NetChoice Sues To Block Maryland's Kids Code, Saying It Violates the First Amendment (theverge.com) 22
NetChoice has filed (PDF) its 10th lawsuit challenging state internet regulations, this time opposing Maryland's Age-Appropriate Design Code Act. The Verge's Lauren Feiner reports: NetChoice has become one of the fiercest -- and most successful -- opponents of age verification, moderation, and design code laws, all of which would put new obligations on tech platforms and change how users experience the internet. [...] NetChoice's latest suit opposes the Maryland Age-Appropriate Design Code Act, a rule that echoes a California law of a similar name. In the California litigation, NetChoice notched a partial win in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which upheld the district court's decision to block a part of the law requiring platforms to file reports about their services' impact on kids. (It sent another part of the law back to the lower court for further review.)
A similar provision in Maryland's law is at the center of NetChoice's complaint. The group says that Maryland's reporting requirement lets regulators subjectively determine the "best interests of children," inviting "discriminatory enforcement." The reporting requirement on tech companies essentially mandates them "to disparage their services and opine on far-ranging and ill-defined harms that could purportedly arise from their services' 'design' and use of information," NetChoice alleges. NetChoice points out that both California and Maryland have passed separate online privacy laws, which NetChoice Litigation Center director Chris Marchese says shows that "lawmakers know how to write laws to protect online privacy when what they want to do is protect online privacy."
Supporters of the Maryland law say legislators learned from California's challenges and "optimized" their law to avoid questions about speech, according to Tech Policy Press. In a blog analyzing Maryland's approach, Future of Privacy Forum points out that the state made some significant changes from California's version -- such as avoiding an "express obligationâ to determine users' ages and defining the "best interests of children." The NetChoice challenge will test how well those changes can hold up to First Amendment scrutiny. NetChoice has consistently maintained that even well-intentioned attempts to protect kids online are likely to backfire. Though the Maryland law does not explicitly require the use of specific age verification tools, Marchese says it essentially leaves tech platforms with a no-win decision: collect more data on users to determine their ages and create varied user experiences or cater to the lowest common denominator and self-censor lawful content that might be considered inappropriate for its youngest users. And similar to its arguments in other cases, Marchese worries that collecting more data to identify users as minors could create a "honey pot" of kids' information, creating a different problem in attempting to solve another.
A similar provision in Maryland's law is at the center of NetChoice's complaint. The group says that Maryland's reporting requirement lets regulators subjectively determine the "best interests of children," inviting "discriminatory enforcement." The reporting requirement on tech companies essentially mandates them "to disparage their services and opine on far-ranging and ill-defined harms that could purportedly arise from their services' 'design' and use of information," NetChoice alleges. NetChoice points out that both California and Maryland have passed separate online privacy laws, which NetChoice Litigation Center director Chris Marchese says shows that "lawmakers know how to write laws to protect online privacy when what they want to do is protect online privacy."
Supporters of the Maryland law say legislators learned from California's challenges and "optimized" their law to avoid questions about speech, according to Tech Policy Press. In a blog analyzing Maryland's approach, Future of Privacy Forum points out that the state made some significant changes from California's version -- such as avoiding an "express obligationâ to determine users' ages and defining the "best interests of children." The NetChoice challenge will test how well those changes can hold up to First Amendment scrutiny. NetChoice has consistently maintained that even well-intentioned attempts to protect kids online are likely to backfire. Though the Maryland law does not explicitly require the use of specific age verification tools, Marchese says it essentially leaves tech platforms with a no-win decision: collect more data on users to determine their ages and create varied user experiences or cater to the lowest common denominator and self-censor lawful content that might be considered inappropriate for its youngest users. And similar to its arguments in other cases, Marchese worries that collecting more data to identify users as minors could create a "honey pot" of kids' information, creating a different problem in attempting to solve another.
Of course they're trying to spy on children! (Score:3)
Since they can't target adults, at least easily, government laws are moving to regulate how children will be tracked, and tracked by force. Governments know that using the “Think of the children” slogan as a call of protection, will generally work, on enough parents, to let the guards down. Once the guards are down, you stop thinking and wondering why that strange webcam showed up for your daughter or son, and why the strange camera is in their bedroom, with the blinking light.
Governments are effective becoming the men from “To Catch a Predator”. Instead of passing laws that fully anonymize and hide children's data, effectively washing it and masking it, they're creating explicit data points to track, inspect, and digitally molest your children. Now, they can't do that out loud, so instead they hide the intention in silly games like “Making reports”, “Track the user age”, “Validate the ID” because dumb and clueless people won't realize what it's really all about.
If governments wanted to protect children, would you see Microsoft and Google in the classroom or QubesOS / Fedora? Providing Microsoft, Google, Facebook, or TikTok doesn't abuse the data worse than the government, they can keep the pseudo kiddy porn, providing the government gets the hardcode stuff. I'm absolutely calling the government child predators.
Stop with capricious bullshit (Score:2)
Western governments are doing this more and more, making law as vague as possible so they get plausible deniability to just hit up anyone for political gain, ideological warfare or money.
"Though the Maryland law does not explicitly require the use of specific age verification tools"
That's exactly the problem. Let government decide how to do age verification, let government decide clear rules about what kids are allowed to interact with. Let everyone enjoy free speech with clear boundaries and without massiv
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
> and that single point of failure will be compromised immediately
Cool, we'll see what all the politicians are subscribing to.
That is what the politicians want, riiiight?
Re: (Score:2)
Age verification should be done with a national electronic ID, every other way is stupidly flawed and should not be part of legal consequences for getting it a little too wrong by completely arbitrary standards.
If doing it right is not an option in the US, then the only reasonable alternative is to just not restrict free speech "for the children" and let the chips fall as they may.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
That's an option too, the more American option.
My point is that whatever option is picked should have a clear way to be compliant. Not hinting that in some magical way you might be compliant without massive self-censorship ... but they are not going to tell you how.
Do it like Norway or have government stay out of it.
Re: (Score:2)
So... who pays for hosting this?
Re: (Score:2)
The same people already paying to host things...
Mark my words VPNs are next. (Score:3)
One of the things that is used for about anonymous internet access is the ability to criticize an administration without the fear of reprisals. There is no way they're going to let us keep that. It is painfully obvious watching what's going on right now that the screws are being tightened. You can see it everyday in the tone of the news media as it gets ludicrously pro corporate. Way more than anything we all grew up with which was already Weyland yutani levels of Pro-Corporate.
We've really fucked up (Score:3)
We decided that the internet was a better babysitter than a human, and we *ALL* have to pay for this stupidity. It's become a peer-pressure laden wall of fuck-off to rationality, and we need to sanitize the web or else.
I don't think we, as a species, were ready for the information age. There's too much greed built in to every aspect of our society, and that greed drove us through several mechanisms to handing the entire thing off to kids. We don't allow parents enough time to actually be parents by typically forcing both parents to work, and this happened right around the time the internet started to become an available resource. We built shiny objects to access the internet, then sold it directly to kids through media that portrayed these devices as fun, and cool, and must haves. We flooded parents with messages that kids won't be safe if they don't have this device on them at all times so they can contact a parent at a moment's notice, though mostly the kids use it to access the internet and play games. We literally let the corporations steer us into this mess, and now we're allowing our governments to use this mess as yet another means of outright control.
We weren't ready. And this *NEED* that governments now have to crack down on and fine-grain track people will combine with the coming crapflood apocalypse of AI agents flooding the web with bullshit and creating whole feedback loops of false narratives to eventually render the web unusable as an information source, as an entertainment source, and as an education source. It was a fun little experiment we had. Too bad we couldn't steer ourselves in a better direction.
Re: (Score:2)
Admit to your own bad choices without trying to make it seem like you were just following everyone else. You werent. You were teaming up with many people just like you for sure when you were all not taking responsibility, but it definitely wasnt everyone, not even half.
Promise them their worst fears (Score:2)
Promise them what they're really afraid of: School-girls will read banned books, have pre-marital sex, will buy abortions. Older teens will stop attending church, will vote Democratic Party, will demand insurance CEOs are shot on 5th Avenue.
Ignore mass killing, but beware the internet (Score:2)
So complete censorship of online access is a reasonable option, while reducing out of control gun violence is an assault (pun interned) on our sacred rights.