Social media must protect kids by default—or face FTC fines and state lawsuits
H.R. 6484 — Kids Online Safety Act · Filed by Gus Bilirakis (R-FL) · Introduced Dec 5, 2025 · Markup held
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What it does
This bill requires social media platforms to establish policies protecting minors from physical violence, sexual exploitation, drug/alcohol/gambling promotion, and financial fraud. Platforms must provide minors with privacy controls and time-limit tools (with protective defaults), give parents management capabilities, and respond to harm reports within 10 days. Platforms must also conduct annual third-party audits and disclose their safeguards. The FTC enforces violations as unfair trade practices; states can sue on behalf of residents.
Why we flagged it
The bill's operative mechanism is a mandatory duty regime: platforms must implement harm-prevention policies, provide protective defaults, enable parental controls, audit annually, and report to the FTC. This is direct regulatory obligation, not a tax, subsidy, or deregulation.
What the text implies
- Platforms may outsource safeguard/parental-tool implementation to third parties (section 4(f)(3)), creating a compliance-services market but potentially fragmenting enforcement and accountability.
- The bill preempts all state laws on the same subject (section 10), eliminating state experimentation and potentially preventing stricter state protections.
- Annual audits by third-party auditors create a new compliance-audit industry; audit standards are not yet defined, leaving room for inconsistent enforcement.
- The definition of 'compulsive usage' ties to the ADA's 'major life activities' standard, which may create litigation over what constitutes a substantial limitation and who bears proof burden.
- Platforms must respond to harm reports within 10 days but are not required to remove content or take action—only to respond substantively—leaving the remedy ambiguous.
Section numbers refer to the bill text the analysis read — linked under Primary records below.
Who it affects
Minors and parents gain concrete protections: default privacy settings, time-limit tools, parental oversight, and a reporting mechanism for harms. Platforms must address documented harms (exploitation, drug promotion, financial fraud). The bill does not require age verification or browsing-history disclosure, preserving privacy. Compliance costs fall on platforms, not citizens.
Who stands to gain
- third-party compliance and audit firms
- parental-control software vendors
- platforms that can absorb compliance costs (large incumbents)
Named in the bill
Federal Trade Commission (FTC), State attorneys general, Covered platforms (social media, user-generated content sites), Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), Communications Act Section 230, Federal Trade Commission Act Section 18
Where it stands
- Dec 5, 2025 — Introduced · Congress.gov: “Introduced in House”
- Dec 5, 2025 — Referred to House Committee on Energy and Commerce · Congress.gov: “Referred to the Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade”
- Dec 11, 2025 — Markup held in committee · Congress.gov: “Subcommittee Consideration and Mark-up Session Held”
Dates and quoted wording are Congress.gov's action record; the timeline shows status changes, not every procedural step.
Money around this bill
27 lobbying clients named this bill on 38 disclosure filings across 3 quarters, Dec 2025 to Jun 2026. Those filings disclosed $83,425,000 in lobbying spend. A filing names 24 bills on average, so that figure is what each filing reported, not a share belonging to this bill.
More lobbying clients named this bill than 97% of bills with at least one filing.
Gus Bilirakis, the sponsor, reported $937,250 in PAC receipts in the 2026 cycle.
- Chamber of Commerce of the U.S.A. — $54,660,000 on 3 filings
- Google Client Services LLC — $6,920,000 on 2 filings
- Meta Platforms, Inc. and Various Subsidiaries — $5,990,000 on 1 filing
- National Retail Federation — $3,881,000 on 2 filings
- American Association for Justice — $3,610,000 on 2 filings
Lobbying Disclosure Act filings through Jul 20, 2026. A filing shows who paid to lobby on a bill it names, not what changed.
How this was measured
Analysis — Quorum's AI read the bill text published by Congress.gov (25,493 characters) on Aug 21, 2026. Section numbers in the findings refer to that text, linked below; transparency and hidden-provision scores are compared against the median of 16,222 analysed bills.
Status and sponsors — Congress.gov's bill record — actions, committee referrals and cosponsors — loaded nightly. The timeline shows status changes, not every procedural action.
Money — Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act filings whose specific-issue field names this bill for quarters ending Dec 2025 to Jun 2026. A filing's amount is reported whole beside the median number of bills a filing names; it is never divided across them. PAC receipts are FEC-reported contributions to the sponsor's candidate committee in the 2026 cycle.
As of — lobbying records through Jul 20, 2026 · page rendered 2026-10-20.
“Social media must protect kids by default—or face FTC fines and state lawsuits” QuorumCivic. https://share.quorumcivic.app/bill/119/hr6484 Report an error
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