S.Amdt. 2815

This amendment introduces the Kids Online Safety Act and rules on Filter Bubble Transparency. Its main purpose is to protect children and minors online by placing strict safety and privacy duties on online platforms, video games, messaging apps, and video streaming services.

The amendment aims to change the digital landscape by adding several key protections and rules:

• It requires covered platforms to use reasonable care to prevent specific harms to minors, such as eating disorders, suicidal behaviors, online harassment, and sexual exploitation.

• It forces platforms to provide minors and parents with easy-to-use safeguards and parental tools, such as limiting communication, restricting public access to personal data, setting strict default privacy settings, and controlling time spent on the platform.

• It prohibits platforms from advertising illegal products like alcohol, tobacco, cannabis, and gambling to anyone they know is a minor.

• It requires large platforms to issue public transparency reports based on independent, third-party audits regarding their impact on minors.

• It establishes the Kids Online Safety Council to provide ongoing advice and reports to Congress on online safety for minors.

• It mandates that online platforms using opaque algorithmic ranking systems must give users clear notice and allow them to easily switch to an input-transparent, unmanipulated chronological algorithm without being charged different prices.