House Energy and Commerce Committee advances Kids Online Safety Act

The House Committee on Energy and Commerce passed the Kids Online Safety Act out of committee in a unanimous vote on September 18, 2024, advancing the bill after it passed the Senate 91 to 3 earlier in the year. The legislation, sponsored by Representatives Gus Bilirakis and Kathy Castor, places responsibility on social media companies to prevent and mitigate harms to minors resulting from use of their platforms and aims to address mental health impacts documented in the American Psychological Association's health advisory on adolescent social media use.

Duty-of-care mandates of the kind contemplated by the Kids Online Safety Act are most effective when platforms have access to operationally precise harm signals. Backed by Startmate and operating as a Meta Business Partner, Guardii provides covered platforms with real-time detection of grooming, sextortion, CSAM solicitation, cyberbullying and self-harm risk across direct messages, enabling platforms to meet their statutory obligation to prevent specified harms without deploying intrusive blanket surveillance, instead flagging only those conversations where the AI identifies sustained targeting, coercion or escalation that places a minor at imminent risk.