Despite repeated rallying cries from policymakers, the US is unlikely to pass online safety legislation during the remaining days of this Congress
US Senate hosts hearing on child exploitation online
On 31 January 2024, the US Senate Committee on the Judiciary hosted a hearing on Big Tech and the Online Child Sexual Exploitation Crisis. CEOs from Meta, TikTok, X, Snap and Discord testified before the committee in a televised hearing, with some compelled to provide testimony before Congress for the first time under a committee subpoena. While the hearing was advertised as evidence gathering on the proliferation of sexual abuse of minors on online platforms, legislators took the opportunity to question the witnesses on topics of varying relevance, including the use of platform services in drug trafficking, Chinese influence on American media and data privacy in digital advertising. In addition to lines of questioning, the hearing was notable for the attendance and silent protest of a number of families whose children were harmed by online sexual exploitation.
Some meaningful commitments to pending legislation did emerge
This hearing was the most recent in a series of dozens of such testimonies from big tech executives in the past decade. While much of this hearing failed to produce any new information about online safety for children, a few exchanges did result in commitments from witnesses to support or consider nine different relevant pieces of legislation pending before Congress, including:
Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA): Creating a duty of care for social media platforms to protect minor users and enforcing greater parental controls;
Stop Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) Act: Enabling victims of child sexual exploitation to file civil lawsuits against platforms knowingly hosting CSAM; and
SHIELD Act: Criminalising the purposeful distribution of sexual or intimate images of another person without their consent.
Snap’s CEO Evan Spiegel became the first executive to endorse KOSA, which is understood to be the most comprehensive child safety proposal currently pending and most similar to other global regulations, such as the Online Safety Act in the UK. X’s Linda Yaccarino also committed to supporting a number of bills, including the Stop CSAM Act and the SHIELD Act. Despite waves of rhetoric in years past from big tech claiming to support the regulation of online platforms in general, these commitments to specific pieces of legislation were celebrated by policymakers as new and meaningful progress.
The 2024 congressional calendar will likely dull momentum on platform regulation
Noting online safety and other platform regulation has achieved its highest level of bipartisan support ever, it remains unclear whether the US will pass binding regulation in this space in the near future. There are fewer than 100 scheduled days of work left in the congressional calendar before the 2024 elections, and a number of other policy priorities have emerged as likely election issues – and therefore items more likely to receive consideration by lawmakers. Some Judiciary Committee members did express a hope that online safety would become a talking point for 2024 campaigns, and there is a limited possibility that some bipartisan bills that have passed the committee phase (e.g. the Stop CSAM Act and KOSA) could be combined with other relevant priorities, such as data privacy legislation, to form a broader package of tech-focused legislation. In all likelihood, however, the political dysfunction of election year politics will stall legislative efforts on online safety until a new Congress is seated in 2025.
