Notícias

On Monday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Kids Internet and Digital Safety (KIDS) Act, a package of online-safety measures aimed at protecting minors, by a vote of 267 to 117. The bill, formally H.R. 7757, now heads to the Senate, where its fate is uncertain. The vote drew support from both parties, a rare bipartisan moment on tech regulation.

At the center of the package is the Kids Online Safety Act, better known as KOSA - a proposal that has been debated in Washington for several years. For a site focused on digital rights, the bill is worth reading closely, because it sits squarely on the fault line between two things people care about: protecting children online, and protecting everyone's privacy and freedom of expression. As reported by outlets including the Washington Times, NBC News and The Hill, the House version bundles KOSA together with several other measures, so it is worth separating what each part actually does.

O que a KOSA exige realmente

KOSA's core idea is to push social media companies to make their platforms safer for minors by default rather than leaving the burden on parents and children. In practice, that means setting minors' accounts to the strongest available safety and privacy settings automatically, adding more parental controls, and changing design features - such as those that encourage compulsive, endless use - that can harm young users.

The mechanism that has drawn the most attention is what KOSA calls a "duty of care." In broad terms, it would require covered platforms to take reasonable steps to prevent certain harms to minors in the design and operation of their services. Supporters see this as a long-overdue obligation; critics worry that a broad, open-ended duty could be interpreted in ways that reach far beyond its intent - a tension we return to below.

As outras medidas do pacote

KOSA is only the headline. The wider KIDS Act package folds in a series of additional rules. It would block private messaging for children under 13, and restrict disappearing-message features for teens under 17 - features that can make it harder for parents or platforms to spot harmful contact.

• On Monday the U.S. House passed the Kids Internet and Digital Safety (KIDS) Act, H.R. 7757, by 267–117; it now goes to the Senate
• Its centerpiece, the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), would set minors' accounts to the strongest safety and privacy settings by default and add a platform "duty of care"
• The package also blocks private messaging for under-13s, restricts disappearing messages for under-17s, adds AI-chatbot and video-game safeguards, mandates age verification for porn sites, and limits targeted ads using minors' data
• Privacy upside: stronger default settings and less data exploitation of minors
• Civil-liberties concern (EFF): age-verification mandates can force all users to prove their identity, and a broad "duty of care" could lead platforms to over-remove lawful content
• Next step is the Senate, where the outcome is uncertain

The package also turns to newer technology. It includes safeguards for minors who interact with AI chatbots, and safeguards on interactive video-game platforms - an acknowledgement that the places children spend time online now go well beyond traditional social feeds. These are areas where dedicated rules for minors have so far been thin.

Two more provisions touch privacy and access directly. The bill would impose age-verification requirements on pornographic websites, and it would restrict the use of minors' data for targeted advertising. The advertising limit is a clear privacy gain for young users; the age-verification mandate, as we will see, is also where some of the sharpest civil-liberties objections arise.

A preocupação com as liberdades civis

Digital-rights advocates have not opposed the goal of protecting children, but they have raised pointed concerns about how some of these tools work. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a long-standing digital-civil-liberties group, has warned that age-verification mandates are not limited in their effect to children: to prove that a user is old enough, a site generally has to check the age - and often the identity - of everyone who shows up, including adults. That turns anonymous browsing into identified browsing, and creates new pools of sensitive identity data that can be breached or misused.

The second concern is about speech. Critics, including the EFF, argue that a broad "duty of care" could pressure platforms to over-remove lawful content to avoid liability - erring on the side of taking things down. Because what counts as harmful to minors can be read broadly, the worry is that legal information - on health, sexuality, or controversial topics - could be swept up alongside genuinely harmful material. These are not hypotheticals invented to dismiss the bill; they are the trade-offs that make a well-intentioned law genuinely contested.

O ganho para a privacidade

It is just as important to state the case in the bill's favor honestly. Setting minors' accounts to the most protective settings by default, limiting the use of their data for targeted advertising, and restricting features designed to maximize time-on-app all push in a privacy-protective direction. For years the default has run the other way - toward maximum data collection and engagement - and a law that flips the default for young users addresses a real and widely shared concern. The honest picture is that the same package contains both meaningful privacy protections and meaningful civil-liberties risks, and reasonable people weigh them differently.

O que observar na passagem ao Senado

For a privacy-conscious reader, the most useful thing to watch now is the Senate. The House vote moves the bill forward, but it does not make it law, and the Senate has considered earlier versions of KOSA before without enacting them; the outcome remains genuinely uncertain. As it moves, the details to follow are the ones that decide the privacy balance: how broadly the "duty of care" is written, and whether age verification is designed to minimize the data collected from everyone - or to demand full identity from every visitor.

Whatever happens in the Senate, the underlying tension is not going away. Stronger default privacy settings for minors are something most people want; age-verification systems that ask every adult to prove who they are are something digital-rights groups have long resisted. Both can live in the same bill, which is exactly why it deserves careful reading rather than a simple cheer or jeer. The questions it raises - who has to identify themselves to go online, and how much lawful speech a safety rule should be allowed to touch - will outlast this particular vote.