Dec. 19, 2024, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement urging Congress to reject the Kids Online Safety Act:
Censorship is an ugly word. Over the past decade, our nation has witnessed federal agents pressuring social media platforms to suppress, remove, and prohibit user content on several critical topics. These include valid treatment options for COVID-19, concerns about election integrity, the now-debunked Russian collusion narrative, and the incriminating revelations from Hunter Biden’s laptop, to name just a few examples.
Now, under the pretense of protecting children from “harmful,” non-government-approved content, Congress is considering a last-minute push to grant the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) unprecedented authority to decide what children should or should not access.
Believe it or not, this proposal also allows each state’s Attorney General to sue social media platforms over content they disapprove of. This can only end badly.
For instance, consider the state of California. With its radical policies on gender identity and transition, California could wield this new authority to suppress dissenting voices. Facts and moral objections to these policies could be censored, preventing children—who are directly impacted by such initiatives—from accessing vital information. California law already prohibits teachers and school officials from notifying parents about “gender-related decisions” made at school, effectively preventing parents from intervening and opposing these psychological attacks against their children.
Giving content censorship powers to a state that already censors parents from receiving information about state-conducted changes to their children’s biology would be insane. Yet that is precisely what the deceptively named KIDS ONLINE SAFETY ACT would do.
Stop this bill now and let President Trump and the next Republican Congress act to protect children without granting powers that would destroy those children’s ability to access information and empower themselves against those who seek to prey upon them.
For media availability contact Americans for Limited Government at media@limitgov.org.
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