# The EARN IT Act of 2022: What It Actually Does

This bill creates a new government commission focused on stopping child sexual exploitation online. The commission would bring together federal law enforcement officials, prosecutors, police investigators, survivors of abuse, tech company employees, privacy experts, and computer security specialists to develop recommended guidelines that social media platforms and other internet services could voluntarily follow to better protect children from predators.

The commission would have 19 members total and would spend about 18 months developing a set of best practices—essentially a playbook of strategies that tech companies could choose to adopt. These recommendations would cover things like how platforms can better detect and report child sexual abuse material, train content moderators to identify exploitation, work with law enforcement, and offer parental controls. The commission would consider that different types of companies face different challenges—a small messaging app would have different capabilities than Facebook or YouTube—so the recommendations would offer flexible alternatives rather than one-size-fits-all rules. The Attorney General would then publish these recommendations so companies and the public can see them.

It's important to note what this bill does NOT do: it doesn't force companies to follow the recommendations, it doesn't create new laws or penalties, and it doesn't change how internet platforms are currently regulated. It's purely advisory—the commission develops suggestions, publishes them, and then it's up to individual companies to decide whether to implement them. The bill essentially tries to get all the relevant stakeholders in a room to figure out what actually works to combat child exploitation online, then shares those findings publicly.

EARN IT Act of 2022

Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies Act of 2022 or the EARN IT Act of 2022 This bill revises the federal framework governing the prevention of online sexual exploitation of children. The bill establishes the National Commission on Online Child Sexual Exploitation Prevention. The commission must develop best practices for interactive computer services providers (e.g., Facebook and Twitter) to prevent, reduce, and respond to the online sexual exploitation of children. Additionally, the bill limits the liability protections of interactive computer service providers with respect to claims alleging violations of child sexual exploitation laws. The bill replaces various statutory references to child pornography and material that contains child pornography with child sexual abuse material. Finally, the bill makes changes to the reporting requirements for electronic communication service providers and remote computing service providers (providers) who report apparent instances of crimes involving the sexual exploitation of children to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Among the changes, the bill requires providers to report facts and circumstances sufficient to identify and locate each minor and each involved individual. The bill also increases the amount of time that providers must preserve the contents of a report.