't Help Kids

The Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) would censor the internet and would make government officials the arbiters of what young people can see online. It will likely lead to age verification, handing more power, and private data, to third-party identity verification companies like Clear or ID.me.

The government should not have the power to decide what topics are "safe" online for young people, and to force services to remove and block access to anything that might be considered unsafe for children. This isn’t safety—it’s censorship.

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KOSA would seriously endanger teenagers’ ability to access information. The bill creates liability for platforms that fail to block young people from a list of content that it deems harmful. The natural result of this censorious scheme is that a large amount of material will likely be banned outright or put out of the reach of children, leaving huge holes in what information is accessible online. And online services are likely to implement this censorship with poorly working filters, which we know fail to properly distinguish “good” speech from “bad” speech.

On July 30, KOSA passed the U.S. Senate. But many Representatives in the House are concerned with the bill's impact on free speech. KOSA is a heavy-handed plan to prevent minors from accessing content that the government believes is not in their best interest. Tell your Representative to vote NO on this bill.

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Sample message:

As your constituent, I urge you to reject and publicly oppose the Kids Online Safety Act (H.R. 7891).

This bill will censor the internet for both adults and children while likely leading to online services collecting even more personal data. The bill  pushes online services to implement age verification systems, which would undermine all users’ privacy, and invade everyone’s right to access the internet anonymously.  It will lead to identity verification companies like Clear or ID.me getting more of people’s private data

In effect, the KOSA will make a small group of federal officials, and indirectly, the U.S. president and attorneys general, the arbiters of what material minors can see online. Online services will remove and block access to material in all states. KOSA could result in loss of access to truthful information that one state’s top law enforcement official deems dangerous. This isn’t safety—it’s censorship.

Please protect all internet users’ privacy and our ability to access information online, and publicly oppose KOSA.

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