Meta has thrown its support behind the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), a federal bill aimed at protecting children online — but according to Politico, the company's backing came only after the legislation was bundled with two other provisions that benefit the tech industry in significant ways.
The package includes language that would preempt state-level artificial intelligence laws, effectively overriding a growing patchwork of regulations that states like California have been advancing. It also includes a separate bill that would require app stores to verify the ages of their users.
According to Politico, the White House has been pushing the preemption of state AI rules as part of this broader legislative effort. The age-verification requirement would shift responsibility for knowing a user's age onto app stores — companies like Apple and Google — rather than placing that burden on individual apps and platforms like Meta's own products.
KOSA itself has been in legislative limbo for years, championed by child safety advocates who argue that social media companies have failed to protect minors from harmful content. Critics have raised concerns that some versions of the bill could restrict what information is accessible to all users, not just children.
The deal illustrates how major tech legislation rarely moves on its own merits alone. Meta's willingness to embrace a child safety bill it had previously kept at arm's length reflects the political reality that companies often extract concessions — here, a shield against a web of state AI rules and a new gatekeeping role for app stores — in exchange for lending their lobbying weight to priorities they didn't originally champion. For parents and child safety advocates, the question now is whether the political bargain delivers real protections or just good optics.