Meta is pressuring Congress to slip lawsuit immunity into a child safety bill — a move that would kneecap thousands of families trying to hold the company accountable for destroying their kids, all while Zuckerberg's outfit pretends to care about protecting minors.
The stakes are straightforward: if Meta gets its way, the Kids Online Safety Act won't protect children — it'll protect Meta. The company is lobbying to insert language that would make online platforms "immune from suit or liability under state law with respect to all claims for loss caused by, arising out of, relating to, or resulting from the safety or privacy of individuals under the age of eighteen." That language, reviewed by Reuters, would also override state laws governing children's online protections.
Meta spokesperson Stephanie Otway claims the provision "does not extinguish existing lawsuits, nor does it represent blanket immunity" and instead establishes "uniform national standards for online youth safety, ensuring these critical issues are governed by comprehensive federal legislation, not plaintiffs' lawyers or patchwork state legislation."
That's the spin. Julia Duncan of the American Association for Justice reads the actual text and says it would knock out any lawsuits pending when the law took effect. "The language is pretty clear-cut immunity against every parent, every school district, that is seeking to hold any AI or social media company accountable for harm" to children, Duncan told Reuters. "There is no other way to read this language."
The legal exposure Meta is running from isn't hypothetical. Earlier this year, a jury in New Mexico hit Meta with $375 million in civil penalties for failing to protect minors from sexual predators. New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez didn't mince words: "Meta is showing the world how little it cares about child safety. Meta's refusal to follow the laws that protect our kids tells you everything you need to know about this company and the character of its leaders." A Los Angeles jury also found Meta negligent in a separate case over Instagram and YouTube's design features harming minors. Breitbart reported that jurors determined the companies acted with malice or highly egregious conduct, meaning punitive damages could push the total even higher.
At the heart of these cases are the engagement features built to keep kids scrolling — infinite scroll, push notifications, appearance-altering photo filters. TechSpot noted that KOSA was originally designed to target those design choices, requiring companies to take reasonable steps to reduce risks from features that encourage compulsive use. Now Meta wants that same bill rewritten to ensure no parent can sue over them.
KOSA passed the Senate in 2024 with bipartisan sponsorship from Senators Marsha Blackburn and Richard Blumenthal — the kind of bipartisan agreement that usually means the public is about to get sold out. The bill stalled in the House but has been reintroduced, and Meta's liability provision is now part of broader negotiations involving the White House and federal preemption of state laws. A spokesperson for Blackburn said the office hadn't seen the specific language and wouldn't comment on discussions with stakeholders — which tells you everything about how carefully Congress is minding the store.
Meta and Google lost the first child social media addiction trial to reach a jury. TikTok and Snap settled before trial. Now Meta's answer isn't to change how it does business — it's to change the law so nobody can make them.
The question isn't whether KOSA will pass. It's whether Congress will let a trillion-dollar company write its own get-out-of-lawsuit-free card into federal law — and call it child safety.
