• by Wendy Davis , 3 hours ago

The Senate Commerce Committee on Wednesday advanced a package of online safety bills, including the controversial Kids Online Safety Act, which would impose new restrictions on social platforms.

But the measure faces an uncertain future, given that lawmakers in the House passed a version of the bill that would impose less stringent requirements on tech platforms.

Senators Marsha Blackburn (R-Tennessee) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut), who introduced the Senate version, have both denounced the House bill.

"The Senate cannot and will not accept the version that the House passed earlier," Blackburn said Wednesday after the bill advanced. "It is toothless, and it is a very pale imitation of the Senate version, and therefore it is a pale imitation of big tech accountability."

The current Senate iteration of the Kids Online Safety Act would require platforms to use reasonable care to implement design features in a way that would "prevent and mitigate" a host of harms to minors under 17 -- including anxiety, depression, eating disorders, substance use disorders, suicidal behaviors, "addition-like" behavior, violence, sex abuse and drug use.

The specific design features covered by the bill include push alerts, appearance-altering filters and videos that play automatically.

The House's current version of the bill does not include a mandate that platforms use reasonable care to avoid a broad range of injuries to minors.

Instead, that bill only requires platforms to establish "reasonable" policies addressing such as threats of violence, sex abuse, drug use and financial loss caused by fraud.

Earlier this week, digital rights advocates urged lawmakers in the Senate to reject the Kids Online Safety Act for several reasons -- including that it would nudge platforms to censor speech that's protected by the First Amendment.

"When platforms face liability for content that someone later claims contributed to harms like anxiety, eating disorders, or substance use, the safest response is to remove lawful speech or shut down forums discussing those topics altogether," the Electronic Frontier Foundation said this week in a blog post.

The Senate bill's restrictions would apply to platforms that are “reasonably likely to be used” by minors, but critics say that mandate would threaten privacy by prodding companies into requiring all users to verify their ages.

"Because no objective standard exists for determining when a service is “reasonably likely” to be used by a minor, covered services will be incentivized to verify the ages of all users, requiring the collection of additional sensitive information from both minors and adults," the tech industry group Computer & Communications Industry Association said Monday in a letter to lawmakers.