Tell your senators: vote no on the KIDS Act and KOSA

On June 29, the House fast-tracked the Kids Internet and Digital Safety (KIDS) Act, H.R. 7757, and the Senate is now considering it alongside the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), S. 1748. Whatever their intentions, these bills pressure websites to demand a government ID, a face scan, or other age verification from every person—adult or child—before they can read, speak, or associate online. New York’s senators need to hear from their constituents before any vote.

Step 1Download the letter

Download the letter Microsoft Word (.docx) — one page

I’ve written a letter you can use to tell Senators Schumer and Gillibrand to vote NO on the KIDS Act and KOSA. It makes three primary arguments:

1. Age verification, by another name. Although both bills claim not to require age verification, because they hold websites liable based on what they “should have known” about users’ ages, many websites will likely implement age verification to avoid potential liability.
2. Content regulation in disguise. The Senate’s KOSA imposes a “duty of care” that claims to regulate website design features but is really content regulation. The same design feature that is lawful in one case may be unlawful in another based on the content a website delivers.
3. Ignored alternatives. If age verification must exist, better tools are available to serve the goal of protecting kids online while still allowing adults to access the internet privately and anonymously if they choose. Congress has failed to consider these alternatives.

Step 2Make it yours

1. Fill in your name, address, and email in the bracketed fields at the top and bottom.
2. Choose the senator you are writing to in the address block and salutation (send one to each!).
3. Optional but powerful: add a sentence in your own words about why a free and open internet matters to you.

Step 3Send it

Senators do not publish public email addresses; the fastest routes are their official contact forms (you can paste the letter text directly into the message field) or postal mail. A phone call to the D.C. office is also highly effective.

Learn moreWant to dig deeper?

Read the bills and coverage for yourself: H.R. 7757 (KIDS Act) text, S. 1748 (KOSA) text, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s analysis of the age-verification problem.

Thank you again. A one-page letter takes ten minutes and it is how constituents move votes.