Senate to push forward with child online safety bills this week

WASHINGTON — The Senate plans to vote this week on a pair of children’s online safety bills, a rare moment of bipartisan cooperation a little more than three months before a heated presidential election.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., on Tuesday afternoon teed up a procedural vote on the social media bills, known as the Kid’s Online Safety Act, or KOSA, and the Children’s and Teens Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA 2.0, with an initial vote planned for Thursday. A final vote could come next week unless senators in both parties agree to one sooner.

While the online safety package appears poised to pass the Senate, it would also need to pass the House. Republican leaders there have also expressed strong interest in passing online safety legislation for children this Congress, but it's unclear how soon that could happen. Lawmakers in both chambers are set to leave Washington for the August recess in the coming days.

Some tech companies, like Microsoft and Snap, the company that owns Snapchat, have endorsed KOSA. But other social media companies haven’t taken formal positions.

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 that it could lead to censorship of content that promotes politically polarizing issues, gender equality or abortion rights.

In recent months, Schumer had tried to move the bipartisan online safety bills to the Senate floor by unanimous consent, but some senators blocked those efforts with objections.

Since then, Schumer has worked closely with Commerce Committee Chair 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 broader support. KOSA has well over 60 co-sponsors, enough to overcome a filibuster from opponents.

Speaking on the Senate floor Tuesday, Schumer said he spent the past month meeting with parents whose children died by suicide because of their experiences using social media.

“Nothing has galvanized me and so many others of us here in the Senate more to act on kids’ online safety than meeting with parents who’ve lost loved ones,” Schumer said. “Some of these kids were bullied, others were targeted by predators or had their personal, private information stolen — practically all of them suffered deep mental health anguish in some way and felt like they had nowhere to turn.

“And in far too many cases, their suffering ended in tragedy as they took their own lives,” he added.

Congress has struggled for more than a decade to regulate Big Tech. The two online safety bills have been considered the “low-hanging fruit,” the easiest to pass through the Senate and the House on a bipartisan basis. President Joe Biden signed legislation in April that would ban video-sharing app TikTok in the U.S. after the election unless its Chinese owner sells it.

KOSA, written by Blumenthal and Blackburn, would require social media companies to provide better protections for users under age 17. It also would require companies to provide guardians with more control over minors’ use of a platform and prevent certain features, such as autoplay. And it would require companies to give users a dedicated page on which to report harmful content.

COPPA 2.0, written by Markey and Cassidy, would create strong online privacy protections for anyone under age 17. It would also bar targeted advertising to kids and teens and create an eraser button for parents and kids by requiring companies to allow users to delete information.

Blackburn said speaking at a news conference with Blumenthal on Tuesday that KOSA was drafted following a series of emotional and powerful hearings focused on the harms of social media.

“As we held those hearings, we heard from people who said, ‘I want to tell you my story,’” said Blackburn, flanked by family members of children who died by suicide.

Once the bills pass the Senate, what happens next in the House is less certain. Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers, D-Wash., said her full committee is “planning to move forward” with marking up both bills.

“It’s very important that Congress act,” McMorris Rodgers, who is retiring from Congress at the end of the year, told NBC News on Tuesday.

Still, a markup hasn’t been scheduled yet, and time is running short before the November election. The House is supposed to be in session next week, but with government funding bills stalled, GOP leaders could cancel votes next week and send lawmakers off on their monthlong August recess a week early. If that happens, House members wouldn’t return to Washington until Sept. 9.

House Republican leadership will determine whether and when the legislation comes to the floor.

Schumer said Tuesday that lawmakers can’t afford any more delays.

“Social media has helped hundreds of millions of people to connect in new ways over the last two decades, but there are also new and sometimes serious health risks that come along with those benefits,” Schumer said. “We cannot set these risks aside, on this issue — we desperately need to catch up.”