Few threats to the safety and well-being of children today are greater than the oligarchs of the Big Tech companies that control the internet. Platforms like Facebook and Snapchat are increasingly serve An open drug market for drug dealers and cartels has led to a surge in fatal fentanyl overdoses among minors, which increased 30-fold between 2013 and 2021.
Platforms like Instagram use sophisticated algorithms to Pedophiles Those who traffic minors and child sexual abuse materialAnd Chinese-owned sites like TikTok are allowing kids to Bombarded Within minutes of opening the app, you will see content promoting suicide, eating disorders and self-harm.
For years, big tech companies have avoided any responsibility for the harm they cause to American children. But that all changed with the Senate's passage of the bipartisan Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), led by Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee and Democrat Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut. The bill would impose strict rules on social media sites to provide a safe environment for children.
Key provisions of KOSA include protecting minors' online information and allowing them to opt out of addictive algorithms. KOSA also provides parents with tools to identify and report online harm. Large social media companies will be required to conduct independent audits to ensure that big tech companies are actually protecting children online. Perhaps most importantly, KOSA establishes a duty of care for platforms to prevent harm to children.
This bill will now head to the House of Representatives, where every member of Congress must support it, especially Republicans. If you are concerned about the outsized power of big tech companies, this should be a no-brainer. For too long, big tech companies have made record profits by hooking teens and kids for as long as possible with their addictive features and ignoring the consequences. This bill represents our best opportunity to protect children from this abuse.
While parents, victims, and leading conservative groups, including Article III Project, Internet Accountability Project, Heritage Foundation, Institute for Family Studies, Ethics and Public Policy Center, and America First Policy Institute, support KOSA, major tech lobbying groups Lined We will do everything in our power to combat this. The same lobbying groups that fight to censor Republican and conservative ideals online are now fighting to increase the abuse of children online.
Still, KOSA has faced some criticism from the right, including claims that the bill is a Trojan horse for big tech companies to censor conservative speech. While this claim is understandable given big tech companies' track record of silencing conservative voices, it couldn't be further from the truth.
KOSA does not impose any legal liability on social media companies for the content of their sites. Instead, KOSA's duty of care applies to product features of big tech companies that lead young users to the specific harms that plague our youngest generations, such as addictive algorithms. In fact, for example, Facebook is likely to face legal liability for refusing to fix its “People You May Know” feature even after executives reportedly discovered that the algorithm was connecting pedophiles with young users. Political speech, on the other hand, falls outside the scope of the bill.
In reality, big tech companies have spent tens of millions of dollars lobbying against industry accountability bills, including KOSA, because the legislation would curb big tech companies' misconduct, not give them more power. If there's one thing conservatives should agree on, it's that children's safety should come before big tech profits.
Mike Davis is founder and president of Article III Project, a conservative justice group whose mission is to hold big tech companies accountable, including the Internet Accountability Project.
The views and opinions expressed in this editorial are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the Daily Caller.
