Congress is considering a pair of deeply flawed data privacy bills.

One is the American Privacy Rights Act (APRA) in the House. The other is the Kids Online Safety and Privacy Act (KOSPA) in the Senate.

Both of these bills have bipartisan support, but they also face significant opposition, and not just from IAB. 

Among other provisions, APRA would give individuals the right to access, correct, delete, and export their data and authorize the Federal Trade Commission to expand the categories of sensitive covered data through regulation. KOSPA would establish legal standards to protect minors and require platforms to lessen potential online harm.

We do want a federal privacy law and have been loudly advocating for it for years. We also want to protect kids online. However, this legislation seems to start from a position that advertising and marketing are inherently unfair and deceptive. Such political posturing is not a substitute for impact and effectiveness.

Setting these bills aside can open the door for better federal privacy legislation and better ways to protect kids online.

What’s wrong with APRA?

The current draft of the APRA is even worse than the existing 20-state patchwork of state privacy laws. It would do something no state has done: treat general web browsing data as sensitive and require opt-in consent rather than allowing consumers to just opt-out.

In a letter to House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers and ranking member Frank Pallone, I wrote that “The APRA’s classification of ordinary browsing history as sensitive data demanding opt-in consent could severely impact the availability of free online content and services.” The opt-in concept could affect the entire ecosystem, creating a data-poor, less functional, and less useful internet. 

That’s not the only problem. The exemption criteria for small businesses have unrealistic revenue and data processing limits. The last thing we need right now is legislation that hinders the growth and sustainability of America’s small businesses.

Ad-supported media is not a new idea. Indeed, it’s one that consumers are both familiar and comfortable with. IAB research shows that consumers value the ad-supported products and services they receive thanks to advertising by $39,000 per person per year. That’s more than half of the real median U.S. household income, and in total, that’s trillions of dollars in value each year that consumers do not have to pay for.

As we’ve been saying all along, a uniform, nationwide standard for data privacy is exactly what we want. This bill just isn’t it. Fortunately, more House members are coming to that conclusion, and APRA is stalled there, while their colleagues in the Senate are coalescing around KOSPA.

What’s wrong with KOSPA?

Like APRA, KOSPA assumes all advertising is inherently unfair and deceptive, but without ads to subsidize free children’s content, parents would pay more—and what could happen next is obvious. 

Kids in the richest ZIP codes might continue to receive access, while kids in the poorest ZIP codes might lose it. In a country where there is already serious income inequality, this would be a disadvantage to poor children.

What’s needed is common-sense legislation providing the right protections for kids. Maximizing safety as well as the positive effects of innovation, is among the most fundamental roles of good government.

And IAB is not the only group opposed to KOSPA. The ACLU, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Fight for the Future, and other organizations have been outspoken against it.

As Fight for the Future observes, “[the bill] would pressure platforms to install filters that would wipe the net of anything deemed “inappropriate” for minors. This is instructing platforms to censor, plain and simple. And it would ramp up online surveillance of all internet users by requiring that platforms use age verification and parental monitoring tools. Not only are these tools needlessly invasive, but they’re also a massive safety risk for young people who could be trying to escape domestic violence and abuse.”

The ACLU “remains concerned that this bill would silence important conversations, limit minors’ access to potentially vital resources, and violate the First Amendment by imposing a roundabout government-mandated content moderation rule.”

We need a federal privacy law, and we need to protect kids. We can do better than these legislative proposals. I’m confident that one day soon we will.