Coverage spread: 2 sources — 2 center
Lean ratings via AllSides / Media Bias-Fact-Check. How this works.
Where they agree
- The Senate Commerce Committee advanced the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) on Wednesday with strong, largely unanimous support.
- KOSA was introduced by Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) with Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and includes a “duty of care” provision requiring platforms to protect kids from harmful design features.
- The House passed a different version of child-safety legislation in June that omitted the duty-of-care language, creating a rift between the chambers.
- The bill has a long history in Congress, including Senate passage of an earlier version in 2024, without becoming law.
Where they differ
- The Hill frames the story primarily around the contrast between KOSA’s success and the age verification bill’s failure to meet quorum.
- CNBC gives minimal attention to the age verification bill and instead focuses on KOSA’s legislative history and interchamber dispute.
- CNBC includes civil liberties objections from the ACLU and FIRE over privacy and censorship risks; The Hill’s excerpt does not mention this angle.
- CNBC notes an AI chatbot privacy bill advanced alongside KOSA, a detail absent from The Hill’s account.
The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee voted unanimously on Wednesday to advance the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), a bill that would impose new safety duties on social media platforms. A separate bill requiring age verification to keep minors off pornography websites failed to advance the same day because the committee did not have enough members present to meet quorum.
What does KOSA actually require?
KOSA was introduced by Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) with backing from Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), and it now has 76 cosponsors in the Senate. The Senate’s version includes a “duty of care” provision that would require platforms like Meta, Snapchat and TikTok to take reasonable steps to prevent design features that harm kids, alongside measures to build parental controls and to study how social media affects young people’s well-being. Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), the committee’s top Democrat, said before the vote that “children and teens face real risk of harm online, and we’ve lost too many,” arguing the duty-of-care requirement forces companies to avoid building products that cause harm.
Why did the age verification bill fail to advance?
The Hill reports that the age verification bill, aimed at blocking minors from accessing pornography websites, failed in the same markup session because the committee could not meet quorum — meaning not enough senators were present to take a valid vote. Unlike KOSA’s unanimous and largely expected passage, the age verification measure’s failure appears to have been a procedural setback tied to attendance rather than a substantive rejection, though neither source detailed which members were absent or when the committee might try again.
How does the Senate bill differ from the House version?
A different version of KOSA passed the House in June as part of a broader child-safety package, but it dropped the duty-of-care language that Blackburn and Blumenthal see as central to holding tech companies accountable. In a joint statement after House passage, the two senators said the House’s bill was “a pale imitation of Big Tech accountability” and accused the House of stripping out protections that would let “Big Tech” keep treating children “as profit centers” while leaving parents to handle the consequences. That gap between the two chambers’ bills has been the main obstacle keeping any version of KOSA from reaching the president’s desk, despite the Senate having already passed its own version back in 2024.
What other measures moved with KOSA?
The committee also advanced several related child-safety bills in the same markup, including one that would require AI companies to build privacy safeguards into chatbots used by minors, according to CNBC. This suggests the committee is trying to bundle child online-safety measures together, though it’s unclear from the available reporting exactly how many other bills were included or their specific provisions.
Where do the two outlets differ?
The Hill’s coverage centers the story on the contrast between KOSA’s success and the age-verification bill’s quorum failure, treating the procedural stumble as newsworthy in its own right. CNBC’s account barely mentions the age verification bill and instead spends most of its space on KOSA’s legislative history, the duty-of-care dispute between the House and Senate, and pushback from civil liberties groups. CNBC also flags opposition from the American Civil Liberties Union and the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which argue that KOSA-style bills risk user privacy and could enable government censorship — a point The Hill’s excerpt does not address.
What happens next?
The committee took up these bills just one day before the Senate’s August recess, and CNBC notes that few legislative days remain before November’s midterm elections. That timing raises real uncertainty about whether the Senate and House can reconcile their differing versions of KOSA — particularly the duty-of-care provision — before the current Congress runs out of time, or whether the bill stalls again as it has in previous sessions.
Why this matters
KOSA has been debated in Congress for several years without reaching final passage, despite broad bipartisan cosponsorship and past Senate approval. The core disagreement — whether to hold platforms to a “duty of care” standard — pits child-safety advocates and its Senate sponsors against House negotiators who removed that language, while civil liberties groups warn any version could be used to restrict online speech or compromise privacy. The fate of the pornography-site age verification bill, meanwhile, remains an open question after Wednesday’s quorum failure, with no clear timeline for when the committee might revisit it.
Sources
Featured photo: Bill Ingalls via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain)