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The Kids Online Safety and Privacy Act (KOSPA) is a new comprehensive bill aimed at enhancing protections for minors against online threats like sexual exploitation and violence. It merges two previous bills: the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) and the Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA 2.0). On July 30, the U.S. Senate approved KOSPA with a 91-3 vote, and it now moves to the House of Representatives. This legislation is notable as it updates online child protection measures for the first time since 1998.
The bill defines online platforms as “any public-facing website, online service, online application, or mobile application that predominantly provides a community forum for user generated content, such as sharing videos, images, games, audio files, or other content, including a social media service, social network, or virtual reality environment.”
This means social media companies like Facebook and Instagram along with popular gaming websites such as Twitch and Roblox would be forced to comply with KOSA.
How Will KOSA Protect Children?
This part of the bill requires that online platforms:
- Establish a Duty of Care: Platforms would be forced to design features in a way that prevents and mitigates dangers like sexual exploitation.
- Provide Safeguards: By putting easy to change privacy settings in place, minors can restrict who can message them, view their content, and access their personal information.
- Offer Parental Tools: These will give parents an active role in protecting their children and easy ways to report dangers.
- Advertise Safely: This would stop the advertising of narcotic drugs, tobacco products, gambling, or alcohol to minors.
How Will Parents Benefit?
Parents will have access to the amount of time their children are spending online and get the ability to set restrictions, change privacy settings, and easily report harm.
COPPA 2.0
This part of the bill will strengthen protections put in place by COPPA, a 1998 law that protects children under the age of 13 by allowing parents to control what information commercial websites and other online services “collect, use, or disclose” about their children, according to the FTC. For COPPA 2.0, revisions include:
- Extending online protections to minors under 17 years old
- Banning targeted advertising to children and teens
- Creating an “eraser” button for parents and kids to remove personal information
- Establishing a Youth Marketing and Privacy Division at the FTC.
Read More: https://childreninfobank.com/safebank/bipartisan-kids-online-safety-act-passes-senate-91-3/
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