Senate Poised to Pass Bills to Protect Children’s Safety and Privacy Online

The Senate is scheduled to pass new legislation today to protect children’s safety and privacy online. Last Thursday, senators voted 86-1 to end the debate on the two bills and advance them to the floor, setting them up on a “glide path to final passage,” according to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.).

The new bills update a decades-old law to safeguard children’s safety on the internet. The rules for the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (COPPA) took effect in 2000, four years before Facebook was created.

One of the bills, COPPA 2.0, expands the age limit for protected minors from 13 to 16 and requires social media platforms to obtain consent from users aged 13 to 16 before collecting their personal information. The bill also bans ads targeting children and teens.

The other bill, the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), addresses tech companies’ algorithms for keeping users consuming content. It requires the companies to allow minors to limit the category of recommendations or opt out of personalized recommendation systems that facilitate infinite scrolling.

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