New York Pushing Yet Another Unconstitutional Social Media Age Verification Bill

It never ends with these moral-panic-driven, blatantly unconstitutional state bills for the children." The latest, from New York state Senator Andrew Goundardes and Assemblymember Nily Rozic was announced this week with direct support from NY Governor Kathy Hochul (who has been pushing for such unconstitutional bills for a while now, mainly to redirect attention away from her own failures as a governor).

The bills, the New York Child Data Protection Act and the Stop Addictive Feeds Exploitation (SAFE) for Kids Act (which doesn't appear to have text live just yet), incredibly seem to be taking a page from equally censorial bills that have already been ruled unconstitutional in places like Arkansas and California. The SAFE bill is actually quite similar to a bill in Utah, which hasn't been challenged yet, but I have to believe it will be soon, and it's equally unconstitutional. Incredibly, the Data Protection Act itself cites the bill in Utah AND California's Age Appropriate Design Code even though that bill has already been declared unconstitutional by a federal judge! Incredible.

When you're introducing a bill by citing as inspiration a bill that has already been declared unconstitutional, you might just be a grandstanding fool.

Either way, this shows again how this issue isn't a red state" or a blue state" issue, but politicians across the political spectrum are cynically stomping on the rights of children and adults to get headlines claiming (falsely) that they're protecting" the children.

As with Utah's bill, New York's SAFE Act will require parental consent for anyone under age 18 to have a social media account, which means that if you're an LGBTQ+ child and your parent disapproves of your identity, they can cut you off from your community support. I understand why Republican governors like Spencer Cox might want that, by why are Democrats in New York pushing for such bills that will do such harm.

It will also require default chronological feeds" rather than algorithmically generated feeds, even though a recent study of chronological feeds found that they expose users to more misinformation than algorithmic feeds.

So Kathy Hochul wants kids exposed to more misinfo?

As for the Data Protection Act, it will require age verification (since it says sites have to treat those under 18 differently), and, as we've seen with the rulings in California and Arkansas (not to mention multiple past Supreme Court rulings), that's just blatantly unconstitutional as it ends up limiting adult access to content as well.

But it's quite clear that the intent of this law is not about actually protecting kids, because any expert can tell you that these laws will do a great deal to harm kids. These laws are about getting the politicians pushing them positive headlines. And to that effect, it's already working. The NY Times gave them a big old headline, without one ounce of skepticism that the bills might not actually protect kids.