Page 3 of the bill pdf:
> ... (b) the recommendation, prioritization, or selection is based on user-selected privacy or accessibility settings, or technical information concerning the user's device;
And also:
> It shall be unlawful for a covered operator to provide an addictive feed to a covered user unless:
> (b) the covered operator has obtained verifiable parental consent to provide an addictive feed to a covered minor.
"Hey, kid, activate the Dynamic Feed setting and get a cool badge on your profile!" Or: "Type your parent or guardian's email here; we'll tell them all about how we work to provide you with age-appropriate content, and if they click to upgrade your Dynamic Feed, you'll get a special hat for your avatar!"
This seems rife for abuse in practice, but I'd rather this be the case than have overly-broad definitions.
(Not a lawyer, this is not legal advice!)
Some context here: https://www.techdirt.com/2024/06/11/nys-safe-for-kids-act-a-...
"or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press"
Well, is social media "speech" or "press"?
Television and radio stations need to abide by FCC guidelines, and in general, certain topics and words aren't allowed in the daytime.
Another example: Tobacco advertising is severely curtailed, *especially advertising targeted towards minors."
In this case, what isn't restricted is social media platforms ability to express ideas or otherwise function as "press." Instead, what's restricted is the addictive nature and activities that cause psychological harm.
Speech.
> Television and radio stations need to abide by FCC guidelines
As far as the content restrictions, they only need to do so if they are broadcast channels (or cable rebroadcasts of broadcast channels), and FCC is constitutionally prohibited from regulating speech on cable-only channels. The argument for why they can do broadcast is the "compelling government interest" in policing the inherently limited broadcast spectrum, which (quite frankly) is pretty shaky precedent if you ask me.
> Another example: Tobacco advertising is severely curtailed
Advertising is commercial speech, which the government has much more powerful abilities to restrict than expressive speech.
whichever benefits them at that point in time
I also wonder if this is a first salvo to get users to submit IDs before using online services. How do you determine if a user is a minor or an adult without some form of ID, right?
You want to get adults addicted and express yourself to them, so be it, but the legal distinction on limitations on what you can express to minors is well documented.
Anyone can go to pornhub and see a landing page full of highly explicit sexual images without any kind of age verification whatsoever. How is this legal, if what you say is true? Is it just that they don't know it's a minor on the other side of the screen, so they can say it's not "intentional"?
Hochul told a reporter, “we’ve checked to make sure, we believe it’s constitutional.” And, that’s just laughable. Checked with whom? Every attempt I saw to call out these concerns was brushed off as “just spewing big tech’s talking points.”
The Constitution is not a “big tech talking point.” What the actual research shows is not a “big tech talking point.”
https://www.techdirt.com/2024/06/21/today-we-save-our-childr...
[2] Content discrimination
[3] Has the unfortunate side effect of restricting LGBTQIA+ youth and adults' speech
There's a reason why most of these bills are legally challenged.
>“We’ve checked to make sure, we believe it’s constitutional.”
It may be constitutional but it certainly isn't scientific. It's closer to the for-profit use of medical ideas in "anti-gay" "de-patterning" camps and the like. Except backed by people with firearms and a tendency to use them without consequence.
Source: Just search HN, there's been so many posts related to this.
In my view, this is a perfect case for "there's legitimate doubts about the safety of this technology, so let's ban this until it's completely proven to be safe to consume".
Say the language is fixed up replacing addiction with disorder, ... Any other objections?
My other big objection is that this bill as written applies to all people hosting websites instead of being restricted to just incorporated persons like corporations and institutions like the EU's Digital Markets Act.
If it were modified to only apply to incorporated entities then it'd be a solid bill doing net good without any significant violation of individual rights. But as is it applies to all human people that run websites and that makes it a net negative because of the violation of the rights of normal human people.
I don't need the DSM's permission to notice that.
Whether the ban will work out, open question. But pretending there's no addiction here doesn't pass the smell test.
Additionally, feelings are fine for personal behavior but legislation requires a higher level of evidence. I really do believe what I am saying: addiction is an inappropriate concept to apply here since incentive salience is not being directly hijacked. The types of legislative responses to social problems of addiction (like to cocaine) are not appropriate or justified in this context.
To be clearer: enjoyable things with intrinsic value are being targeted in this context and those things are enjoyed. While addiction involves uncontrollable reptition of things without intrinsic value which become wanted due to the system for wanting being activated directly. Stimuli on screens do not do this. Drugs do. That's why it's gambling disorder and drug addiction. That extra layer of abstraction through the senses makes all the different.
In case anyone was wondering why feeds are not ordered chronologically. Has nothing to do with ads.
I understand the hesitancy to government control, but at some point, what other mechanism is there? I'm seriously asking.
The biggest con economists ever pulled was to model people as "rational actors" and then generate an entire worldview off of "if everyone acts in their rational self-interest then this works great."
People are almost fundamentally irrational. People are guided by emotion and superstition and a bunch of weird shit that makes it easy for them to get addicted to things that have little to no societal value. If not a government, what force should counter balance that?
You can invite a person into your house to perform a service for you. They can define conditions on performing their service: "I'll shampoo your carpet for $50." Those conditions could also be "I'll shampoo your carpet every month if you let me read your credit card bill every month." You don't have to agree to this! If you don't want to let them read your credit card bill, you don't have to agree to this service.
If you let someone into your house to shampoo your carpet, without agreeing to let them read your credit card bill, and they secretly do that anyway, that's already illegal!
What you're asking is the equivalent of saying that, if someone has a business of shampooing carpets in exchange for reading people's credit card bills, you want to be legally entitled to invite them into your house and force them to shampoo your carpet anyway, without giving them what they want in exchange.
(incidentally - if you respond to my post by nitpicking details of the analogy instead of addressing the central point, I'm not going to bother to respond).
In addition, with software "contracts", it's often a case of "give an inch and they'll take the mile". The terms are always open to unilateral change from the vendor. So it's more like: "I'll shampoo your carpet for $50. And I can change the terms to whatever I like at any point in the future." which in itself seems insane.
