I’m willing to bet social media companies fucking love this.

“Oh no, we have to collect identifying information on people? The horror. And it sure is tragic that the regulatory burden stifles competition in our space.”

Depending on the stipulations of the bill it could result in some social media platforms completely removing themselves from Texas. Also beyond the enforcement question, what defines “social media”? Does Discord fit? What about Telegram? What about iMessage? SMS?

Ultimately, and like much of the recent GOP social legislation, this is mainly just a way to show Republican voters they’re “doing” something because none of those same voters will care when this is taken up to the court system and struck down as unconstitutional. Even the article indicates this:

“Critics contend that Texas’ law violates the First Amendment and the principles of limited government and individual responsibility.”

On one hand preventing kids from developing a social media addiciton is good. On the other this law will probably cause a lot of issues. Some issues that i can think of on the spot are:

1. How exactly do you verify age. Kids can just lie about it and social media platforms requiring a national ID is a stupidly bad idea just from the privacy concerns. I don’t want every website to have my ID because:

   A. This would make tracking people between platforms much easier.

   B. One data leak from one website and milions of people have their govt IDs available on-line along with names, phone numbers, e-mail addreses and possibly even addresses (from billing information) and answers to security questions (from posts)

2. I’m worried that this will cause a lot of social media platforms to go the way that youtube went, ie. no NSFW, swearing or anything even remotly not kid-friendly.

What would possibly be the consequences for either parent or child if they violate?

If the law designed is any good, there should be none. The responsibility to check whether the parent has agreed should be laid on the social media giants, not the child or the parent. It should be a tool for parents to control the social media consumption of their kids. And after reading the article, which I highly recommend, it seems to be the case:

The broad law comes with heavy burdens for online platforms. It requires basically any digital services provider that collects an email at sign-up to conduct age verification to identify all minors, verify parents or guardians connected to all minors identified, and secure parental consent for a wide range of account activity.

Please read the articles that you post. Asking follow-up questions that are already answered is a little stupid.

But on the other hand they get a free shotgun with their first credit card debt /s

This is just as useless as requiring people to be a certain age to access your web site. Everybody on the internet was born January 01, 1901 and everybody’s real name is Batman Bin Suparman until proven otherwise.

Also, the last thing we need is even more ways to exclude young people from society. I mean, who looks at young people and thinks “you know what would make this lonely, overworked, overstressed, hyper-regulated cohort better? MORE ISOLATION!” ?

Conservatives love their nanny state

This is so stupid. If we are going to regulate social media companies it needs to be done at the national level. I’d say their age should be voluntary and if it’s a minor then yeah the algorithms should be cognizant of that. But that needs to be a national bill.

I do hope that these social media companies respond by just shutting down in these states. Even as someone who is unfortunate enough to live in Texas.

Hopefully they use their ridiculous amount of power to show Texas legislators who is actually in charge.

How would you even enforce that?

Of course every parent should have an idea of their kids are doing on the internet or at least educate their kids to such a degree that they don’t require supervision and can be trusted use the internet responsibly. But that is just common sense and should fall in to the general responsibilities of a parent.