Nov. 27, 2024, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement urging the U.S. House to reject renewed efforts to pass the Kids Online Safety Act in the lame duck session:
“The misnamed Kids Online Safety Act allows civil actions by states and/or the Federal Trade Commission against any website or application that ‘predominantly provides a community forum for user-generated content’. Specific to states, it says, ‘In any case in which the attorney general of a State has reason to believe that a covered platform has violated or is violating section 103, 104, or 105, the State, as parens patriae, may bring a civil action on behalf of the residents of the State in a district court of the United States or a State court of appropriate jurisdiction…’
“It is not hard to imagine a far-left, California attorney general utilizing this power to prohibit access to, for example, Christian religious content including the Bible to minors under the guise of protecting them from truths that are unacceptable their gender-bending doxology. Ultimately, Silicon Valley, California-based companies will have significantly more liability in California courts, resulting in default bias against conservative thought and speech on these platforms under the guise of combating misinformation.
“The granting of national authority to the FTC requires a legislator to put blinders on regarding the unconstitutional, already expanded power of that agency under the Biden administration.
“The KOSA sounds like something everyone can get behind. Unfortunately, the devil is in the details, and those details demand that it be rejected as a Congressional approval for broad-based censorship of the internet. The First Amendment says Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech and of the press. By authorizing the FTC to censor speech, it makes one ask what part of ‘Congress shall make no law’ do members not understand.”
Attachments:
“Speaker Johnson: Kids online ‘safety’ bill will have ‘unintended consequences’. He’s right. It will increase government censorship.” By Robert Romano, Nov. 27, 2024 at https://dailytorch.com/2024/10/speaker-johnson-kids-online-safety-bill-will-have-unintended-consequences-hes-right-it-will-increase-government-censorship/
For media availability contact Americans for Limited Government at media@limitgov.org.
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