WASHINGTON — The Senate plans to vote this week on a pair of bills related to children’s online safety, a rare moment of bipartisan cooperation a little more than three months before a heated presidential election.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer held a procedural vote Tuesday afternoon on the social media bills known as the Children’s Online Safety Act, or KOSA, and the Children and Teens Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA 2.0. with a primary vote scheduled for Thursday. A final vote could take place next week unless senators from both parties agree sooner.
While the online security package appears poised to pass the Senate, it must also pass the House. Republican leaders there have also shown strong interest in passing online safety legislation for children this Congress, but it’s unclear how soon that might happen. Lawmakers from both chambers are set to leave Washington for the August recess in the coming days.
Some tech companies, such as Microsoft and Snap, which owns Snapchat, have backed KOSA. However, other social media companies have not taken an official position.
Opponents, including the American Civil Liberties Union and other free speech and civil liberties groups, argue that the bill’s definition of harm is too broad and could lead to censorship of content promoting politically polarizing issues, gender equality or abortion rights.
In recent months, Schumer has tried to move bipartisan online security bills to the Senate floor by unanimous consent, but some senators have blocked those efforts with protests.
Since then, Schumer has been working closely with Commerce Committee Chairman Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., and the bills’ sponsors — Sens. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., Ed Markey, D-Mass. and Bill Cassidy, R-La. — to address concerns and build wider support. KOSA has more than 60 co-sponsors, which is enough to overcome the irritation from opponents.
Speaking on the floor of the Senate on Tuesday, Schumer said that in the past month he has met with parents whose children have committed suicide because of their experiences using social media.
“Nothing motivates me, and many of us here in the Senate, to address children’s online safety more than meeting with bereaved parents,” Schumer said. “Some of these children have been abused, others have been targeted by predators or had their personal, personal information stolen – almost all of them have suffered in some way from deep mental health distress and felt they had nowhere to turn.
“And in too many cases their suffering ended in tragedy because they took their own lives,” he said.
Congress has struggled for more than a decade to regulate Big Tech. Two online security bills have been considered “low hanging fruit,” the easiest to pass through the Senate and House on a bipartisan basis. President Joe Biden signed the law into law in April TikTok has banned the video sharing app In the US after the election unless the Chinese owner sells it.
KOSA, written by Blumenthal and Blackburn, will require social media companies to provide better protections for users under 17. It would also require companies to have guardians monitor minors’ use of the platform more closely and block certain features, such as auto-play. And it would require companies to give users a dedicated page to report harmful content.
COPPA 2.0, written by Markey and Cassidy, would create strong online privacy protections for anyone under the age of 17. It will also ban ads targeted at children and teenagers and create an erase button for parents and children, requiring companies to allow users to delete data.
Blackburn said at a news conference with Blumenthal on Tuesday that KOSA was developed after a series of military missions. emotional and powerful listening focused on the harms of social media.
“When we were doing these hearings, we heard from people who said, ‘I want to tell you my story,'” said Blackburn, who was with family members of children who died by suicide.
After bills pass the Senate, it’s less clear what happens next in the House. Energy and Commerce Committee Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers, D-Wash., said her full committee “plans to move forward” with marking up both bills.
“It’s critical that Congress act,” McMorris Rodgers, who is retiring from Congress at the end of the year, told NBC News on Tuesday.
Still, the price hike has not yet been set, and the November election is just around the corner. The House is expected to be in session next week, but with government funding bills stalled, GOP leaders could cancel the vote next week and send lawmakers into a month-long August recess a week early. If that happens, members of the House of Representatives will not return to Washington until September 9.
House Republican leadership will determine whether and when the legislation will be brought up for debate.
Schumer said Tuesday that lawmakers could not afford more delays.
“Social media has helped hundreds of millions of people connect in new ways over the past two decades, but with those benefits come new and sometimes serious health risks,” Schumer said. “We cannot ignore these risks in this matter – we desperately need to catch up.”