Yesterday, the US House of Representatives quietly passed a bundle of “digital protections” collectively labelled the Kids Internet and Digital Safety Act (KIDS Act).
You might not have heard, because the US news was focused on other things, like the Supreme Court refusing to review the civil verdict that Donald Trump sexually assaulted E Jean Carroll, or that they would continue to count mail-in ballots that arrive after election day.
As is usually the case, the truly important news found itself buried behind things that never happened and things that don’t matter.
So what’s in the USA’s online safety act?
The same things that are in everyone else’s, obviously.
Digital ID this, age verification that.
The act is effectively a package of clauses and sections from other acts, including:
- Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA),
- Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA 2.0)
- Shielding Children’s Retinas from Egregious Exposure on the Net (SCREEN) Act
- Safeguarding Adolescents from Exploitative (SAFE) Bots Act
- Safer Guarding of Adolescents from Malicious Interactions on Network Games (GAMING) Act.
[Side note – I HATE US legislation naming conventions and the need to force cringey acronyms.]
If you want to go into the details, there’s a good write-up here.
The unfortunate truth is the details don’t really matter. As we’ve seen already with Spain, the UK, Australia, Canada et al. the actual measures and rules may have cosmetic differences, but in the end they share one important similarity: The only way to enforce them is age verification.
This is true of social media bans, or screen time limits, or algorithm exemptions or disabling infinite scrolling or nudity filters or…any of them.
Whatever is or isn’t in the KIDS Act, it will need you to verify your age by biometrics or digital ID to work.
Just like everywhere else.
It passed the House with bipartisan support. It will probably pass the Senate too; if it doesn’t, it will be branded as a “victory for small government”…and the individual states will just pass their own legislation. As many already have.
And just like that, Trump’s MAGA US will be just like the “liberal” countries he despises and who claim to despise him.
Weird.
Source link
