House Republicans revealed new plans detailing their efforts to provide parents with new tools to protect children online.
The House Republican Big Tech Task Force, led by Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), detailed the tools for child safety online in a proposal first reported by the Washington Examiner. These will include equipping parents with tools to monitor online activities, ensuring that data collected by Big Tech companies can be deleted, and raising the age of children who are covered by the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act.
The plan also proposes reforming Section 230 to allow parents to hold Big Tech accountable when companies “knowingly facilitate illegal activity, such as illegal drug sales and child trafficking and exploitation.” The Task Force also proposed incorporating warning labels into certain Big Tech products in order to communicate certain risks involved in their use.
TWITTER WHISTLEBLOWER TO APPEAR BEFORE CONGRESS ON SEPT. 13
While the plan does not provide explicit details on how Congress would reform current technology laws to accommodate these interests, it offers insight into possible tech-related policy reforms that the House could pursue if Republicans take it over in the midterm elections.
The industry group NetChoice said the proposal might be counterproductive. “The problem is, oftentimes with government intervention, it can actually make parental choices more difficult, or could even create kind of a false sense of security where parents aren’t fully examining if this one-size-fits-all approach is right for their individual families,” the group’s policy counsel Jennifer Huddleston told the Washington Examiner. “Additionally, there can certainly be a lot of other trade-offs, when it comes to adult use of technology, from some of the proposals that we’ve seen start to pop up that can raise significant speech and First Amendment concerns.”
Rodgers has regularly supported amending Section 230, a key piece of legislation that protects internet companies from being liable for what other people publish online. The House Energy and Commerce Committee Republican leader introduced a draft discussion bill in July 2021 alongside Rep. Jim Jordan pushing for an amendment of Section 230 that would remove the protections from Big Tech businesses such as Facebook and Google and allow conservatives to try to hold them liable for content moderation decisions.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
The legislation arrives as teenagers’ use of the internet continues to increase. An estimated 46% of U.S. teenagers claim that they use the internet “almost constantly,” which 97% said they use it every day, according to the Pew Research Center.
