The current US House of Representatives approved of the KIDS (Kids Internet and Digital Safety) Act 267-117 after receiving bipartisan support.

The KIDS Act is a repackaging of the infamous Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) which carried similar concerns regarding privacy, surveillance, and censorship. A big part is the act pushes for nation-wide age verification to access “mature” online materials.

Until now, states have been empowered to make their own decisions regarding age-gating mature content, and websites who do require age-verification have received substantial backlash from consumers. Earlier this year Discord hinted that they may begin requiring age verification, as a result searches for “Discord alternatives” increased approximately 10000% before they quietly walked it back.

To understand why consumers are anxious, it helps to understand how age verification works. The two main methods of verification involve facial recognition, which is somehow the less intrusive option, and sending sites a picture of your ID. That means if you want to browse “mature” content, you need to give sites video of your face, or a picture of your government ID. Think about the sites you visit for a moment, would you trust them with your ID?

Large corporations have previously sponsored surveillance legislation, Microsoft supported KOSA back when it was relevant. Some believe that the corporate interest in digital age-verification is to fight botting and AI tools that devalue advertising and performance metrics.

All of this is to say that under the auspices of “protecting the children”, the government is asking citizens to give up privacy and anonymity, all while conveniently providing a framework for large corporations to economically benefit.

The government appears desperate to stay ahead of advances in technology, which is understandable in a world of deep fakes, and online hate mobs. However critics of these new bills point out that existing laws should be able to cover the problematic aspects of new technology. Many deep fakes could hypothetically be handled by existing laws on libel and other malicious uses of technology. However unlike existing laws, the KIDS Act and similar bills empower the government to attack lawful speech and collect information on individuals.

Below you can see a list of representatives and how they voted.