Republicans are barreling toward remaking the internet

For years, protecting kids online has been touted as one of the only issues Republicans and Democrats could agree on. Last year, nearly the entire Senate voted to pass a substantive kids online safety bill in an exceedingly rare show of bipartisanship. Right before the vote to pass the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), then-Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) praised the joint effort, saying, “It shows the chamber can work on something important, that no one let partisanship get in the way of passing this important legislation.”

But an event this week in Washington previewed how that conversation may take a different tone under President Donald Trump’s second term — one where anti-porn rules, conservative family values, and a push for parents’ rights take center stage.

The Federal Trade Commission workshop held on Wednesday — billed as “The Attention Economy: How Big Tech Firms Exploit Children and Hurt Families” — was more aggressively partisan than past tech-focused events. Originally announced with the milder tagline “Monopolizing Kids’ Time Online” at the end of the Biden administration, the Trump-era event deprioritized the academics and industry stakeholders found at similar FTC workshops.

In their place was a string of Republican regulators and lawmakers, alongside analysts from “family values” groups and conservative think tanks, including the Heritage Foundation, organizer of Project 2025. Remarks were delivered by Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Katie Britt (R-AL), FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson, and the agency’s other two Republican commissioners (the ones that remained after Trump broke Supreme Court precedent to attempt to fire their Democratic counterparts.)

Blackburn and Britt have both co-sponsored what are billed as bipartisan online safety rules: the KOSA for Blackburn and the Kids Off Social Media Act (KOSMA) for Britt. For years, these bills have been described as addressing common-sense problems with social media, like cyberbullying and addictive features that keep teens reaching for their phones. Both their Republican and Democratic backers constantly downplayed concerns that, for instance, KOSA might be used to make web platforms censor LGBTQ content. And many remarks at the FTC panel echoed common bipartisan talking points — FTC Commissioner Mark Meador, for example, riffed on the common comparison of the social media industry’s lobbying and marketing efforts to those of Big Tobacco.

But that earlier, bipartisan framing came together under Democratic President Joe Biden and a split Congress. With Republicans in control of all three branches of government, the tone has shifted. Alongside calls for things like stronger privacy protections, Ferguson mentioned “cancel culture” in his opening remarks, saying that “no parent wants their child canceled or exposed to public humiliation for some youthful indiscretion online.” The framing of his comments and those from other participants focused on giving parents more “control” and tools to monitor their children — a proposal that has bipartisan support but is a particular concern of the Republican “parents’ rights” movement.

Throughout the day, other speakers — several of whom have worked on efforts to exclude trans girls from sports or prevent the use of puberty blockers or other gender-affirming treatment — referenced Christian or family values in their remarks. Joseph Kohm, director of public policy at the Family Policy Alliance, said it’s not just Big Tech standing in the way of protections for kids online, but also the broader “sex industry,” which he says includes “prostitution, sex trafficking,” and porn. Kohm charged that this industry wraps itself in the banner of free speech but really is trying to ensure unfettered access to addictive porn sites to protect “a business model built on taking advantage of kids without parental consent and leaving them broken.” (Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee recently introduced a plan to wholesale ban online porn.)

Matthew Mehan, associate dean at the conservative Christian Hillsdale College, criticized teens’ constant need to track their friends’ locations as a sort of “mob mentality,” comparing the practice to “a bunch of orca whales” constantly locating each other “because you don’t know how to orient yourself. It’s because you don’t have relationships with God, your family, your work, your school, your community.”

The lineup could be taken as a targeted message at the very people who have previously stood in the way of kids online safety reform: fellow Republicans. Last year, the main roadblock to passing KOSA was House Republican leadership, which failed to put the bill to a vote after the Senate passed it 91-3. While Congress managed to speedily pass the Take It Down Act this year after first lady Melania Trump’s endorsement, the future of KOSA and other bills remains uncertain.

At this point, Republicans, who control both chambers of Congress, don’t necessarily need to convince Democrats to support online regulation. But locking out industry-aligned groups — not just conventional Big Tech companies but the tech world more broadly — could inspire pushback.

“Small tech innovators like our members can offer essential, real-world expertise on policy implementation, technical feasibility, and the operational requirements of maintaining user privacy and safety,” ACT | The App Association, a trade group for small and medium-sized tech companies, wrote in a letter to Ferguson. “A balanced, inclusive dialogue would better equip the Commission to craft more effective policies to protect children online and avoid implementation challenges seen in recent policy proposals.”

Even the Cato Institute, the Koch-founded libertarian think tank, called the event “a one-sided airing of grievances against tech companies” in a blog post ahead of the workshop. Cato free expression and technology fellow David Inserra wrote that he was initially invited to participate, but that “the real disappointment is that we lost the chance to have a fruitful discussion featuring different perspectives on an important policy issue.”

Amid the shift in tone, though, the FTC event still turned out parents who lost their kids after struggling with online harms. For those parents, passing reforms that they believe could save kids like their own is still the top priority, regardless of which party currently controls the agenda. “Parents aren’t asking for a pass. They’re asking for help,” said Maurine Molak, a parent advocate whose teen son, David, died by suicide after experiencing cyberbullying. “This is a collective action problem, and it takes all of us working together to find common ground.”