Like a Bouncer at a Bookstore: Texas’ App Store Accountability Act is Unconstitutional
This week, CDT joined the Internet Society (ISOC) and New America’s Open Technology Institute (OTI) to file an amicus brief supporting Students Engaged in Advancing Texas (SEAT) and the Computer & Communication Industry Association (CCIA) in their challenge to Texas’s App Store Accountability Act...
They Said I’d Feel Different About Free Speech as a Parent. They Were Wrong.
When I first began working on free speech issues full time in 1997, I worked on lots of challenges to freedom of speech based on feared harms to children. At the time, the perceived threats to young people were supposedly Satanic lyrics in heavy metal and violence on television. In conversations with fellow advocates on both sides of the issues, I was frequently admonished "Just wait until you have kids of your own. You’ll feel different then."
The ‘Papers, Please’ Era of the Internet Will Decimate your Privacy
Imagine your favorite team just scored an incredible, last-second goal at the World Cup. So you log online to celebrate with other fans. But, using data it’s already collected on you, the social media platform you like to post on wrongly guesses that you’re under 16 so it forces you to go to a third-party verification app and provide images of your face or your government-issued ID...
The Supreme Court is About to Decide if Children Still Have Free Speech Rights
It’s not a great time to be a parent. Young people get their information from platforms that did not exist just a few years ago and that many adults have never even heard of. Many parents, who did not grow up using TikTok or even YouTube, do not know how to counsel their children on how to function in a hyper-online world...
SIIA Files Amicus Brief Opposing Texas App Store Accountability Act
The Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA), joined by TechNet and Engine Advocacy, filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court supporting efforts to block enforcement of Texas Senate Bill 2420, the Texas App Store Accountability Act...
Smartphones are no longer just phones. For kids, they are libraries, newspapers, classrooms, cameras, maps, town squares, and, yes, bottomless distraction machines. Texas Senate Bill 2420 treats access to all of it as something that should first pass through a state-mandated checkpoint.
Age Verification Law Risks Blocking Valuable Information, Exposing Data
Federal lawmakers want it to be harder for children to access age-restricted material online. But a bill designed to keep kids safe makes it harder for younger readers to access local journalism.
Australian “Lab” Reveals The Folly Of App Store Age Verification
“The kids all laugh about it, ‘What a joke, we haven’t been taken off anything.’” Those are the words of Lauren Hillier, a 42-year-old mother of two Australian teens. Hillier was describing the effects of Australia’s Social Media Minimum Age Act to the New York Times.
Opinion: Senator Sullivan’s “Parents Over Platforms Act” Helps Keep Kids Save from Predatory Tech
Alaska’s most recent Youth Risk Behavior Survey found that 19% of high school students reported attempting suicide at least once in the past year, more than double the rate recorded in 2011. Senator Dan Sullivan has spent years making the case that social media platforms bear real responsibility for that trend, hosting the U.S. Surgeon General in Anchorage for community roundtables on the youth mental health crisis and writing publicly that Big Tech’s business model is to get our children hooked.
