A couple months ago, the MA House advanced a harmful bill that would ban minors from social media, force social media platforms to enable parental surveillance of teenagers’ online activity, and subject everyone to privacy-invading online ID checks in order to access information or speak out online. We joined groups from across the state in opposing this language.
The Senate’s bill (S.3164), passed 38 to 2 yesterday, takes a smarter approach, targeting addictive design. Republicans Kelly Dooner and Peter Durant were the sole NO votes.
We joined our friends at Fight for the Future in urging senators to support several amendments that would protect privacy, protect youth, and help the bill better accomplish its stated goals. Most of those amendments were adopted:
- Amendment #2, which closed a loophole in the definition of “user” that would have allowed platforms to continue providing addictive features to minors so long as the minor does not use an account to access the platform
- Amendment #3, which updated the definition of social media so that it would exclude sites like GitHub and Wikipedia that have valuable educational purposes
- Amendment #4, which clarified that the attorney general will be regulating interoperability of age signals and not mandating that all operating systems implement age signals
- Amendment #24, which voided the privacy and security issues that come with obtaining parental consent, while increasing the protections for minors
- Amendment #25, which clarified that platforms can use interaction data to generate feeds when that data functions to allow users to control the amount and types of content they receive from users they subscribe to
- Amendment #27, which expanded the ban on tech companies’ ability to use design tactics, such as repeated nudges and grouping of settings controls, to manipulate users into choosing less protective settings
- Amendment #29, which added important protections to minors’ data by requiring the attorney general to address issues of re-identification that could expose minors’ personal information to the public
However, the Senate rejected Amendment #19, which would have prevented companies from manipulating users into using addictive features and would have changed age verification requirements to opt-out to opt-in.
