The Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) passed with flying bipartisan colors in the Senate Tuesday — but Rand Paul stood virtually alone against it.
“I have a great deal of sympathy for the issue,” Sen. Paul (R-KY) told The Post. “But I’m afraid it will lead to censorship.”
The bill, which passed with a whopping 91 votes in favor, is an attempt to protect children from the harms of the internet. It establishes a “duty of care” for social media platforms to protect minors, and would require them to suppress content that could cause harm.
Paul said that, while the bill is well-intentioned, it could enable the government to censor speech that it subjectively deems anxiety-provoking for youth.
“The whole idea that we’re going to set up a committee and we’re going to give a vague definition of anxiety — and then say anything that causes anxiety we’re going to give a group the power to regulate — is bizarre,” Paul added.
He referred to the “absurdity of the anxiety argument,” explaining that virtually anything could be considered anxiety-producing by the Federal Trade Commission, which has been tasked with enforcement of KOSA.
Paul points to a Harvard survey that found 65% of people aged 15 to 30 say they have intrusive anxiety about climate change on a daily basis. Therefore, KOSA could theoretically be used to censor climate change content.
“I would be one of the first people kicked off the internet because I’m sure that I say things that cause people anxiety,” the senator said. “I just think there’s a real danger in letting government regulate this or take things down.”
Paul said he worried that censorship could come for anyone of any political persuasion — and points to groups on both sides of the aisle that have come out against KOSA as well.
The conservative Students for Life organization is worried that pro-life content like theirs might be censored because it could be argued that it causes anxiety to kids.
Likewise, the ACLU has expressed concerns about how pro-choice and LGBT content might be censored — warning that the act “would violate the First Amendment by enabling the federal government to dictate what information people can access online and encourage social media platforms to censor protected speech.”
Paul is worried that the bill’s vague standards will cause mass self-censorship of political speech online.
“You might think, maybe I need to self-censor or put less inflammatory topics on my website or my streaming service, because if a kid looks at it, then I’ll have the State Attorney General breathing down my neck,” he said.
Now that the bill has passed the Senate, the House of Representatives could take it up for vote at any time.
Paul was joined only by senators Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Mike Lee (R-UT) in voting against KOSA, which was introduced by Democrat Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and Republican Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee.
“We have people on the right and people on the left who misunderstand the First Amendment,” Paul said.
He added that, when he expressed his criticisms of KOSA to colleagues, many shared his concerns — but still voted in favor of it.
“They’re embarrassed to change their vote,” he said. “They know that they’ll be pilloried because the title sounds good. They read the title, Kids Online Safety Act, and thought, ‘How am I gonna vote against that?’
“I would venture to say most [senators] didn’t read the bill,” he continued. “They’re doing it for their own self-righteousness. They’re doing it for their own virtue signaling.”
Paul says that KOSA passed in large part due to its moral weight.
“This is like almost every emotional battle that involves [a] social ill that they want to fix in Washington,” he said. “I don’t think it saves any lives. It’ll set up a bureaucracy, and the terms are vague. I have no idea what this [FTC] group is going to do.”
While he thinks that KOSA is not a solution to the problem, Paul says he’d be more open to a minimum-age restriction for social media: “Just a minimum age would be different. It would probably be less bad.”
He also says that parents, not politicians, should determine what content and social media platforms are appropriate for their children.
“The hypocrisy of conservatives is they’re all in on family values and parents and everything, but they say, in this instance, that the government needs to step in.”
