Senate Passes Bill to Protect Kids Online, Faces Resistance from Tech Firms
The Senate overwhelmingly passed legislation on Tuesday designed to protect children from dangerous online content, marking a significant development in online safety of children news, as well as the first major effort by Congress in decades to hold tech companies accountable for harmful actions cause by their platforms.
Driven by parents whose children have faced bullying or harmful content online, and parents whose children committed suicide, the bill passed with a vote of 91-3. It requires tech companies take all reasonable steps to prevent harm to minors and guarantees the safest settings are the defaults.
The bill now goes to the House, with its speaker Mike Johnson expressing his commitment to passing legislation to the bill but has not confirmed if this specific bill will come up for a vote before the session ends in January.
Those in favor of the bill point to a strong Senate vote as a compelling reason for the House to act in the two months remaining in the session.
President Joe Biden urged the House to expedite the process, stating, “Today our children are subjected to a wild west online and our current laws and regulations are insufficient to prevent this. It is past time to act.”
Technology and Safety
This bill calls for tech companies to reduce harm to children in areas including bullying, violence, inducement to suicide, eating disorders, substance abuse, and sexual exploitation of children. It also mandates blocking advertisement display for illegal products such as narcotics, tobacco, and alcohol. This will be achieved by providing options for minors to protect their information, disable addictive features, or opt-out of personalized recommendations on social media platforms.
The lawmakers’ bill requires limiting communications with children and features that tend to get people to use for a longer period, such as autoplay videos. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer stated, “This is a good first step, but we have more to go.”
The Balance
The bill aims to make online platforms “safe by design,” as emphasized by its proponents. Senator Marsha Blackburn said, “The message we are sending to big tech is that kids are not your product. Kids are not your profit source.”
Several tech companies, including Microsoft, X (formerly Twitter), and Snap, have supported the legislation. However, Carl Szabo, a vice president at NetChoice, a tech industry group, voiced concerns about the bill’s “cybersecurity, censorship, and constitutional risks.”
Meta Platforms, the parent of Facebook and Instagram, also supported the effort to develop standards but prefers legislation that mandates parental consent for app downloads by teens. Senators Richard Blumenthal and Marsha Blackburn, main sponsors of the bill, underline the need to put the burden on companies, not parents. The senators attempted to modulate corporate responsibility with freedom of expression to forestall legal challenges.
Some critics, like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), say it could undermine user privacy and even limit access to crucial information, with Jenna Leventoff of the ACLU saying, “The House must block this dangerous bill before it’s too late.”
The push for the bill also updates child privacy laws by raising the age from 13 to 17 for the prohibition on online companies collecting personal information and banning targeted advertising to teenagers.
Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey, who sponsored the original legislation in 1998, and Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana collaborated on this update to address the evolving online landscape.
Tech Companies’ Suspicious Response to the Bill
Tech companies are acting quite suspiciously when it comes to the bill. At the end of the day, the main aim of the bill is to protect our children online. Nothing but that. Every parent has the right to know their children are safe on social media platforms. Yet, for some reason, with all the claims these companies have been making, preaching their commitment to protect children, big tech companies are failing to fully comprehend the level of destruction their platforms are causing to children, questioning the reason behind the bill.
The more we engage with the online world, the more we understand its dangers. For the past year, the Senate has been striving to achieve online safety of children news, but no significant action has been taken, and no signs of child protection have emerged. Although the top garner line safety for children always garners attention, it consistently fails to be passed as a bill and be implemented.
In Lebanon, there’s a saying, “People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.”
A saying, our Big Tech giants should heed and be mindful of.
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