Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti and other attorneys general have joined forces to oppose a U.S. House bill proposal seeking to protect kids from online harm.
Skrmetti and 43 other attorneys general, including 41 states, Washington, D.C., and the Northern Mariana Islands, sent a letter on Tuesday to congressional leadership expressing concern about the House’s Kids Internet and Digital Safety (KIDS) Act.
The attorneys general said the bill will not protect minors but rather “insulate Big Tech from appropriate oversight and accountability and imperil the young people it purports to protect.”
According to the attorneys general, the broad nature of the KIDS Act would prevent state laws from addressing concerns such as “online obscenity, online harms to children, social gaming
platforms, and artificial intelligence chatbots.”
“Such sweeping federal preemption is independently alarming, but the bill’s inadequate approach to these issues compounds our concern,” the letter said.
“The bill not only fails to meaningfully protect kids, but also, imperils the significant progress our jurisdictions have achieved on a wide array of tech issues. Given the rate of technological progress and the limited efforts to date to pass responsive laws that protect children, it is too soon to shut down the ‘laboratories of democracy,’” the attorneys general wrote.
“State law legal developments, through both legislation and enforcement, are the surest route to legal innovation that can approach the speed of technological innovation,” they added.
The attorneys general also expressed concern that the bill proposal lacked a duty of care section for online platforms.
According to a Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) press release, a duty of care section mandates “social media companies to prevent and mitigate certain harms that they know their platforms and products are causing to young users as a result of their own design choices, such as their recommendation algorithms and addictive product features.”
Skrmetti said states have been battling to “hold online platforms accountable for real harm to real children.” The House’s KIDS Act would “undercut that work and hand Big Tech a shield instead of setting a standard,” he noted.
“Online platforms should have a clear duty of care to protect children from foreseeable harms and addictive design features. Congress should strengthen our ability to hold these companies accountable—not weaken it,” he said.
Blumenthal, who sponsored the Senate’s version of the KIDS Act alongside Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), includes a duty of care section in his bill proposal.
The Senate’s bill proposal would require social media companies to limit minors’ ability to see content such as suicide, eating disorders, substance use disorders, and sexual exploitation.
Numerous attorneys general have voiced their support for the Senate’s version of the KIDS Act.
The letter said this bill proposal “preserves states’ authority to enact laws, rules, or regulations that similarly protect children; prohibits market or product-focused research on children; and imposes upon online platforms a meaningful duty of care.”
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Zachery Schmidt is the digital editor of The Star News Network. Email tips to Zachery at [email protected].
