Who Would Benefit From California’s Age Appropriate Design Code? Apparently Porn Companies, Privacy Lawyers, And Medical Disinfo Peddlers. But Not Kids
This week we've been writing about California bill AB 2273, a dangerous bill that has effectively sailed through the California legislature with little pushback, because it's wrapped up in protect the children" language and no one wants to be seen as not wanting to protect the children." But, like so many bills that frame themselves as protecting the children," this one does no such thing, and likely puts everyone's (not just children, but them too) privacy at much greater risk. Eric Goldman posted a long, detailed breakdown of just how bad the bill is. I highlighted how it's literally impossible to comply with, using Techdirt as an example. And, then I also covered how the bill came into being, because a UK baroness/Hollywood filmmaker pushed it on California lawmakers who took it and ran with it (she has already gotten a similar law passed in the UK, and is pushing for it elsewhere).
Within all of those articles, we've described the many, many, many problems with the law, how its very premise is based on myth rather than fact, and why it will be a disaster for the internet. And yet the bill has very little official opposition, and a massive amount of official support. So, today, I wanted to look at who is likely to benefit from this bill becoming law, mostly using the official supporters listed in the Senate Floor Analyses presented during the third reading in the California Senate a few days ago.
But, before we even get to that, I wanted to point out one organization that might be, by far, the biggest beneficiary of the law going into effect: the world's largest porn company. Reporter Shoshana Wodinsky, who covers the privacy beat better than any other reporter out there, wrote up a Twitter thread about this.
just realized that this children's protection/privacy bill would, if passed in its current state, actually be a huge boon to the online porn industry (and pornhub's parent company specifically). lemme explain: https://t.co/dtF97bkEI5
- shoshana wodinsky (she/her) (@swodinsky) August 25, 2022
In short, one of the aspects of the bill is that if your site is likely to be accessed" by someone under the age of 18, there are a bunch of requirements. And one of those requirements is that any such site must estimate the age of child users with a reasonable level of certainty." Given that nearly any site has to think that at least some high school students may visit, that covers effectively every site. And, at this point, you have two choices: either you try to block all such under the age of 18" people from visiting your site... or you have to have a reasonable level of certainty" of the age of those children.
The issue with both of those options is that the only way to do that is by using age verification technology. Age verification technologies have always been a huge mess. They don't work well, they're often easy to get around, and they're usually incredibly intrusive and dangerous to privacy. And it turns out that the biggest provider of age verification technology is... MindGeek, the massive (and massively secretive) company behind Pornhub (and basically every other porn site).
MindGeek runs an age verification technology called AgeID. Indeed, MindGeek was a supportive lobbyist in favor of a similar law in the UK, because they knew it was basically the only option most companies would turn to. In fact, concerns about how this was giving the world's largest porn company detailed private information on basically every internet user was one of the reasons why the UK dropped its original age verification law. As Wodinsky highlights in her thread, AgeID's privacy policy is a mess. It admits to collecting plenty of personal data, and appears to allow the company to do plenty with it as well.
So, in an effort to protect the children," California may effectively be forcing everyone to hand over tons of personal data to the guys who run Pornhub - a company that just recently had to remove the majority of its videos after an investigation showed many videos involved child sexual abuse.
Giving that company all our data is supposed to protect the children?
Really?
And, now, let's look at the list of actual supporters. The list is long. And I'm not going to go through all of it, but there are some surprising (and some not-so-surprising) names on it.
SUPPORT: (Verified 8/22/22)
5Rights Foundation (co-source)Common Sense (co-source)
Attorney General Rob Bonta
Accountable Tech
ADL West
Alcohol Justice
American Academy of Pediatrics, California
Avaaz
California Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO
California Lawyers Association, Privacy Law Section
California Public Interest Research Group
Center for Countering Digital Hate
Center for Digital Democracy
Center for Humane Technology
Children and Screens
City of Berkeley
Consumer Federation of America
Consumer Federation of California
Do Curious Inc.
Eating Disorders Coalition
Epic
Fair Vote
Fairplay
Je Suis La
Joan Ganz Cooney Center - Sesame Workshop
LiveMore ScreenLess
Log Off
Lookup
Me2b Alliance
National Hispanic Media Coalition
NEDA
Oakland Privacy
Omidyar Network
Outschool, Inc.
Parents Together Action
Protect Young Eyes
Public Health Advocates
Real Facebook Oversight Board
Remind
Reset Tech
Roblox Corporation
Smart Digital Kids
Sum of Us
Tech Oversight Project
The Children's Partnership
The Signals Network
The Social Dilemma
Tiramisu
Ultraviolet
Two individuals
We already discussed 5Rights, the group out of the UK who sponsored" the bill. Some of the others seem to just be random for the kids" charities who do good work and likely signed on because this bill is to protect the kids" and they don't have the knowledge or expertise to understand how problematic it is.
But there are some inclusions worth calling out. First up: California Lawyers Association, Privacy Law Section. It seems a bit unseemly for them to be endorsing this bill. As we've discussed, realistically, the only thing this bill protects" is the employment of privacy lawyers. Because under this law, basically every website is going to need to hire privacy lawyers to write a Data Protection Impact Assessment" (DPIA) for every single feature on their website, and every new feature that they launch. Those DPIAs will need to be reviewed every two years as well. Legal liability attaches to these DPIAs, and so you're going to need a privacy lawyer to write them.
In other words, this bill is a full employment for privacy lawyers" kind of law.
I mean, I noted that Techdirt probably will require at least a dozen different DPIAs, and possibly more, and we're just a tiny blog. I shudder to think how many DPIAs any site with actual features will have to create.
And thus, it seems not just a little self-serving to see the official Privacy Law Section of the California bar endorse it. I mean, in general, it seems kind of unseemly for the California bar to be officially endorsing any laws, considering that members will likely have to be on both sides of disputes. I was kind of curious about what sort of advocacy the California Lawyers Association deems acceptable, and the organization indicates that its advocacy is just about promoting excellence, diversity and inclusion in the legal profession and fairness in the administration of justice and the rule of law."
I do not see how this law that will just make a ton of legal busy work achieves any of that.
Those with economic interest in passing this bill are on the list as well. There is a large and growing business of companies who are pumping up the (unproven) claims of social media addiction" in an effort to sell stuff to overly concerned parents (note to parents: there are plenty of free tools that help you do this without having to pay these companies, and also there's value in teaching your kids how to be good digital citizens and when to recognize they're in an unsafe digital space).
Some of these are... well... sketchy. One of the supporters" of the bill is the organization Do Curious Inc." I've read over their website a few times now and I have no idea what they actually do beyond spreading general fear about screens" and telling people they should go outside more. And, yeah, I'm all for going outside and putting away your screens. But... I don't know that we need a company to help us do that.
But, and here's where it gets really bizarre, reporter Shoshana Wodinsky (again) discovered that the guy who runs Do Curious, Douglas Perednia... is apparently the same dermatologist who at the beginning of the pandemic got propaganda rag The Federalist to publish an article recommending that we purposely infect young people with COVID.
WAIT IT GETE SO MUCH WORSE
THE GUY WHO RUNS THIS DOGOOD" COMPANY IS pic.twitter.com/S44q4T5n8j
- shoshana wodinsky (she/her) (@swodinsky) August 26, 2022
So good work, California, you've got medical disinfo peddlers supporting your bill.
There's another supporter of this bill that I want to call out separately, because it's a bit hidden. At the end there, it lists two individuals." But one of those individuals is revealed later in the document to be Tim Kendall. The California legislature seems taken with Tim, and his resume suggests why: he was the first Director of Monetization at Facebook" and was also the President of Pinterest.
That resume has made him a popular name on the prodigal tech bro" circuit of former techbros who got rich and then claimed they saw the light" and are now working against tech. As Maria Farrell (who coined the prodigal tech bro" term) notes, these stories are always a little too perfect.
Indeed, Kendall basically gets the second most screen time in the documentary The Social Dilemma (after the proto-prodigal tech bro, Tristan Harris). You remember The Social Dilemma, don't you? That was the documentary on Netflix (the company that originally perfected algorithmic recommendations to keep you coming back - though the documentary conveniently leaves out Netflix's role in all that) that manipulates you with misinformation to convince you that others are manipulating you with misinformation.
Anyway, I find it interesting that neither in The Social Dilemma, nor in the endorsement" for AB 2273, does anyone mention that Kendall founded and runs Moment, an app that was pitched as a tool for weaning you off of your supposed screen addiction.
In other words, his startup is helped out quite a bit by continuing the narrative that the internet is bad and dangerous and addictive for kids.
It seems like maybe some of that should have been disclosed?
Anyway, since we're talking about the Social Dilemma (again, a movie that is deeply manipulative and full of disinformation), I should note that the makers of that movie are also listed as supporters of the bill, as is the Center for Humane Technology, the organization founded by Tristan Harris, the only person to get more screen time than Kendall in the documentary.
It's almost as if there's an entire industry built off the claims that tech is inherently bad and we need to be protected from it - and they have every incentive to continue to promote that narrative, even as the data frequently contradicts the claim. As you scroll through the list, you can see other examples of such organizations as well.
And, yes, it's reasonable to be concerned about children. But so much of the problem with for the children" legislation is that it's not good legislation and won't fix any actual problem. And no one feels willing to speak up about it, because then they'll get attacked as not wanting to protect the children.
But this bill doesn't protect the children, as we've explained at great length. Its drafted so poorly and so broadly that it will create all sorts of problems. Lumping everyone under 18 into a single category of children" is ridiculous and disconnected from reality. Having it apply to websites likely to be accessed by a child" rather than those actually targeting children (and again, without distinguishing what kinds of children) is a problem. Requiring sites to know the ages of visitors (i.e. age verification provided by the largest porn company in the world) is a problem. Requiring every website to file useless paperwork regarding every feature and allowing the Attorney General to demand those papers be handed over with just a couple days of notice is a problem.
The bill doesn't help the children. It seems to help the world's largest porn company, a bunch of privacy lawyers, and the burgeoning industry of folks who are now building their careers around getting everyone (especially parents) to fear technology (including one guy who advocated infecting people with COVID).
It's not exactly a good look.
And yet, everyone tells me Gavin Newsom is likely to sign the bill.