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Republicans Pump Brakes on KOSA After Realizing It Could Censor Them Too

For a while, we’ve been pointing out how terrible KOSA (the Kids Online Safety Act) is. Our main concern is that the bill would fundamentally lead to the suppression of all kinds of speech. That’s …

That’s because the “duty of care” provision, while limited, would allow officials (mostly at the FTC, which can get partisan) to argue that certain types of results were due to a design failure, and companies would seek to suppress content, rather than face the potential liability. “It could lead to censorship of conservative speech, such as pro-life views, is almost certainly unconstitutional and grants sweeping new authority to unelected bureaucrats at the FTC,” the leadership aide said, referring to the Federal Trade Commission. But now, looking at the polls and the increasing likelihood that Harris will win, they’ve suddenly realized that maybe they don’t want a Lina Khan-run FTC determining what kinds of harm fail a duty of care…

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