Wisconsin Pushing Bill That Requires Websites To Treat All Users As If They’re Children

I've talked before about the utter stupidity (and danger) of trying to turn the internet into Disneyland: a safe space for little kids, where they'll never encounter any content that makes them upset, but plenty of states (and many people in Congress) are trying to do it anyway.

Wisconsin is the latest, and its Senate Bill 385 is pretty impressive in just how ridiculous it is. It literally requires websites to treat everyone as if they're a child unless they've done age verification on you:

Under the bill, social media companies must ensure that all accounts created on or after January 1, 2019, are designated as a youth accounts that comply with the youth account requirements of the bill. A social media company may remove the youth account designation from an account if 1) the social media company estimates that the account holder is not a minor through employment of a process or program that provides a 95 percent accuracy rate of estimating age within 24 months of actual age; 2) the social media company verifies that the account holder is not a minor; or3) a parent or guardian of a minor account holder requests for the youth account designation to be removed from the minor's account.

Basically, the internet must be Disneyland, unless you can show that you're over 18, then you're allowed to see controversial stuff... like detailing how Wisconsin legislators are foolish authoritarians who don't understand how the 1st Amendment works.

Among the things that social media sites would have to do to anyone they haven't age verified is... not allow them to use the site between 10pm and 7am. So, if you aren't willing to give up your privacy, there goes the internet at night for you.

The nighttime lock-out is even dumber than it sounds:

ensure that the account cannot be used or accessed between the hours of 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. The time of day under this paragraph shall be calculated on the basis of the Internet protocol address being used by the account at the time of attempted access. The social media company shall ensure that an account holder does not change or bypass the time restrictions under this paragraph.

So... if a teenager uses a VPN to shift the timezone of their IP address, then... the social media site is liable for failing to ensure that the account holder wasn't able to bypass the IP-based time restrictions? Really?

On top of that, the bill would give parents of actual children a ridiculous level of access to their children's accounts:

The bill also provides to parents of minor account holders certain access, including full access to the account and all its posts and messages, the ability to change the time limits on the account, and to opt out the minor's account from the youth account designation.

As we've pointed out with other similar bills, this does not take into account what happens if a child is estranged from a parent. Or if a child and a parent don't get along.

Not only is this bill making the internet treat everyone as elementary school children, it also teaches kids that your parents will be spying on you all the time." This is a dangerous combination, especially for kids in an abusive or dangerous household.

Look, we get it. There's an evidence-free moral panic going around about how horrible social media is for kids, even if the actual evidence shows that that's not true at all. But, really, these nonsense moral panic bills are looking dumber and dumber.

It's just non-stop old people scared of the internet and ignorant of how the 1st Amendment (and the internet) work. Stop it.