The internet is a crazy place, especially for kids. Many Americans worry about what their children may find on social media and darker corners of the web. There’s a popular demand for Congress to act make the internet safer for vulnerable minds. However, the solution backed by many Republicans will empower liberal bureaucrats and tech executives to suppress more speech on the internet. Rather than resolving the problem, the bill opens the door to tacit hate speech laws.
The bill, called the Kids Safety Act, was just introduced in the House. In the Senate, it has over 60 co-sponsors, including such GOP heavyweights as Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. “The Kids Online Safety Act is a serious and meaningful step toward empowering parents and protecting our kids from toxic content, bullying, sexual predators, and other online threats,” Cruz said in why he supports the bill. The bill is also supported by several Democrats, including President Biden.
While well-intentioned, the act is another example of how bipartisanship in the Swamp often leads to terrible results for Middle Americans. Examining the bill reveals its harmful elements. In the section requiring “Prevention Of Harm To Minors,” it states:
A covered platform shall take reasonable measures in the design and operation of any product, service, or feature that the covered platform knows is used by minors to prevent and mitigate the following harms to minors:
…
(3) Physical violence, online bullying, and harassment of the minor.
The use of “online bullying” and “harassment” should raise red flags. Big Tech already uses this standard to suppress speech its censors don’t like. YouTube includes these words in its statement on “hate speech” restrictions:
“Our harassment policy protects identifiable individuals, and we remove policy violative content. We consider content harassment when it targets an individual with prolonged or malicious insults based on intrinsic attributes, including their protected group status or physical traits. This policy also includes harmful behavior such as deliberately insulting or shaming minors, threats, bullying, doxxing, or encouraging abusive fan behavior.”
Leftist “legal experts” believe harassment should count as a criminal defense and hope to use this justification to implement enforcement against hate speech. “[T]he sad fact is a lot of hate speech does satisfy the emergency principle: It constitutes a general threat or targeted harassment or hostile environment harassment, or an intentional incitement of imminent violence,” former ACLU president Nadine Strossen argues.
The left-wing Anti-Defamation League deems criticism of Black Lives Matter and gender ideology “harassment” and possibly worth prosecution. A 2023 ADL report stated:
“Political mobilization around transgender rights, reproductive rights, voting rights, and racial justice over the past year has contributed to toxicity and harassment in online spaces. The 2022 midterm elections in the U.S. drove some of this mobilization, including transphobic themes in political campaigns, harassment campaigns against transgender health care, and bills targeting transgender participation in sports and access to gender-affirming care.”
The same report implied that teens seeing arguments claiming that “LGBTQ+ people are grooming children to adopt their lifestyle” and that “Women should primarily serve men” constitutes harassment. It’s clear the ADL wants prominent conservative influencers targeted under such laws as the Kids Online Safety Act.
Liberals consider all criticism and backlash to be harassment. Chris Rufo’s campaign to expose plagiarists in academia is even deemed harassment. Would people like Rufo face legal consequences under this bill if the wrong person is offended?
If the bill passes, it would allow liberal attorneys general all over the country to persecute whoever they want. Imagine what New York AG Letitia James would do with such power. She’s already weaponized extant laws against Donald Trump, the NRA, and other conservative groups on political grounds. This would also be a gift to liberal bureaucrats at the Federal Trade Commission, who could pressure tech platforms to censor more to “protect the kids.” Silicon Valley would be happy to oblige. To conservative complaints that they’re censoring, the tech platforms would just reply that they’re simply following the law.
We all want to keep kids away from dangers on the internet. But passing a bill that would sneak hate speech laws into America is not the way to do it. We have enough censorship as it is. Our lawmakers shouldn’t make the problem worse.