The House just passed the Kids Internet and Digital Safety Act, and if you value your privacy or your right to speak online, read the fine print: the bill that claims to protect children strips the one provision that would have held platforms accountable, while keeping the age-verification mechanism that means every American — adult or minor — hands over sensitive data to log on.
The KIDS Act passed Monday with measures limiting minors' access to sexually explicit material, restricting "design features that result in compulsive usage," and giving parents tools to track screen time. But here is what CNBC reported that the bill's cheerleaders will not advertise: the House removed the "duty of care" provision from earlier versions. That legal standard would have required platforms to identify and mitigate risks like financial exploitation and mental health harms. Candice Odgers, a UC psychology and informatics professor, told CNBC that duty of care is "the piece that gives the real teeth to the legislation." Without it, Big Tech goes on operating exactly as it does today.
So what is left? Age verification — the mechanism that demands every user prove who they are before they speak. As Odgers noted, because companies must determine who is and is not a minor, they "may end up collecting sensitive information from all users" — and, she added, may not always be able to protect it. That is not a bug. It is the feature. Government mandates age checks; Big Tech builds the compliance infrastructure; independent platforms like Gab that cannot absorb the cost get squeezed out. The children are the human shield; the target is the open internet.
Even the bill's supposed Senate allies admit it is a shell. Senators Richard Blumenthal and Marsha Blackburn, who have their own online safety legislation, issued a statement calling the House bill "a pale imitation of Big Tech accountability." Translation: Washington's bipartisan censorship class wanted more power, and the House gave them less. The fight now moves to the Senate, where Blumenthal and Blackburn will push their version — which, by their own framing, will have more "teeth."
Meanwhile, a Deseret News opinion piece pushed the App Store Accountability Act, backed by Utah Senator Mike Lee, which would require age verification and parental approval at the point of download — before an app ever reaches a child's phone. The Utah mom who authored the piece made a fair point: under current law, and under the House bill, parents are still "chasing each app one by one." The App Store approach centralizes the checkpoint at the download point rather than leaving it to individual platforms.
But centralizing control at the app store level has its own cost. Apple and Google run those stores. Handing them a government-mandated gatekeeping role does not decentralize power — it entrenches the two companies that already decide which platforms get to exist on mobile devices. If Gab or any independent voice cannot meet Apple's approval standards, it never reaches the phone to begin with. The app store is not a neutral checkpoint; it is a chokepoint.
The real question Congress will not ask: why does every "solution" to child safety require more surveillance of law-abiding Americans? Jessica Ji, a senior research analyst at the Center for Security and Emerging Technology, told CNBC that "if we're trying to address child safety, we also need to look at other things, like how adults are interacting with children online." She is right. But tracking predators requires actual law enforcement work, not compliance theater from Silicon Valley.
The KIDS Act gives Washington the surveillance tool and Big Tech the compliance contract. The duty of care — the one provision that might have cost platforms real money — got stripped in committee. The bill that survived protects the industry. It does not protect your kids, and it does not protect your speech.
