California, a state once brimming with optimism for a free and open internet, is now leading the country in online safety regulation. On Thursday, California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed 13 bills into law "strengthening California's nation-leading protections for children online."
The laws will impose stricter regulations on AI chatbots, a moratorium on certain AI-enabled toys, and pricey penalties on social media companies that knowingly cause harm to children. One of the laws, Assembly Bill 1709, is a particularly "massive privacy and free speech nightmare," according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). The law requires social media platforms to "implement reasonable measures to ensure that users under 16 years of age are not offered or provided any addictive feature on the covered platform." While these provisions intend to protect children, the EFF notes that the law's implementation may have the opposite effect, as it would compel tech companies to implement age-gating measures to determine user ages.
