The Texas social media law takes effect September 1.
How do they even plan on enforcing this? What would possibly be the consequences for either parent or child if they violate?
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I’m willing to bet social media companies fucking love this.
“Oh no, we have to collect identifying information on people? The horror. And it sure is tragic that the regulatory burden stifles competition in our space.”
Depending on the stipulations of the bill it could result in some social media platforms completely removing themselves from Texas. Also beyond the enforcement question, what defines “social media”? Does Discord fit? What about Telegram? What about iMessage? SMS?
Ultimately, and like much of the recent GOP social legislation, this is mainly just a way to show Republican voters they’re “doing” something because none of those same voters will care when this is taken up to the court system and struck down as unconstitutional. Even the article indicates this:
“Critics contend that Texas’ law violates the First Amendment and the principles of limited government and individual responsibility.”
The article mentions anything that requires an email to sign up. My guess is that social media sites will allow “guest” accounts or something with no email that section you off into a kids version of the site while everyone else is expected to provide verification.
This is just as useless as requiring people to be a certain age to access your web site. Everybody on the internet was born January 01, 1901 and everybody’s real name is Batman Bin Suparman until proven otherwise.
Also, the last thing we need is even more ways to exclude young people from society. I mean, who looks at young people and thinks “you know what would make this lonely, overworked, overstressed, hyper-regulated cohort better? MORE ISOLATION!” ?
But on the other hand they get a free shotgun with their first credit card debt /s
realistically it’s going to be impossible to implement this. not even taking into account that most of the people making these decisions have absolutely no clue
This is so stupid. If we are going to regulate social media companies it needs to be done at the national level. I’d say their age should be voluntary and if it’s a minor then yeah the algorithms should be cognizant of that. But that needs to be a national bill.
I do hope that these social media companies respond by just shutting down in these states. Even as someone who is unfortunate enough to live in Texas.
Hopefully they use their ridiculous amount of power to show Texas legislators who is actually in charge.