Child Safety or Government Overreach? House Passes Major Digital Safety Act

A bipartisan majority of House representatives passed a controversial bill on Monday aimed at protecting minors from harmful online content, which has drawn privacy concerns from some in light of draconian online safety measures in Europe.

[RELATED: AI Bill Claiming to Protect Minors Could Institute Online Age Verification Requirements to Maine…]

“This legislation represents an important step forward in Congress’ effort to protect children online and hold big tech accountable, while also empowering parents and protecting free speech. I commend Chairman Guthrie for working across the aisle to get this done, and we look forward to working with our Senate counterparts to ensure these essential protections for our children become law,” said Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.).

“This is a dangerous anti-privacy bill (identity verification) that the House of Representatives might try to pass by voice vote this afternoon before many of us are even in town. Senators Mike Lee, Rand Paul, and Ron Wyden voted against a similar bill in the Senate two years ago,” said Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.)

The bipartisan bill, the Kids Internet and Digital Safety Act, put forward by Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) and co-sponsored by Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), passed with a 267-117 vote, with 47 representatives not voting. Neither Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) nor Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine) voted on the bill.

Thirty-two Republicans and 85 Democrats voted against the act.

The lengthy bill addresses multiple facets of online safety, including AI, online access to fentanyl, and pornography.

Under the bill, any publicly available online platforms on which more than one-third of the content is identified as sexual material will be required to implement an age verification process to ensure that minors are unable to access the sites.

The text does not specify how those pornography sites will be required to verify the ages of their users, but it does say that the verification must be more secure than simply asking users to input their age.

The process could likely require all users to submit a photo of their ID or scan their face to determine their age—the process used in the United Kingdom—to determine that they are not minors.

It also requires all social media apps, including some messaging apps, to implement settings for minor users to limit compulsive use and the ability of adults to communicate with them. They also must provide parental controls and prevent the use of “ephemeral,” or disappearing, messages by minors.

Unlike with pornography providers, social media sites are not required to implement age verification, but must implement the new features for users whom they know to be minors.

Video game platforms must implement similar protections.

It is unclear how this would be enforced in practice, or how the provider could know which users were minors without implementing new age verification features.

“Nothing in this subtitle may be construed to require the provider of a covered platform to implement an age gating or age verification functionality on the covered platform,” says the bill in the section on social media.

AI chatbots must include disclosures for minor users that the system is not human and include suicide hotline information.

The bill also mandates a variety of studies, including a study on the availability of fentanyl to minors through social media.

Though the bill does not require blanket age verification for social media use, many conservatives have expressed concerns that it is merely using the protection of children to erode online privacy rights.

“Probably one of the most important things right now or ever. This is being coordinated with European nation . This is total deanonymization of the internet and building complete lifetime profiles on every citizen,” said conservative commentator Jack Posobiec.

The pro-privacy nonprofit, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, had similar concerns about the bill, and argued that, even without explicit age verification requirements for social media sites, the bill would nevertheless make providers decide that the easiest way to comply with the new rules is to do so.

“The package of cobbled-together bills is a mess, with different age-gating schemes for different services, using different standards. It’s a lot of complexity, and a lot of legal risk. Faced with that, many companies will conclude that the safest option is restrictive age-checking practices across their entire platforms,” said the non-profit.

“While supporters continue to claim this bill protects minors online, its requirements come at the expense of privacy, free expression, and the ability of people of all ages to use the internet without revealing sensitive data,” they added.

Online age verification has come to the forefront of the discourse recently with a new law in the United Kingdom that bans social media for children under the age of 16.

While the law is ostensibly to protect children from the very real harms of social media, it, in effect, ends online anonymity for all users, who will now be forced to verify their identities to use social media.

Bluesky, the left-wing alternative to X, often used by leftist politicians including Rep. Pingree, is reportedly exempt from the UK’s new age verification requirements.