Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) responds to questions about Joe Biden’s presidential candidacy following a Senate luncheon at the U.S. Capitol on July 9, 2024.
Tom Williams | Chongqing Roll Call Company | Getty Images
Landmark legislation aimed at keeping children safe online cleared a major hurdle when the Senate passed the bill in an 86-1 vote on Thursday.
measures This is the most comprehensive regulation of the technology industry in more than a decade. Final adoption is expected next week.
Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass., said the safeguards put in place by social media companies were “inadequate.” He cited data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that said one in 10 teenage girls and one in five LGBTQ teens have attempted suicide.
“Whatever safeguards were put in place, they were clearly not working,” he told CNBC on Tuesday at the Senate Office Building.
The bill, technically labeled S. 2073, consists of two bills that move around the chamber as one.
The first, called the Children and Youth Online Privacy Protection Act, would ban targeted advertising to children and teenagers, prohibit companies from collecting personal information from users under 17, and allow users to delete personal information collected about them. . It would also create a new division at the Federal Trade Commission focused on youth marketing and privacy.
The second bill is called Children’s Internet Safety Act, also requires social media platforms to have a “duty of care” to prevent their products from harming children, including exposing them to content that promotes drugs and alcohol, or exacerbates mental health problems such as eating disorders, anxiety, depression and suicide. Social media companies must automatically enable the strongest privacy settings for children.
The bill has received endorsements from major tech companies, including snapshot companyX and Microsoft. But NetChoice, a trade association whose members include Yuan, Google Yahoo opposed the bill, saying it was so restrictive that it would be impossible for the company to implement it.
While the bill explicitly states that websites don’t need to verify the age of users, Carl Szabo, NetChoice vice president and general counsel, said the law would actually require websites to verify the age of everyone who uses them, and collect a lot of data in the process. data.
“Suddenly, the government is requiring the collection of massive amounts of data that conflicts with several privacy laws we’re seeing at the state level,” he said.
While the bills are likely to pass the Senate, their fate in the House is less certain, and the breadth of the bills remains a concern. But House Speaker Mike Johnson said in an interview that Americans need more power over what their children see online.
“We will look at the details of the specific legislation, but I suspect it will have a lot of support. Clearly we need to protect children in terms of online activities,” he said. “The internet is the Wild West and some of these reforms are long overdue.”
