Putting Profits Over People: How Big Tech Money Is Thwarting Kids' Online Safety Legislation
Earlier this year, the Senate passed the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) in a resounding 91-3 vote following a concerted effort by Gen Z activists and parents who shared heartbreaking stories of themselves or their kids being harmed by social media products. These include the stories of Nylah Anderson, a 10-year-old from Pennsylvania, who died because she decided to try a choke challenge that a TikTok algorithm recommended to her on its “For You” feed; Carson Bride, a 16-year-old from Oregon, who died by suicide after classmates incessantly bullied him anonymously over Snapchat and other instant messaging apps; and Gavin Duffey, a 17-year-old who died by suicide after being targeted by a sexual extortion scheme on Instagram. Sadly, there are many more stories of children and teens who had similar experiences. Data backs this up, too. A 2023 survey showing that one in three teenage girls had contemplated suicide recently, and alarming statistics such as this may be why kids’ online safety legislation receives support from nearly nine in 10 Americans, according to a recent poll by Issue One, ParentsSOS, and Fairplay.
Yet, despite kids’ online safety being a rare bipartisan issue that has received near universal levels of support in the Senate and among the public, KOSA has stalled, and it’s unclear whether the bill will make it into Congress’ end-of-year spending package. It’s reasonable to ask, “how could that be despite all that support for the bill?” Well, unfortunately, it is because Big Tech companies are pouring tens of millions of dollars into lobbying efforts in Congress to thwart this legislation to maintain a status quo that allows them to continue using dangerous product designs that prioritize profits over people.
The Wall Street Journal published an article the other day detailing how Big Tech companies — such as Meta (the parent company of Facebook and Instagram) and Alphabet (Google’s parent company) — have poured nearly $90 million over the past three years into lobbying about several topics, including KOSA. While this amount of money is substantial, it only seems to have grown with time. Issue One’s most recent Big Tech lobbying report found that tech companies pumped more than $51 million into lobbying between January and September of this year — more than any other year on record. Meta and ByteDance (TikTok’s parent company) have led this charge, following increased public scrutiny of their products, with Meta spending a record $18.9 million on lobbying during the first nine months of 2024 and ByteDance spending a record $8.1 million on lobbying during that same time. These spending efforts have also allowed tech companies to deploy hoards of lobbyists to quash bills contradictory to their interests. Meta currently has one lobbyist for every eight members of Congress, while ByteDance has one lobbyist for every 10 members of Congress.
As Issue One’s Vice President of Technology Reform Alix Fraser said in the same article from The Wall Street Journal, one way these companies block legislation is by having their lobbyists fearmonger about culture war issues with both Democratic and Republican lawmakers. Social media platforms have told the left that KOSA will harm vulnerable LGBTQ+ communities or limit access to information on reproductive freedom, while simultaneously advancing anti-abortion and general censorship concerns that resonate with the right. However, these companies have not been very creative with their fear mongering. They have recycled many of the same talking points that they deployed to thwart the American Privacy Rights Act (H.R. 8818) earlier this year, in some cases copy-pasted word for word.
These efforts show how Big Tech is trying to use its power and influence to weaken the “duty of care” provisions in KOSA. Duty of care is a legal concept that says that a person or company should act with a reasonable level of caution, and that if they do not, they might then be open to liability. It is the concept underlying the idea that you can sue a toy company if plastic from a toy gets stuck in your child’s throat or a carmaker if your car explodes and causes you harm. Essentially, Big Tech companies are trying to dodge the liability standards that almost all other companies are held to and use culture war issues to deceptively argue that these calls for accountability open up censorship opportunities.
As this Congress gears up for its final push, it is clear that Big Tech companies are throwing everything they have at avoiding meaningful transparency and accountability. It is even more clear that a resounding majority of voters want both those from social media companies. With public pressure mounting, these companies fear that if responsible safeguards for children pass, more reforms could follow in the future. Instead of having free reign to profit off of their dangerous and addictive products as they do now, they might be regulated more like the Big Tobacco industry, which would hurt their bottom lines.
As Kristin Bride, the mother of Caron Bride, said at the launch of Issue One’s Safe Kids, Safe Tech campaign, “Social media companies run with the motto ‘Move fast and break things.’ Those ‘things’ are our children.” This is unacceptable. We need to protect children from the dangerous and addictive harms of Big Tech’s products by having Congress include KOSA in its end-of-year spending package. Unless we act now, more children’s lives will be lost, and more irreplaceable holes will be left in our families and communities.
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