Comment by ke88y | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ke88y | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

The text of KOSA does not require age verification.

The standard in the statute is "reasonably should know" that a user is a minor.

This likely looks something like the status quo, where the site asks for but does not verify your age. Additionally, if the site does not know the user's age but eg categorizes a person as "12-15 years old" for the purpose of ad targeting and sells ads based upon this targeting feature, then courts will likely agree that they should have "reasonably known" that this person is 12-15 years old (else they were committing fraud in selling those ads).

Not much changes in terms of age request/verification. What does change is what you need to do with that info about age once it's furnished and available. KOSA is about TARGETED ADS and ALGORITHMIC RECOMMENDATIONS. It even contains language that absolves platforms of responsibility for content specifically requested by children:

> IMITATION.—Nothing in subsection (a) shall be10 construed to require a covered platform to prevent or pre-11 clude— any minor from deliberately and independ-13 ently searching for, or specifically requesting, con-14 tent; or15 (2) the covered platform or individuals on the16 platform from providing resources for the prevention17 or mitigation of suicidal behaviors, substance use,18 and other harms, including evidence-informed infor-19 mation and clinical resources

> It even contains language that absolves platforms of responsibility for content specifically requested by children

Actually, the bill does not absolve platforms of that responsibility. Let me format the text of the bill's Section 3(b) into something more readable:

> SEC. 3. Duty of care.

>> (b) Limitation.—Nothing in subsection (a) shall be construed to require a covered platform to prevent or preclude—

>>> (1) any minor from deliberately and independently searching for, or specifically requesting, content; or

>>> (2) the covered platform or individuals on the platform from providing resources for the prevention or mitigation of suicidal behaviors, substance use, and other harms, including evidence-informed information and clinical resources.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/140...

Section 3(b)(1) is worded in a deceptive way. It does not prevent websites from allowing minors to search for censored content censored by the bill, but the text of the "Limitation" still does not allow websites to display content censored by the bill, even when specifically requested by the minor. Websites would still have a "duty of care" to "prevent and mitigate" anxiety and depression in users and viewers under 18 years of age, as prescribed in Section 3(a)(1), which is something that requires content any adult would find acceptable to be broadly censored.

> It does not prevent websites from allowing minors to search for censored content censored by the bill, but the text of the "Limitation" still does not allow websites to display content censored by the bill

No judge except the most cravenly political would accept that the legislature intended that kids should be able to type things into a search bar but not see the results of the search. That makes no sense and clearly isn't what the law intends. Which does in fact matter.

And if a judge is that full of shit, I don't think the absence of KOSA is going to stop them from finding some pretense to accept an inane legal theory with similar results.

Anyways, I agree the word "display" should be added, but this whole line of argumentation seems pretty desperate.

It's not "desperate" to evaluate a bill by its actual text. Judging by the presumably incorrect language used in Section 3(b)(1) and the ill-considered mandate to "prevent and mitigate" anxiety and depression in Section 3(a)(1), the Kids Online Safety Act is too sloppily written to deserve serious consideration. If the intent of KOSA differs from the text of KOSA, then the bill should be written correctly before it is voted on, since the bill as it is currently written would lead to an endless debate over the intended meaning of its poor phrasing years after its prescribed censorship takes effect.

The text said it doesn't but honestly when readiing the bill, age verification is the most likely outcome for websites having to create a database of users to store their IDs/drivers licenses on their servers.

Platforms have had legal obligations to treat children online differently since 2000, and yet that didn't happen.

If you don't want age verification, then I think it is politically wise to fight that fight separately. Nothing about KOSA as written requires age verification, not even as a second order effect. Furthermore, KOSA does not introduce any market or regulatory incentive to implement additional identification tracking.

Mandatory or even incentivized age verification would require a separate act of Congress.

One of the things I like about KOSA is that it separates the verification question from the "once you know, then don't do X" question. A more nefarious bill designed to destroy anonymous speech on the internet would certainly conflate the two issues in a single statute.

As someone who doesn't want ANY mandatory age verification on the internet, I very much want to fight that fight on its own merits and not wrapped up with something like KOSA. Passing KOSA separately and without Age Verification requirements has the advantage of giving a stronger position to anonymous speech proponents when and if mandatory age verification statutes are proposed. Both in Congress and also, potentially, in court.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com