{"id":328538,"date":"2026-07-01T07:04:52","date_gmt":"2026-07-01T07:04:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=328538"},"modified":"2026-07-03T05:58:30","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T05:58:30","slug":"here-comes-the-kids-act-usa-joins-the-age-verification-club","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=328538","title":{"rendered":"Here Comes the KIDS Act: USA joins the \u201cage verification\u201d club"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kit Knightly \u2013 Off-Guardian June 30, 2026<\/strong><\/h1>\n

Yesterday, the US House of Representatives quietly passed a bundle of \u201cdigital protections\u201d collectively labelled the Kids Internet \u200band Digital Safety Act (KIDS Act).<\/p>\n

You might not have heard, because the US news was focused on other things, like the Supreme Court refusing to review the civil verdict that Donald Trump sexually assaulted E Jean Carroll, or that they would continue to count mail-in ballots that arrive after election day.<\/p>\n

As is usually the case, the truly important news found itself buried behind things that never happened and things that don\u2019t matter.<\/p>\n

So what\u2019s in the USA\u2019s online safety act?<\/p>\n

The same things that are in everyone else\u2019s, obviously.<\/p>\n

Digital ID this, age verification that.<\/p>\n

The act is effectively a package of clauses and sections from other acts, including:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA),<\/li>\n
  2. Children and Teens\u2019 Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA 2.0)<\/li>\n
  3. Shielding Children\u2019s Retinas from Egregious Exposure on the Net (SCREEN) Act<\/li>\n
  4. Safeguarding Adolescents from Exploitative (SAFE) Bots Act<\/li>\n
  5. Safer Guarding of Adolescents from Malicious Interactions on Network Games (GAMING) Act.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    [Side note \u2013 I HATE US legislation naming conventions and the need to force cringey acronyms.]<\/p>\n

    If you want to go into the details, there\u2019s a good write-up here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

    The unfortunate truth is the details don\u2019t really matter. As we\u2019ve seen already with Spain, the UK, Australia, Canada et al. the actual measures and rules may have cosmetic differences, but in the end they share one important similarity: The only way to enforce them is age verification.<\/p>\n

    This is true of social media bans, or screen time limits, or algorithm exemptions or disabling infinite scrolling or nudity filters or\u2026any of them.<\/p>\n

    Whatever is or isn\u2019t in the KIDS Act, it will need you to verify your age by biometrics or digital ID to work.<\/p>\n

    Just like everywhere else.<\/p>\n

    It passed the House with bipartisan support. It will probably pass the Senate too; if it doesn\u2019t, it will be branded as a \u201cvictory for small government\u201d\u2026and the individual states will just pass their own legislation. As many already have<\/a>.<\/p>\n

    And just like that, Trump\u2019s MAGA US will be just like the \u201cliberal\u201d countries he despises and who claim to despise him.<\/p>\n

    Weird.<\/p>\n

    —<\/p>\n

    Support Off-Guardian:<\/p>\n

    Ko-fi<\/a><\/p>\n

    Subscribestar<\/a><\/p>\n

    Paypal<\/a><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    Source\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Following in the footsteps of Spain, the UK, Australia, Canada and all the other \u2018liberal\u2019 governments that Trump claims to despise, the U.S. is preparing to introduce new legislation that will make online age verification mandatory<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":328540,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-328538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-controlling-the-news-andor-the-free-exchange-of-ideas-and-information"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=328538"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328538\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":328539,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328538\/revisions\/328539"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/328540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=328538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=328538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=328538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}