Senators Marsha Blackburn and Richard Blumenthal, along with X CEO Linda Yaccarino, announced the changes on Saturday.

Senators Richard Blumenthal and Marsha Blackburn announced on Saturday that they’ve made changes to the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) with help from X to “strengthen the bill while safeguarding free speech online and ensuring it is not used to stifle expression.” The Senate passed the bill in July with a vote of 91-3, but it’s since stalled in the House, and its proponents are pushing for it to be passed before the end of the year. X’s CEO Linda Yaccarino also posted about the collaboration, and called for Congress and the House to pass the bill.

“After working with the bill authors, I’m proud to share that we’ve made progress to further protect freedom of speech while maintaining safety for minors online,” Yaccarino wrote in a post on X that was shared by the two senators. KOSA is meant to protect minors from “addictive” social media features and potentially dangerous content by placing a “duty of care” on the companies that own the platforms. But critics have argued that it could lead to censorship and other harms. The new changes, according to The Verge, clarify the conditions under which duty of care can be enforced and narrow its application around anxiety and depressive disorders, stating they must be “objectively verifiable” and tied to “compulsive usage.”

In their joint statement, Blumenthal (D-Connecticut) and Blackburn (R-Tennessee) said:

KOSA was first introduced in February 2022 and has faced opposition from groups including the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. It’s been revised multiple times.

Source:
courtesy of ENGADGET

by Cheyenne MacDonald

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