Dec. 10, 2024, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement urging Congress to reject the Kids Online Safety Act as currently written:
“Speaker Mike Johnson is absolutely correct that the issue of protecting free speech is paramount to any consideration of the Kids Online Safety Act. The bill as rewritten still allows the FTC to regulate and states to sue websites over the content on their platforms, a clear contradiction of Johnson’s admonition. Each of us has seen and perhaps even experienced the result of the federal government coercing social media to deny access to information on issues as broad as Covid, election integrity and Russiagate, and instinctively know that creating a federal government censorship regime can only end badly. In its current form, the legislation will effectively and ultimately require government identification in order to access anything that children might see on the web. Note that the federal government does not require the same identification requirements for voters.
“Congress needs to heed Speaker Mike Johnson and Majority Leader Steve Scalise’s reservations about this legislation’s impact on free speech, and instead push the Kids Online Safety Act to the next Congress and the Trump administration to ensure that kids’ online safety is protected as much as possible while the First Amendment’s requirement that Congress shall make no laws abridging free speech is not violated.”
Attachments:
“Johnson pours cold water on KOSA push,” Dec. 10, 2024 at https://thehill.com/policy/technology/5032362-house-republicans-cautious-online-safety/
For media availability contact Americans for Limited Government at media@limitgov.org.
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