Big Tech Spent $90 Million to Stop Online Kid Safety Bill

The Senate-passed Kids Online Safety Act is reportedly facing Big Tech opposition seeking to sow discord between conservatives and progressives by leveraging culture-war issues like gender and sex dysphoria and abortion to stop the bill in the narrowly divided House.

"On the left and the right, they've tried to say whatever the cultural red flag is," Issue One's Alix Fraser told the Journal, who leads a group seeking to reduce lobbyist influence in politics.

Big Tech giants Meta and Alphabet's Google have poured nearly $90 million the past three years in lobbying tied to related topics to avoid regulations and mandates outlined in the Senate's Online Kid Safety Bill crafted by Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., and Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday.

The nearly $90 million total is an estimate because the lobbyists are required to disclose the efforts they are lobbying for but not the amounts spent, according to the report.

The bill is designed to protect America's children and teens on social media who might be victimized by bullying, mental-health disorders, addiction-like behaviors, and sexual exploitation.

But Big Tech opposition is against the "duty of care" component that puts legal onus if not accountability and liability on social media companies, according to the Journal.

Progressive lawmakers are being lobbied to be concerned about censorship of LGBTQ expression, while conservatives should be concerned about anti-abortion censorship, the big-money campaign argues in helping to squelch the passage of the law.

Fraser's Issue One reports the lobbying totals to create division against the bill in the past year along are record-breaking.

Among the nontech companies joining in the opposition of the social media censorship is Journal parent News Corp, which has spent a reported $1.9 million in the past two years on the topics related to the potential passage of the law.

Meta, which covers Facebook and its social media properties like Instagram, is paying up to improve the legislation to put the onus on parental consent as opposed to the Big Tech companies.

"Federal legislation should require app stores to get parents' approval whenever their teens under 16 download apps," the Meta spokesman told the Journal.

Both Meta and Alphabet, which owns the Google and YouTube properties, have made alterations this fall to make children and teen accounts automatically private and keep videos from autoplaying for pre-adult users, according to the Journal.

Sources in the Journal report Alphabet and its lobbyist have reached out to senators on their concerns of the bill related to censorship to allow freedom of expression to protect vulnerable younger users.

At the heart of the effort is the "duty of care" to be put on the parents and not the companies, sources told the Journal.

S-3's Matt Bravo, who used to work for House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., issued an unsigned memo this summer to lobby House conservatives, calling the act "a wolf in sheep's clothing for the pro-life movement," according to the Journal.

House opposition to the nearly unanimous Senate-passed bill includes concerns by the House Freedom Caucus, Scalise, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan, R-Ohio.

The summer opposition from the right led to the Energy and Commerce Committee's hearing in late June to be abruptly canceled, the Journal reported.

Then, Scalise and Rep. Gus Bilirakis, R-Fla., have worked to tweak the "duty of care" provision in the bill, because it feared the Federal Trade Commission would hold too much power in regulating online content and censor conservative voices, according to aides and a Freedom Caucus email reviewed by the Journal.

"As a parent survivor, to feel like you're being toyed with is unconscionable," Maurine Molak, whose son died in 2016 from a suicide pinned on his social media addition, told the Journal.

Issue One ran an ad in Scalise and Johnson's home state of Louisiana featuring the story of South Carolina GOP state Rep. Brandon Guffey's son who died by suicide after online extortion.

"I couldn’t protect my son, but now it's my mission to make sure all kids are protected,” Guffey said in the ad.