'twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Some things to address:

The current version of KOSA does not mandate age verification. This has been the main problem with the recent wave of internet censorship so far, and it is clear that KOSA is not the source of that problem.

In fact, this bill does not mandate surveillance of any kind. It actually establishes several safeguards to prevent excessive monitoring of minors, as well as the amount of marketing bullshit that they can do - it attempts to curb the specific methods social media companies use to make sure teenagers are online all the time, such as constant notifications and reminders. It seems to be an expansion of COPPA, which already placed limits on how much data could be collected about minors.

Most of the criticisms of KOSA were written in 2024, before it underwent major revisions. Among those revisions, the 'duty of care' clause - which was the center of the original censorship concerns - was clarified to refer to design features (such as The Algorithm) rather than content. It explicitly does not hold social media companies liable for the content itself, and there are strict enforcement limits, which should help resolve censorship concerns.

The current version of KOSA appears to do three things: it makes social media liable for the mental health damage caused by their platform, such as eating disorders and suicide attempts (this recent lawsuit may be of interest to you), it puts limits on the classic social media business model of Making You Really Addicted To Being Angry, and it adds some default parental controls for kids under thirteen (I literally grew up with this) and optional ones for kids aged thirteen to sixteen (did you know you couldn't make a MySpace account unless you were sixteen?) Since these rely on minors willingly identifying themselves as underage, rather than an age verification process, I don't see the issue.

It's also worth noting that Richard Blumenthal, whose website you linked to, is a Democrat with a solid track record of supporting progressive bills and a notable belief in consumer protection laws - which is exactly what KOSA is trying to be.

The really unfortunate thing is that KOSA got bundled into the KIDS Act. While KOSA seems relatively benign - possible to misuse, of course, but frankly a solid step forward from the currently unmitigated manipulative policies of social media companies - the KIDS Act also includes the SCREEN Act, which does mandate age verification and incentivizes censorship. (Also, 'Shielding Children's Retinas from Egregious Exposure on the Net,' are you so for real right now?) Further, KOSA itself lost its teeth - not as a tool of censorship, but as a tool for controlling social media companies. This is a complaint voiced by not just the man who explained KOSA in the link above, but also the parents from the lawsuit I mentioned earlier, and co-signed by several advocacy organizations, including the Young People's Alliance, Design It For Us, NAACP, and CCDH, which are all generally left-leaning organizations with liberal policies and no significant track record of censorship. (However, organizations like the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, which is anti-sex work and anti-porn, and Protect Young Eyes, which is Christian fearmongering, are also involved.) It's worth noting that Roblox, which is famous for its child grooming problem, fell within KOSA but is now mysteriously outside of the KIDS Act.

It's also worth noting that most of the bills in the KIDS Act are good! It also includes a mandate to start teaching basic internet safety again (please God please), several different bills to limit the ability to collect data on minors, and some mandatory disclosure bills like making sure kids know when they're interacting with a bot instead of a person. It also sponsors some further research on how social media use affects minors and what the best practices for future protections may be.

The big concern, aside from the weakened protections, seems to be that the bill was deliberately designed as a 'federal floor' for states to build on - as in 'your protections cannot go any lower than this.' That means that some states, especially red states, will bounce off this to instigate further censorship bills. I personally feel that this is the price we pay to control the goddamn social media companies - which is not an optional objective, they are corporations and corporations must be regulated - and those bills will have to be challenged and struck down individually. Two steps forward, one step back.

I can't help but wonder if the continuing criticism of KOSA is, in part, driven by fearmongering from social media companies who just want so baaaad to keep teaching kids to live their lives in a constant state of low-level outrage that keeps them scrolling. I'm not a legal expert, maybe there's details and nuance I'm missing, but it seems to me that the big concern here is the SCREEN Act and the fact that KOSA's teeth fell out.