MA Senate Votes to Rein in Addictive Social Media Design

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.

Read more here.

MA Senate Passes Strong Data Privacy Protections

Earlier today, the MA Senate voted 40 to 0 to pass the Massachusetts Data Privacy Act, which would — among other steps — ban the sale of sensitive data (including location data) and impose meaningful data minimization on companies harvesting our personal information. You can read the MA Senate’s fact sheet here.

During debate, the Senate passed two amendments that we, along with groups in the Location Shield Act, had advocated for:

  • Amendment 4, which extends the ban on sales of geolocation data to cover anyone who visits Massachusetts for any reason, including travel to the state to pursue personal health care.
  • Amendment 52, which ensures that businesses cannot sell sensitive data, regardless of whether they are otherwise exempt under the act.

The bill now moves to the House. 99 state representatives have co-sponsored the bill, but pressure will be needed to get past the Legislature’s characteristic inertia.

Let Your State Senator Know: MA Wants Strong Data Privacy Laws

Your data should be nobody’s business.

This Thursday, the Massachusetts Senate will vote on comprehensive privacy legislation known as the Massachusetts Data Privacy Act (S.2608). Strong data privacy legislation must ban the sale of our sensitive data, limit how companies handle our data, and provide a strong enforcement mechanism.

The Massachusetts Data Privacy Act, as written, achieves many of these goals, including a complete ban on the sale of sensitive data. But there are critical protections missing from the bill, and Big Tech lobbyists will be hard at work this week trying to keep them out and to weaken the bill.

Your legislators will be hearing from the Big Tech lobbyists who have spent the whole year cozying up to Donald Trump. They need to be hearing even louder from you.

Email your state senator in support of strong data privacy legislation.

Here are the key amendments that civil liberties advocates are rallying behind and that your senator needs to hear from you about:

#52 (Rausch) – Closing Loophole to Prevent All Sales of Sensitive Data, which eliminates broad carveouts for industries that are regulated (but in a much more general way) on the federal level

#25 (Friedman) and #4 (Creem) – Preventing Location Tracking for People Traveling to Massachusetts,which ensure that people who come to our state for reproductive and gender affirming care have all the protections we can offer

#55 and #56 (Rausch) – Strong Enforcement, which ensure that people are able to seek redress in court when their rights are violated. To put it simply, a law without a strong enforcement mechanism is just a recommendation.