As the Senate tees up a cloture vote on the Kids Online Safety Act today, the Big Tech lobby is set to experience its most crushing lobbying defeat of the year. After pouring millions into fighting the bill, the vote is a huge win for tech accountability, promising to hold companies like Meta, TikTok, Google, and Snap accountable while protecting America’s youth.
“In the face of fierce Big Tech lobbying, this victory shows the power of youth and parent advocates who pushed tirelessly for change,” said The Tech Oversight Project Executive Director Sacha Haworth. “As we celebrate this moment, it’s important to appreciate the group of dedicated parents and young people whose persistent voices overcame a tidal wave of Big Tech money, lawsuits, and inside-game lobbying to break through the noise and move the Senate to action.”
Big Tech has viewed the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) as a must-defeat bill since its introduction in 2022 because its passage would mark a significant bipartisan breakthrough in the lobby’s anti-regulation stormwall. But lawmakers and the American public increasingly recognize the Big Tech lobby’s true agenda: maximizing profits for Silicon Valley giants while denying any and all consumer safeguards.
Over the past three years, the following Big Tech front groups have made opposing KOSA and similar state-level safety-by-design bills a top lobbying priority:
- Chamber of Progress (funded by Amazon, Apple, Google and Meta)
- NetChoice (funded by Amazon, Google and Meta) & its NetChoice Litigation Center
- R Street Institute (funded by Google)
- American Action Forum (funded by Google)
Read more about Big Tech’s big-money lobbying and legal campaign against KOSA and similar state laws.