Page:The Kids Online Safety Act is Still A Huge Danger to Our Rights Online.pdf/3

 biometric information such as their photos, and have accuracy issues. Ultimately, no method is sufficiently reliable, offers complete coverage of the population, and has respect for the protection of individuals' data and privacy and their security. France’s National Commission on Informatics and Liberty, CNIL, reached this conclusion in a recent analysis of current age veriﬁcation methods.

In response to these concerns, KOSA’s authors have made two small changes, but they’re unlikely to stop platforms from implementing age veriﬁcation. Earlier versions would have held platforms liable if they “knew or should have known” that an impacted user was sixteen years of age or younger. The latest version of KOSA adds “reasonableness” to this requirement, holding platforms liable if they “know or reasonably should know” a user is a minor. But legally speaking, this doesn't result in giving platforms any better guidance.

The second change is to add explicit language that age veriﬁcation is not required under the “Privacy Protections” section of the bill. The bill now states that a covered platform is not required to implement an age gating or age veriﬁcation functionality. But there is essentially no outcome where sites don’t implement age veriﬁcation. There’s no way for platforms to block nebulous categories of content for minors without explicitly requiring age veriﬁcation. If a 16-year-old user truthfully identiﬁes herself, the law will hold platforms liable, unless they filter and block content. If a 16-year-old user identiﬁes herself as an adult, and the platform does not use age veriﬁcation, then it will still be held liable, because it should have “reasonably known” the user’s age.

A platform could, alternatively, skip age veriﬁcation and simply institute blocking and ﬁltering of certain types of content for all users regardless of age—which would be a terrible blow for speech online for everyone. So despite these bandaids on the bill, it still leaves platforms with no choices except to institute heavy-handed censorship and age veriﬁcation requirements. These impacts would affect not just young people, but every user of the platform.

While we appreciate that lawmakers have responded to concerns raised about the bill, its main requirements—that platforms must “prevent and mitigate” complex issues that researchers don’t even agree the platforms are responsible for in the first place—will lead to a more siloed, and more censored, internet. We also stand by our previous criticisms of KOSA—that it unreasonably buckets all young people into a single category, and that it requires surveillance of minors by parents. They remain troubling aspects of the law.

There is no question that some elements of social media today are toxic to users. Companies want users to spend as much time on their platforms as possible, because they make money from targeted ad sales, and these ad sales are fueled by invasive data collection. EFF has long supported stronger competition laws and comprehensive data privacy legislation in part because they can open the ﬁeld to competitors to today’s social media options, and force platforms to innovate, offering more user choice. If users are unhappy with the content or design of current platforms, they should be able to move to other options that offer different forms of content moderation, better privacy protections, and other features that improve the experience for everyone, including young people.

KOSA would not enhance the ability of users to choose where they spend their time. Instead, it would shrink the number of options, by making strict requirements that only today’s largest, most proﬁtable platforms could follow. It would solidify today’s Big Tech giants, while forcing them to collect more private data on all users.