The House Energy and Commerce Committee on Monday released a bipartisan kids online safety bill that eliminates a restriction many lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have long fought for.

The so-called duty of care provision that was excluded would have mandated that online platforms take reasonable measures to prevent specific harms such as suicidal ideation, eating disorders and cyberbullying by changing algorithm and design features.

The duty of care standard has long been sought by Democrats and some Republicans.

“Without a duty of care, Big Tech companies will maintain the status quo of putting profit before the safety of our children,” Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) said in a statement released Monday. “We need a strong federal standard in place that will ensure Big Tech companies can’t design their products to addict, exploit, and harm America’s children.”

Despite its absence, 76 senators from across party lines have supported including a duty of care in the legislation.

The compromise House bill also requires preemption of state laws weaker than the federal standard while letting states put stricter rules in place if they want to. It also allows for preemption of some state AI laws.

The KIDS Act has become the House vehicle for the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), legislation that was first introduced by Blackburn and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) in February 2022. 

The compromise package includes legislation that blocks minors from using disappearing messages, mandates that AI chatbots acknowledge that they are not human and forces porn sites to use age verification technology.

It also includes provisions regulating video games and a data broker registry for platforms receiving kids’ data.

It is unclear how the Senate will proceed. Blackburn has been collaborating with the White House on her own version of an updated bill. The Blackburn proposal is expected to include a duty of care provision as well as rules meant to curtail AI deepfakes and to prevent minors from downloading apps without parental consent.

An earlier version of the legislation already passed through the committee along party lines in March, but Chairman Brett Guthrie (R-KY) pressed on, seeking a bipartisan bill. The new updated iteration will reportedly be raised on the House floor as soon as next week.

Months of negotiations have led to a “bipartisan agreement that would establish the strongest protections to date,” Guthrie said in a statement. 

“The bipartisan KIDS Act addresses the proven harms from online platforms ranging from social media to gaming to artificial intelligence and pornography, establishes new privacy protections for children and teens, and gives parents the necessary tools to fight back against Big Tech.”

Some digital freedoms experts were critical of the bill. While praising some provisions of the bill for keeping kids safer online, Kate Ruane, director of the Free Expression Project at the Center for Democracy and Technology, said aspects of the bill raise “serious constitutional concerns.”

"Specifically, the bill will incentivize age verification to access online services, putting the privacy of all internet users — kids and adults alike — at risk, and it threatens Americans’ right to access constitutionally protected materials,” Ruane said in a statement. “All users, including kids, deserve strong privacy protections, not mandates to hand over more and more personal details whenever they go online.”

The bill is a rare example of bipartisan consensus on these issues, Cobun Zweifel-Keegan, the managing director of IAPP DC said in an email. He called the compromise significant.

“The recent cross-party talks between Energy & Commerce leadership did not have guaranteed success, so seeing a compromise package released is a major step toward passage,” he said. “If any tech policy proposals have a chance at getting through this Congress, this is now the one to watch.”

Zweifel-Keegan also said that the new House version of the bill more closely aligns with the Senate bill, a boon for its prospects. Still, passage won’t be easy.

“There is a lot of work still to do to bring the chambers together and Senate Democrats have already made it clear what they think of KOSA without a duty of care," he added.