Blumenthal social media bill in spotlight
‘Kids Online Safety Act’ aimed at big tech
A bit of political theater in Washington, D.C. this week has put the spotlight on Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal’s signature domestic policy, the Kids Online Safety Act.
The legislation, which Blumenthal introduced in 2022 with Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tennessee, would require online platforms to take “reasonable measures” to prevent minors from being exposed to harmful material such as bullying, drugs, sexual exploitation and eating disorders — while also giving parents more tools to monitor and manage their children’s account settings.
On Wednesday, it was also the subject of a fiery hearing in which senators from both parties berated a panel of five social media executives, accusing them of failing to enact better controls to limit the flood of negative content aimed at children and teenagers.
The most dramatic moment in the hearing came when Meta — formerly Facebook — CEO Mark Zuckerberg responded to the hounding by one Republican senator by rising to his feet, facing the audience and offering an apology to the families who blamed his social media platforms for harming their children, in some cases driving them to suicide.
“I’m sorry… no one should have to go through the things that your families have suffered,” Zuckerberg said, producing an image that was broadcast across the evening news and the front pages of the New York Times and Washington Post.
Blumenthal, a former state attorney general serving in his third Senate term, has led various efforts to get Congress to address animal abuse, health care for veterans exposed to toxic burn pits and, more recently, the rise of artificial intelligence.
His work on stemming online abuse and protecting childrens’ digital data, however, has been the focus of much of his domestic policy front for the last three years, a spokeswoman said this week.
“It is a critical moment for me,” Blumenthal said while discussing the bill with a group of students at a West Hartford High School earlier in the week. “People came forward to talk about what they saw inside these companies that the heads of the companies didn’t want to tell us. They knew they were doing harm to young people.”
During Wednesday’s hearing, one colleague on the Judiciary Committee, Sen. Lindsey Graham, RSouth Carolina, went so far as to refer to Blumenthal and Blackburn as the “dynamic duo” for their work on the issue.
Blumenthal himself was in the background for the majority of the headlinegrabbing moments of Wednesday’s hearing. Instead, the senator spent the bulk of his speaking time questioning Zuckerberg about several emails that were part of a batch of internal Meta documents released by Congress ahead of the hearing.
In one of the emails, Meta’s former head of global affairs, Nick Clegg, wrote directly to Zuckerberg saying that the company was “not on track to succeed” in its efforts to reduce online bullying and harassment. Clegg proposed hiring dozens of new engineers to help remedy the problem, though that solution was ultimately rejected, according to the documents.
“You rejected that request because of other pressures and priorities,” Blumenthal said. “That is an example from your own internal documents, of failing to act and it is the reason we can no longer trust Meta, and frankly any of the other social media.”
Joining Zuckerberg before the Judiciary Committee were the leaders of TikTok, Snap, Discord and X, formerly known as Twitter.
Blumenthal demanded answers from each of the five witnesses on whether they would support passage of the Kids Online Safety Act as currently written. Only X’s Linda Yaccarino and Evan Spiegel, the CEO of Snap, promised to do so.
“These are nuanced things,” said Zuckerberg in response to Blumenthal’s pressure to respond with a yes-or-no answer. “I think the basic spirit is right, I think the basic ideas in it are right, there are some ideas I would debate how to implement.”
Despite broad bipartisan support in the Senate, Blumenthal’s legislation has drawn opposition from many in the tech industry, who say it would amount to government surveillance over the Internet and censorship of kids’ content.
Concerns over censorship have also been raised among some traditionally liberal groups, such as the American Civil Liberties Union. The Washington Post reported this week that many teens, too, voiced their objections to the bill online even as the hearing was underway.
“If passed, KOSA would allow each state’s attorney general to individually decide what parts of the internet kids can and cannot access,” the ACLU said in a letter published last year. “In fact, KOSA proponents have even openly admitted that they plan to use KOSA to block kids from LGBTQ content online.”
While Blumenthal and Blackburn have made some changes to the bill to address industry concerns, it continues to face opposition from groups such as the Center for Democracy and Technology. Advocates for the bill include both the American Psychological Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Sarah Egan, the head of Connecticut’s Office of the Child Advocate, pointed to a 2021 survey showing increases in the number of Connecticut high schoolers who reported feeling hopeless or contemplating suicide, saying that the current regulatory approach to social media amounted to the “wild west.”
“Tech is like, three steps ahead, tens steps ahead of every parent,” Egan said. “The legislation is not here to take the Internet away from people... it’s not about eliminating that opportunity in those safe spaces, it’s about meeting that duty of care on a tech company and giving those parents and students and youths tools to protect themselves.”
While the bill has twice been advanced by the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation it has yet to receive a full vote on the floor of either chamber, and members of the House have not filed a companion bill in that chamber.
A spokeswoman for Blumenthal’s office on Thursday said that no vote is currently scheduled for the legislation following Wednesday’s hearing.