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      Skeptical America’s ‘Katespiracies’ fixation goes beyond a reasonable doubt

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      For a while, the “Katespiracies” were the most fun people have had on the internet in a long time.The whereabouts of the Princess of Wales after her planned abdominal surgery and subsequent recovery were not particularly high stakes, and so many reveled in the threads and group chats as the “what ifs” got wilder – the theories both more specific and more incredible at the same time.Some postured that Catherine had been replaced with a body double, had been photoshopped into photos not just now but for months, or maybe treated unjustly by an increasingly sinister Prince William. Or: could it be that the princess was dead?The royals did not help their own case. With each vague and defensive correspondence from Buckingham Palace confirming Catherine was actually fine and on track for a recovery by Easter, the online world doubled down.“The Princess of Wales has returned home to Windsor to continue her recovery from surgery. She is making good progress,” a Kensington Palace spokesperson said back in January. “The prince and princess wish to say a huge thank you to the entire team at the London Clinic, especially the dedicated nursing staff, for the care they have provided.”When the Associated Press noted that a photo of Catherine and her children had been doctored, presumably manipulated by the princess herself, the frantic cycle of speculation only escalated.For many it felt like a break from reality and a news cycle dominated by war and politics, and an exercise in collective creativity. It was Twitter/X at its funniest, and the common person working towards a common goal. (That, and the Timothée Chalamet meme.)Then, suddenly, it got dark.A video was released this week by the Sun of Catherine and William shopping near their home. The metadata confirmed the location and timing. In a normal world, this would be enough to slow the rumor mill. But of course, it wasn’t. Internet sleuths kept sleuthing.Why were the Christmas decorations still up in March? She didn’t look exactly like herself, did she? Why were all these videos so damn blurry?It was proof that nothing would satiate the hive mind in the post-truth world, a world where people are fed an onslaught of information, much of it true, some of it manufactured, and some of it somewhere in between. And when people are primed to believe something is false, there’s little one can do, short of maybe meeting the princess in person, that will put an end to the doubt.That matters far beyond what may – or may not – be going on with Britain’s future queen.The US is currently battling a deep distrust in institutions that, while fallible and constantly evolving, are actually founded in the public good – from the Department of Justice to the CDC. That distrust, paired with the ease of proliferating conspiracy theories, has made the ability to have civic discourse, or to report the truth, increasingly difficult. It gives way not to the most likely explanation, or the most fact-based – but the one that most fits with the narrative the court of public opinion has cultivated.There are many depressing versions of Katespiracies that hound Americans in the political world. For example: Ashley Biden’s (fake) diary, QAnon and pretty much anything to do with Anthony Fauci. How do you convince people who believe these hoaxes – which have been disproven many times over, that the real threat to their lives is losing critical social safety nets or birth control, herd immunity, or public education?It is true that the world is rife with misinformation, and blindly trusting those in power has never been a good idea. The royal family, specifically, has a long history of scandal and secrecy. And public institutions, similarly, owe us transparency and clarity.Yet three months of speculation on Catherine is a sign that healthy doubt and questioning can be easily replaced by the inability to accept any truth at all. In the absence of information, on any subject, we’ve now seen what can happen when the court of public opinion takes over the conversation. Even when the facts emerge, there’s a possibility that it will no longer matter. More

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      TikTok may be on borrowed time in the US, but it still holds a Trump card | John Naughton

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      Last week, the US House of Representatives, a dysfunctional body that hitherto could not agree on anything, suddenly converged on a common project: a bipartisan bill that would force TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, to sell the app to an owner of another nationality, or else face a ban in the US, TikTok’s largest market.American legislators’ concerns about the social media app have been simmering for years, mostly focused on worries that the Chinese government could compel ByteDance (and therefore TikTok) to hand over data on TikTok users or manipulate content on the platform. A year ago, Christopher Wray, the director of the FBI, told Congress that TikTok “is a tool that is ultimately within the control of the Chinese government – and it, to me, it screams out with national security concerns”.These fears were amplified by the raging popularity of TikTok among US users. It has upwards of 170 million of them and their addiction to it has bothered Mark Zuckerberg and his empire for the very good reason that TikTok is the only other social media game in town. Six of the world’s 10 most downloaded apps last year were owned by Meta, Facebook’s parent. But TikTok, beat all of them except Instagram to the top spot.TikTok is ferociously addictive, at least for people under 30. What bothers Meta most is that TikTok extracts far more granular data from its users than any other platform. “The average session lasts 11 minutes,” writes blogger Scott Galloway, “and the video length is around 25 seconds. That’s 26 ‘episodes’ per session, with each episode generating multiple microsignals: whether you scrolled past a video, paused it, rewatched it, liked it, commented on it, shared it, and followed the creator, plus how long you watched before moving on. That’s hundreds of signals. Sweet crude like the world has never seen, ready to be algorithmically refined into rocket fuel.”To date, public discourse about the platform has been pretty incoherent – as one critic pointed out: “From policymakers completely talking past each other to the media falling into false binaries when discussing TikTok and a possible ban, too many narratives on the issue have been contradictory, full of logical leaps, or incredibly reductive.” But two main themes stand out from the hubbub. One is that TikTok gathers incredibly detailed personal data on its users (data that may find its way to the platform’s Chinese parent); the other is that it may be a propaganda tool for the Chinese Communist party (CCP).The first is plausible but overegged. As the Economist puts it: “If Chinese spies want to find out about Americans, the country’s lax data protection laws allow them to buy such information from third parties.” The second proposition – that TikTok may be an efficient conduit for propaganda and misinformation – looks spot-on, though. After all, about a third of under-30s in the US regularly get news on TikTok and a recent study has found grounds for thinking that the platform already systematically promotes or demotes content on the basis of whether it is respectively aligned with or opposed to the interests of the CCP.And here’s where the question of what happens to TikTok takes on geopolitical and domestic political dimensions. On the former, it’s highly likely that the prospect of TikTok separating from ByteDance and thereby slipping out of the control of the CCP does not appeal to Beijing. So this congressional bill (which passed overwhelmingly in a floor vote on Wednesday) looks like bad news.On the other hand, there was some good news last week for Beijing. First, Donald Trump became the Republican party’s nominee for the presidency. And second, he announced that he was against the bill. “If you get rid of TikTok,” he posted on his Truth Social platform, “Facebook and Zuckerschmuck will double their business. I don’t want Facebook, who cheated in the last Election, doing better. They are a true Enemy of the People!”For those who appreciate hypocrisy, this was a collector’s item. Is this not the same Trump who in 2020 tried (but failed) to get rid of TikTok? What lies behind this change of heart? Who can say: trying to read what is loosely called Trump’s mind is a fool’s errand. Still, it was interesting to learn that recently Trump reportedly had a “cordial” meeting in his Mar-a-Lago lair with a guy called Jeff Yass. Who’s he? Oh, just someone whose business happens to have a $30bn-plus stake in ByteDance. Sometimes you couldn’t make this stuff up.What I’ve been readingMatter of InterestViewing the Ob-scene is David Hering’s terrific review of Jonathan Glazer’s great movie The Zone of Interest.Machine learningRead Of Top-Notch Algorithms and Zoned-Out Humans, a sobering essay by Tim Harford about the downsides of becoming dependent on smart machines.Science fiction Superconductivity Scandal: The Inside Story of a Scientific Deception in a Rising Star’s Physics Lab recounts a gripping investigation by Nature magazine’s news team. More

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      Congress is right to want to curtail TikTok’s power and influence | Nita Farahany

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      Imagine a world where America’s foreign adversaries don’t need spies or hackers to infiltrate our society or meddle with our democracy. Instead, they can deploy a far more insidious tool: a digital platform, addictive by design, that captivates its users and then mobilizes them to influence our democratic institutions.The scenario may sound farfetched, but something like that recently happened. Earlier this month, while the US Congress was considering a bill that would curtail TikTok’s operations in the United States, the popular, Chinese-owned social media platform confronted its users with a kind of digital ransom note calling for political action. As the New York Times reported, TikTok’s campaign sparked a deluge of calls to Capitol Hill, overwhelming some congressional offices and demonstrating the platform’s political influence.TikTok, whose parent company is the Beijing-based ByteDance, is alarmingly addictive and has a young and intensely loyal user base. It’s so addictive, in fact, that the Chinese version of the app, Douyin, limits Chinese users under the age of 14 to 40 minutes of usage a day, and only between the hours of 6am and 10pm. TikTok introduced a similar measure in the US last year, restricting users under 18 to a default limit of 60 minutes a day, though the feature is optional; certain high-usage users are asked to accept a limit, according to ABC News, but are allowed to decide their own maximum.TikTok’s recommender algorithm, which barrages users with an endless feed of viral, short-form video clips, has effectively exploited human psychology to ensnare a generation of users. Research, including studies funded by China’s own National Natural Science Foundation, have shown that the app undermines human self-control and encourages compulsive consumption. Its algorithms. which automatically curate content to users’ tastes and preferences, have perfected what many other companies have tried: fostering addiction through a feedback loop that continually refines content suggestions based on user interactions and profiling.Researchers have suggested that excessive TikTok usage among young people correlates to mental health problems and poor academic performance that further drives depression. With nearly one in five teens reporting that they’re on YouTube or TikTok “almost constantly”, the draw to the platform seems less like a choice and more like a compulsion.The FBI director Christopher Wray’s recent testimony to the Senate intelligence committee also underscored the national security risks posed by the Chinese government’s control of software on millions of American devices. Those risks, as well as TikTok’s generally addictive nature, are part of what led to growing momentum for a US legislative response.On Wednesday, the US House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly in favor of a bill that would compel ByteDance to either sell TikTok to a US company or face a ban on distribution through major platforms and app stores. President Joe Biden has expressed support for the bill, which enjoys strong bipartisan backing, and indicated he is ready to sign it into law after it is passed by the Senate.By contrast, Donald Trump, whose administration sought to ban TikTok due to the risk of Chinese government surveillance, has reversed his stance in what seems like a strategically motivated pivot to court younger voters and perhaps China. Trump’s opposition to the bill should raise an alarm bell about the risks of TikTok being weaponized in the forthcoming election.Don’t underestimate the platform’s influence: with one-third of American adults under 30 regularly scrolling TikTok for news, and the app serving as the predominant source of information for generation Z, the platform could well influence the presidential election this fall and other US elections to come.While Congress’s bill aims to address immediate security concerns by compelling ByteDance’s divestiture, it falls short of addressing TikTok’s broader risks to US democracy. If the bill takes effect, the app would still probably remain on many of the 170m US devices that have already downloaded it, exposing its users to digital manipulation and foreign data aggregation and influence. The app’s gradual dysfunction when it can no longer be updated might render it slow, glitchy and eventually unusable, but this may not happen before the November elections.Beyond a single app, this saga demands a broader conversation about safeguarding democracy in the digital age. The European Union’s newly enacted AI act provides a blueprint for a more holistic approach, using an evidence- and risk-based system that could be used to classify platforms like TikTok as high-risk AI systems subject to more stringent regulatory oversight, with measures that demand transparency, accountability and defensive measures against misuse.As the bill heads to the Senate, it will almost certainly face an onslaught of legal and lobbying efforts. Critics will also probably argue that the threats TikTok poses are overblown or that the US Congress is merely engaged in anti-China political posturing. That’s untrue. If anything, this is an opportunity for Congress to refine its approach to social media and other powerful technology platforms and adopt a nuanced, risk-based framework that would balance the creative freedoms of content creators with the imperative to shield the public from foreign manipulation.This – the TikTok dilemma – calls for a decisive, comprehensive strategy to fortify the pillars of our democracy and protect Americans’ cognitive liberty – the individual and collective right to self-determination over our brains and mental experiences. We can and should chart a course toward a future where technology is better aligned with the greater good.
      Nita Farahany is the author of The Battle for Your Brain: Defending Your Right to Think Freely in the Age of Neurotechnology and the Robinson O Everett professor of law and philosophy at Duke University More

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      Can US Congress control the abuse of AI in the 2024 election? – podcast

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      In January, voters in New Hampshire answered a phone call from what sounded like President Joe Biden. What turned out to be an AI-generated robocall caused a stir because it was trying to convince Democratic voters not to turn up to polling stations on election day.
      In response to this scam, just a couple of weeks later, the US government outlawed robocalls that use voices generated by artificial intelligence. But experts are warning that this story is just one example of why 2024 will be a year of unprecedented election disinformation in the US and around the world.
      This week, Jonathan Freedland and Rachel Leingang discuss why people are so worried about the influence of artificial intelligence on November’s presidential election, and what politicians can do to catch up

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know More

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      Steven Mnuchin putting together investor group to buy TikTok

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      Steven Mnuchin is putting together an investor group to try to buy TikTok, he told CNBC on Thursday.The former US treasury secretary’s comment comes just a day after the US House of Representatives passed a bill that would give the app’s Chinese owner ByteDance about six months to divest TikTok’s US assets or face a ban. If it did not do so, app stores including the Apple App Store and Google Play would be legally barred from hosting TikTok or providing web-hosting services to ByteDance-controlled applications.TikTok had called the bill a “ban” and urged senators to listen to their constituents before taking any action.“I think the legislation should pass and I think it should be sold,” Mnuchin told CNBC’s Squawk Box on Thursday. “It’s a great business and I’m going to put together a group to buy TikTok.”Discussions of banning TikTok in the US have circulated for years, spurred by fears the China-based company could collect sensitive user data on American citizens – an allegation TikTok has repeatedly denied. Donald Trump attempted a ban in 2020, which did not succeed.The recent bipartisan push to force the company to divest marks the most serious challenge to the app yet, however, and now faces an uncertain vote in the Senate. The House voted overwhelmingly on Wednesday in favor of a ban, with 352 members of Congress voting yes on the bill and only 65 opposed. The company has called the bill unconstitutional.TikTok’s CEO, Shou Zi Chew, said on Wednesday that the company will exercise its legal rights to prevent a ban. He warned in a video message that the bill threatened to consolidate power in the hands of other big tech platforms while risking American jobs. TikTok users have flooded Congress’s phone lines to advocate against a ban, while the company has called on the Senate to reject the bill.“This process was secret and the bill was jammed through for one reason: it’s a ban,” a TikTok spokesperson said. “We are hopeful that the Senate will consider the facts, listen to their constituents, and realize the impact on the economy, 7m small businesses, and the 170 million Americans who use our service.”Although other big tech firms could feasibly attempt to purchase TikTok, companies such as Microsoft, Amazon and Google are already facing intense scrutiny over allegations of antitrust violations and consolidation of power. Microsoft previously offered to buy TikTok in 2020, amid Trump’s attempt to ban the app.Mnuchin served as treasury secretary in the Trump administration, where he oversaw sweeping tax cuts that benefited the wealthy and his department became mired in corruption scandals. Although Mnuchin at one time discussed using the 25th amendment to remove Trump from office after 6 January, he told CNBC last week that he would consider serving again in a second Trump administration.Mnuchin’s private equity firm, Liberty Street Capital, also recently led a group of investors in a $1bn injection of funds into New York Community Bank as its shares plummeted and internal turmoil gripped the institution.China’s ministry of foreign affairs spokesman, Wang Wenbin, said the House’s vote to force a sale used “robber’s logic” in a harsh statement on Thursday morning.“When you see other people’s good things, you must find ways to own them,” Wang said.Despite passing in the House, the potential ban faces an uncertain future. So far, not enough senators have said they would vote in favor of the bill for it to pass. Chew announced that he would head to Congress to speak with senators. TikTok has likewise said it is not clear whether the Chinese government would approve a sale to a US company.The bill that passed in the House on Wednesday is the latest salvo in an ongoing political battle over the platform, which exploded in popularity after its emergence in 2017. The popular app has faced a number of bans and attempted bans in recent years, starting with an executive order by Donald Trump in 2020, which was ultimately blocked by courts on first amendment grounds. Trump has since reversed his stance, now opposing a ban on TikTok. Joe Biden, by contrast, has said he will sign the bill if it reaches his desk. More

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      Is the US really preparing to ban TikTok?

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      The House of Representatives passed a bill Wednesday that would require TikTok owner ByteDance to sell the social media platform or face a total ban in the United States.The legislation now moves to the Senate, where its likelihood of passing is uncertain. But with a landslide of support in the House – 352 Congress members voted in favor of the bill and only 65 voted against – it’s clear that TikTok is facing its biggest existential threat yet in the US.Here’s what you need to know about the bill, how likely TikTok is to be banned, and what that means for the platform’s 170 million US users.Is the US really trying to ban TikTok, and why?The bill that passed in the House on Wednesday is the latest salvo in an ongoing political battle over the platform, which exploded in popularity after its emergence in 2017. It quickly surpassed Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube in downloads in 2018 and reported a 45% increase in monthly active users between July 2020 and July 2022.The platform’s meteoric rise alarmed some lawmakers, who believe that TikTok’s China-based parent company could collect sensitive user data and censor content that goes against the Chinese government.TikTok has repeatedly stated it has not and would not share US user data with the Chinese government, but lawmakers’ concerns were exacerbated by news investigations that showed China-based employees at ByteDance had accessed nonpublic data about US TikTok users.TikTok has argued that US user data is not held in China but in Singapore and in the US, where it is routed through cloud infrastructure operated by Oracle, an American company. In 2023, TikTok opened a data center in Ireland where it handles EU citizen data.These measures have not been sufficient for many US lawmakers, and in March 2023 the TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew was called before Congress, where he faced more than five hours of intensive questioning about these and other practices. Lawmakers asked Chew about his own nationality, accusing him of fealty to China. He is, in fact, Singaporean.Various efforts to police TikTok and how it engages with US user data have been floated in Congress in the past year, culminating in the bill passed on Wednesday.Is this bill really a TikTok ban?Under the new bill, ByteDance would have 165 days to divest from TikTok, meaning it would have to sell the social media platform to a company not based in China. If it did not, app stores including the Apple App Store and Google Play would be legally barred from hosting TikTok or providing web-hosting services to ByteDance-controlled applications.Authors of the bill have argued it does not constitute a ban, as it gives ByteDance the opportunity to sell TikTok and avoid being blocked in the US.“TikTok could live on and people could do whatever they want on it provided there is that separation,” said Representative Mike Gallagher, the Republican chair of the House select China committee. “It is not a ban – think of this as a surgery designed to remove the tumor and thereby save the patient in the process.”TikTok has argued otherwise, stating that it is not clear whether China would approve a sale or that it could even complete a sale within six months.“This legislation has a predetermined outcome: a total ban of TikTok in the United States,” the company said after the committee vote. “The government is attempting to strip 170 million Americans of their constitutional right to free expression. This will damage millions of businesses, deny artists an audience, and destroy the livelihoods of countless creators across the country.”How did we get here?TikTok has faced a number of bans and attempted bans in recent years, starting with an executive order by Donald Trump in 2020, which was ultimately blocked by courts on first amendment grounds. Trump has since reversed his stance, now opposing a ban on TikTok. Joe Biden, by contrast, has said he will sign the bill if it reaches his desk.Montana attempted to impose a statewide ban on the app in 2023, but the law was struck down by a federal judge over first amendment violations. The app was banned on government-issued phones in the US in 2022, and as of 2023 at least 34 states have also banned TikTok from government devices. At least 50 universities in the US have banned TikTok from on-campus wifi and university-owned computers.The treasury-led Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) in March 2023 demanded ByteDance sell its TikTok shares or face the possibility of the app being banned, Reuters reported, but no action has been taken.TikTok was banned in India in 2020 after a wave of dangerous “challenges” led to the deaths of some users. The ban had a marked effect on competition in India, handing a significant market to YouTube’s Shorts and Instagram Reels, direct competitors of TikTok. The app is not available in China itself, where Douyin, a separate app from parent company ByteDance with firmer moderation, is widely used.How would a ban on TikTok be enforced?Due to the decentralized nature of the internet, enforcing a ban would be complex. The bill passed by the House would penalize app stores daily for making TikTok available for download, but for users who already have the app on their phones, it would be difficult to stop individual use.Internet service providers could also be forced to block IP addresses associated with TikTok, but such practices can be easily evaded on computer browsers by using a VPN, or virtual private network, which re-routes computer connections to other locations.To fully limit access to TikTok, the US government would have to employ methods used by countries like Iran and China, which structure their internet in a way that makes content restrictions more easily enforceable.Who supports the potential TikTok ban?While Trump – who started the war on TikTok in 2020 – has reversed his stance on the potential ban, most Republican lawmakers have expressed support of it. The Biden administration has also backed the bill, with the press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre saying the administration wants “to see this bill get done so it can get to the president’s desk”. Biden’s campaign joined TikTok last month.Despite Trump’s opposition to the bill, many Republicans are pushing forward with the effort to ban TikTok or force its sale to an American company.“Well, he’s wrong. And by the way, he had his own executive orders and his own actions he was doing, and now … he’s suddenly flipped around on that,” said the representative Chip Roy, a Texas Republican and member of the far-right Freedom Caucus. “I mean, it’s not the first or last time that I’ll disagree with the former president. The TikTok issue is pretty straightforward.”Who opposes the TikTok bill?TikTok has vocally opposed the legislation, urging the Senate not to pass it. “We are hopeful that the Senate will consider the facts, listen to their constituents, and realize the impact on the economy, 7m small businesses, and the 170 million Americans who use our service,” TikTok spokesperson Alex Haurek said following Wednesday’s vote.Within the House, 50 Democrats and 15 Republicans voted against the bill, including the Republican representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who cited her experiences of being banned from social media. House Democrats including Maxwell Frost of Florida and Delia Ramirez of Illinois joined TikTok creators outside the Capitol following the vote to express opposition to the bill. More

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      in US Politics

      House votes to force TikTok owner ByteDance to divest or face US ban

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      The House of Representatives passed a bill on Wednesday that would require the TikTok owner ByteDance to sell the social media platform or face a total ban in the United States.The vote was a landslide, with 352 Congress members voting in favor and only 65 against. The bill, which was fast-tracked to a vote after being unanimously approved by a committee last week, gives China-based ByteDance 165 days to divest from TikTok. If it did not, app stores including the Apple App store and Google Play would be legally barred from hosting TikTok or providing web hosting services to ByteDance-controlled applications.The vote in the House represents the most concrete threat to TikTok in an ongoing political battle over allegations the China-based company could collect sensitive user data and politically censor content. TikTok has repeatedly stated it has not and would not share US user data with the Chinese government.Despite those arguments, TikTok faced an attempted ban by Donald Trump in 2020 and a state-level ban passed in Montana in 2023. Courts blocked both of those bans on grounds of first amendment violations, and Trump has since reversed his stance, now opposing a ban on TikTok.The treasury-led Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) in March 2023 demanded ByteDance sell their TikTok shares or face the possibility of the app being banned, Reuters reported, but no action has been taken.The bill’s future is less certain in the Senate. Some Senate Democrats have publicly opposed the bill, citing freedom of speech concerns, and suggested measures that would address concerns of foreign influence across social media without targeting TikTok specifically. “We need curbs on social media, but we need those curbs to apply across the board,” Senator Elizabeth Warren said.The Democratic senator Mark Warner, who proposed a separate bill last year to give the White House new powers over TikTok, said he had “some concerns about the constitutionality of an approach that names specific companies”, but will take “a close look at this bill”.The White House has backed the legislation, with the press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, saying the administration wants “to see this bill get done so it can get to the president’s desk”.Authors of the bill have argued it does not constitute a ban, as it gives ByteDance the opportunity to sell TikTok and avoid being blocked in the US. Representative Mike Gallagher, the Republican chairman of the House select China committee, and Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi, the panel’s top Democrat, introduced legislation to address national security concerns posed by Chinese ownership of the app.“TikTok could live on and people could do whatever they want on it provided there is that separation,” Gallagher said, urging US ByteDance investors to support a sale. “It is not a ban – think of this as a surgery designed to remove the tumor and thereby save the patient in the process.”TikTok, which has 170 million users in the US, has argued otherwise, stating that it is not clear if China would approve any sale, or that it could be divested in six months.“This legislation has a predetermined outcome: a total ban of TikTok in the United States,” the company said after the committee vote. “The government is attempting to strip 170 million Americans of their constitutional right to free expression. This will damage millions of businesses, deny artists an audience, and destroy the livelihoods of countless creators across the country.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionFollowing the committee’s passage of the bill, staffers complained that TikTok supporters had flooded Congress with phone calls, after the app pushed out a notification urging users to oppose the legislation.“Why are Members of Congress complaining about hearing from their constituents? Respectfully, isn’t that their job?” TikTok said on X.Although the bill was written with TikTok in mind, it is possible other China-owned platforms could be affected, including US operations of Tencent’s WeChat, which Trump also sought to ban in 2020. Gallagher said he would not speculate on what other impacts the bill could have, but said “going forward we can debate what companies fall” under the bill.Reuters contributed to this report More

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      ‘New text, same problems’: inside the fight over child online safety laws

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      Sharp divisions between advocates for children’s safety online have emerged as a historic bill has gathered enough votes to pass in the US Senate. Amendments to the bill have appeased some former detractors who now support the legislation; its fiercest critics, however, have become even more entrenched in their demands for changes.The Kids Online Safety Act (Kosa), introduced more than two years ago, reached 60 backers in the Senate mid-February. A number of human rights groups still vehemently oppose the legislation, underscoring ongoing divisions among experts, lawmakers and advocates over how to keep young people safe online.“The Kids Online Safety Act is our best chance to address social media’s toxic business model, which has claimed far too many children’s lives and helped spur a mental health crisis,” said Josh Golin, the executive director of the children’s online safety group Fairplay.Opponents say alterations to the bill are not enough and that their concerns remain unchanged.“A one-size-fits-all approach to kids’ safety won’t keep kids safe,” said Aliya Bhatia, a policy analyst at the Center for Democracy and Technology. “This bill still rests on the premise that there is consensus around the types of content and design features that cause harm. There isn’t, and this belief will limit young people from exercising their agency and accessing the communities they need to online.”What is the Kids Online Safety Act?Sponsored by the Connecticut Democrat Richard Blumenthal and the Tennessee Republican Marsha Blackburn, Kosa would be the biggest change to American tech legislation in decades. The bill would require platforms like Instagram and TikTok to mitigate online dangers via design changes or opt-outs of algorithm-based recommendations, among other measures. Enforcement would demand much more fundamental modifications to social networks than current regulations require.When it was first introduced in 2022, Kosa prompted an open letter signed by more than 90 human rights organizations united in strong opposition. The groups warned the bill could be “weaponized” by conservative state attorneys general – who were charged with determining what content is harmful – to censor online resources and information for queer and trans youth or people seeking reproductive healthcare.In response to the critiques, Blumenthal amended the bill, notably shifting some enforcement decisions to the Federal Trade Commission rather than state attorneys general. At least seven LGBTQ+ advocacy organizations that previously spoke out against the bill dropped their opposition citing the “considerable changes” to Kosa that “significantly mitigate the risk of it being misused to suppress LGBTQ+ resources or stifle young people’s access to online communities”, including Glaad, the Human Rights Campaign and the Trevor Project.To the critics who now support Kosa, the amendments by Blumenthal solved the legislation’s major issues. However, the majority of those who signed the initial letter still oppose the bill, including the Center for Democracy and Technology, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Fight for the Future, and the ACLU.“New bill text, same problems,” said Adam Kovacevich, chief executive of the tech industry policy coalition the Chamber of Progress, which is supported by corporate partners including Airbnb, Amazon, Apple and Snap. “The changes don’t address a lot of its potential abuses.” Snap and X, formerly Twitter, have publicly supported Kosa.Is Kosa overly broad or a net good?Kovacevich said the latest changes fail to address two primary concerns with the legislation: that vague language will lead social media platforms to over-moderate to restrict their liability, and that allowing state attorneys general to enforce the legislation could enable targeted and politicized content restriction even with the federal government assuming more of the bill’s authority.The vague language targeted by groups that still oppose the bill is the “duty of care” provision, which states that social media firms have “a duty to act in the best interests of a minor that uses the platform’s products or services” – a goal subject to an enforcer’s interpretation. The legislation would also require platforms to mitigate harms by creating “safeguards for minors”, but with little direction as to what content would be deemed harmful, opponents argue the legislation is likely to encourage companies to more aggressively filter content – which could lead to unintended consequences.“Rather than protecting children, this could impact access to protected speech, causing a chilling effect for all users and incentivizing companies to filter content on topics that disproportionately impact marginalized communities,” said Prem M Trivedi, policy director at the Open Technology Institute, which opposes Kosa.Trivedi said he and other opponents fear that important but charged topics like gun violence and racial justice could be interpreted as having a negative impact on young users, and be filtered out by algorithms. Many have expressed concern that LGBTQ+-related topics would be targeted by conservative regulators, leading to fewer available resources for young users who rely on the internet to connect with their communities. Blackburn, the bill’s sponsor, has previously stated her intention to “protect minor children from the transgender [sic] in this culture and that influence”.An overarching concern among opponents of the bill is that it is too broad in scope, and that more targeted legislation would achieve similar goals with fewer unintended impacts, said Bhatia.“There is a belief that there are these magic content silver bullets that a company can apply, and that what stands between a company applying those tools and not applying those tools is legislation,” she said. “But those of us who study the impact of these content filters still have reservations about the bill.”Many with reservations acknowledge that it does feature broadly beneficial provisions, said Mohana Mukherjee, visiting faculty at George Washington University, who has studied technology’s impact on teenagers and young adults. She said the bill’s inclusion of a “Kosa council” – a coalition of stakeholders including parents, academic experts, health professionals and young social media users to provide advice on how best to implement the legislation – is groundbreaking.“It’s absolutely crucial to involve young adults and youth who are facing these problems, and to have their perspective on the legislation,” she said.Kosa’s uncertain futureKosa is likely to be voted on in the Senate this session, but other legislation targeting online harms threatens its momentum. A group of senators is increasingly pushing a related bill that would ban children under the age of 13 from social media. Its author, Brian Schatz, has requested a panel that would potentially couple the bill with Kosa. Blumenthal, the author of Kosa, has cautioned that such a move could slow the passage of both bills and spoke out against the markup.“We should move forward with the proposals that have the broadest support, but at the same time, have open minds about what may add value,” he said, according to the Washington Post. “This process is the art of addition not subtraction often … but we should make sure that we’re not undermining the base of support.”The bill’s future in the House is likewise unclear. Other bills with similar purported goals are floating around Congress, including the Invest in Child Safety Act – a bill introduced by the Democratic senator Ron Wyden of Oregon and the representatives Anna G Eshoo and Brian Fitzpatrick – which would invest more than $5bn into investigating online sexual abusers.With so much legislation swirling around the floors of Congress, it’s unclear when – or if – a vote will be taken on any of them. But experts agree that Congress has at least begun trying to bolster children’s online safety.“This is an emotionally fraught topic – there are urgent online safety issues and awful things that happen to our children at the intersection of the online world and the offline world,” said Trivedi. “In an election year, there are heightened pressures on everyone to demonstrate forward movement on issues like this.” More