The U.S. House of Representatives pushed through the Kids Internet and Digital Safety (KIDS) Act in a 267-117 bipartisan vote late last month. The legislation now sits in the Senate, positioned as the government’s ultimate legislative response to the youth mental health crises and algorithmic fallout exposed by the 2021 Facebook whistleblower leaks. It sounds like standard child protection policy on paper. But the Electronic Frontier Foundation argues the reality is much darker.
In a July 23 opinion piece for CoinDesk, EFF advocate India McKinney warned the legislation operates as a mass surveillance system disguised as a safety mechanism. The sprawling bill forces social media platforms to implement mandatory age-verification systems to avoid sweeping legal liabilities. To comply, tech companies will likely require users to upload government IDs or submit to facial biometric scans. That effectively kills anonymous internet use for adults and teenagers alike.
The legislation actually combines 14 distinct digital safety proposals into one massive package, embedding heavily revised versions of the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) and COPPA 2.0. It is drawing fire from all sides. Nearly 100 child advocacy groups, including Common Sense Media, are protesting the legislation because the House stripped out KOSA’s original “duty of care” standard, according to the Mashable report covering the 267-117 vote. That removed provision would have legally forced tech companies to actively prevent algorithmic harms like eating disorders and addiction.
Other embedded policies carry aggressive compliance mandates. The SCREEN Act explicitly requires strict age verification for any website where over one-third of the content is sexually explicit. Meanwhile, the SAFE BOTS Act forces AI chatbots to repeatedly disclose their non-human status and automatically supply crisis hotline information to minors, detailed in a Tech Policy Press breakdown of the sub-bills. COPPA 2.0 also legally raises the federal age for children’s data privacy protections from 13 up to 17.
Age Verification Mandates Threaten Anonymous Web Browsing
The immediate collision point here is infrastructure. If the Senate passes H.R. 7757, platforms hosting user-generated content face an impossible technical hurdle. How do platforms selectively protect minors without knowing the exact age of every single person logging onto their servers?
The EFF argues this liability threat forces platforms into a corner. They will have to collect highly sensitive biometric data or government identification from everyone just to prove who is an adult. The secondary consequence is data security. Mandating identification uploads creates massive new honeypots of driver’s licenses and facial scans sitting on corporate servers. That makes them prime targets for data breaches, shifting the burden of privacy entirely onto the end user.