Bipartisan kids’ internet safety legislation is one step closer to reality as key House members announced an agreement including privacy and data broker provisions. House Energy and Commerce Chair Brett Guthrie, R-Ky., and ranking member Frank Pallone Jr., D-N.J., said Monday they’d come to a deal on legislation that advanced out of the committee in March. While revised text for the bill was not available, a source close to the talks said the amended legislation would incorporate data privacy protections for children and use preemption to create a floor for state laws, responding to Democratic concerns. In a joint statement, Guthrie and Pallone said they “have now found common ground on policies to significantly improve the digital environment for kids.” “Through empowering parents, establishing safety as a default, strengthening privacy for children and teens, increasing transparency around data brokers, and holding Big Tech accountable, the KIDS Act delivers the 21st century protections parents have demanded and our kids deserve.” The bill known as the Kids Internet and Digital Safety Act moved out of committee with only Republican support, after lawmakers combined 12 measures to create the online safety package. As advanced by the committee, the bill would set new requirements for parental controls and require certain online platforms to put policies in place to address harms to kids online. It has sections to address direct and ephemeral messaging services, online gaming and artificial intelligence chatbots. Preemption was previously a sticking point for committee Democrats, who argued that the bill would knock out too many state laws without putting in place a sufficient federal standard. The source said the new version of the bill includes new privacy protections and would create a data broker registry. That comes after the committee deferred action on a stand-alone children's data privacy bill led by House Republicans in March, in the wake of the Senate approving its own version of the bill, known as COPPA 2.0, to update the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act. At the time, Guthrie said that bipartisan conversations were continuing and the deferral was due to progress being made toward an agreement. The House and Senate bills differ in the standards they would set. The Senate bill would revise the original requirement that companies have “actual knowledge” that a user is a child before they’re required to get parental consent for disclosing the user’s data. The new language would change that standard to “actual knowledge or knowledge fairly implied on the basis of objective circumstances.” The House bill would instead create a tiered system in which smaller companies would be governed by the “actual knowledge” standard and larger platforms would need parental consent if they “willfully disregarded information that would lead a reasonable and prudent person to determine that a user is a child or teen.” It was not immediately clear if the new KIDS Act would follow one path or the other. The committee said the bill would still include portions of the original 12 measures combined to create the legislation. Staff did not offer a timeline for future action on the bill.
