CDT Joins Open Tech Institute in Open Letter Opposing the Kids Off Social Media Act
On May 16, Center for Democracy and Technology signed an open letter, spearheaded by New America’s Open Tech Institute, in opposing the Kids Off Social Media (S. 4213) introduced by Senators Brian Schatz (D-Hawai‘i), Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), and Katie Britt (R-Ala.).
The letter outlines three major concerns regarding the bill including:
The bill will incentivize schools to spy on children.
The bill has a significant, potentially unconstitutional, restriction for young people’s access to online services.
The bill will likely undermine existing child safety efforts.
The letter encourages the protection of children’s privacy and security online by continuing to work with Congress on a bipartisan bicameral comprehensive privacy bill. Efforts that help ensure everyone’s privacy and security online.
Not All Guardrails Are Created Equal: Comparing Content Safety and Copyright Filtering
As courts and policymakers work through questions about chatbot liability, they should be wary of analogies that flatten meaningful technical differences. Copyright filtering and safety intervention share real challenges around ambiguity and evasion, but they diverge in what each control must assess, how each manifests over the course of a conversation, and how much can be verified from the outside.
Op-Ed: France’s Constitutional Council Ruling Tests the Limits of Social Media Bans
Read our analysis the legal and policy significance of the Constitutional Council’s decision on ongoing social media age restriction and age assurance debates ahead of the most-anticipated EU-wide approach on child online safety due by December 2026.
The brief explains that Section 230’s liability protections are essential to enable free expression online and they extend to the use of automated systems to engage to rank and order content as part of traditional publishing activities.
