On June 29, two of the most consequential internet bills in the democratic world moved at once. In Washington, the House passed the Kids Internet and Digital Safety Act, a package built around a revised Kids Online Safety Act, by 267 to 117. In Brussels, negotiators sat down for what was billed as the final trilogue on Chat Control 2.0, the EU’s long-running child-protection regulation. Both had spent months under fire. Both, notably, retreated.
The US bill’s authors dropped KOSA’s controversial “duty of care,” the standard critics warned would turn platforms into speech police. EU negotiators dropped the mandatory client-side scanning of private messages, the provision that would have broken encryption for everyone. Civil liberties groups are, rightly, claiming partial victories.
But look at what survived in both. Age verification. Quietly, on both sides of the Atlantic, the measure nobody is fighting over is the one that reshapes the internet for adults as much as for children.
Evin McMullen is co-founder and CEO of Billions Network, which builds privacy-preserving verifiable identity for humans and AI agents.
