Social media companies ‘on notice’ over new rules for kids in New York | #childpredator | #kidsaftey | #childsaftey

ALBANY — Social media companies will be prohibited from delivering content to children and teenagers in New York that’s curated using an algorithm fed with data about their online behaviors starting early next year under new rules announced Tuesday.

The new rules, which apply to people under age 18 in New York, will require those companies to determine each user’s age and only provide them with content from users and pages with which they deliberately connect.

That means they’ll be shown a chronological feed of accounts they already know instead of a randomized barrage of posts based on their personal activity and interests. The rules are intended to encourage them to spend less time on those platforms.

The regulations also are designed to prevent negative mental health outcomes for children and teenagers in New York by making it less likely for them to be directed to emotionally harmful or dangerous content.

“These companies who know that this is harmful to their own children and yet for purposes of making the almighty dollar are trying to harm our own kids, we’re putting them on notice,” Gov. Kathy Hochul said while announcing the finalized rules Tuesday in New York City.

The rules are the result of a process that began more than two years ago, when Hochul signed the SAFE For Kids Act into law. 

That law bans social media companies from serving additional content to young people with algorithmic feeds. It also bans them from sending push notifications to those users overnight.

The state attorney general’s office was responsible for promulgating the rules around how those restrictions work. A draft version was published last fall for comment from the public and industry stakeholders. The announcement Tuesday reflects their adoption.

“It’s important to note that a number of these comments came from the industry,” said state Attorney General Letitia James. “The final rules reflected that input while preserving the law’s central purpose, protecting our children and young people online.”

Social media companies will have the next six months to prepare before the rules take effect. They’ll start being enforced by the state on Jan. 25, James said.

Social media companies could face a fine of up to $5,000 from the state for every instance in which a child is served a push notification oversight or a personalized social media feed driven by an algorithm fed with their data. 

Parents will be able to opt their children out of the law’s restrictions but only if the company offers them that option. That’s not required.

Social media companies will have several options to determine a user’s age, according to the rules. That could include asking someone for a form of ID to verify they’re an adult, using facts about the history of their account or estimating their age using a visual or audio recording.

Common Sense Media, a nonprofit that advocates on issues at the intersection of children and technology, called the new rules and their scheduled enactment “groundbreaking.”

“The SAFE for Kids Act and these new final rules to implement and enforce it have the potential to be a transformative step forward in protecting children in New York from the addictive design features of social media,” said James P. Steyer, the group’s CEO.

New York is among the first states to adopt such sweeping regulations around the content social media companies can serve and state officials expect to face litigation over their enactment. That’s part of why they took so long to promulgate, Hochul said. 

“When you’re first, you have to get it right,” Hochul said. “There’s no room for mistakes because the lawyers are lining up to attack and try to defeat you in court.”

Several states have passed laws that restrict access for children to social media or certain content on those platforms but their results in court have been mixed.

A federal appellate court upheld a California law similar to New York’s statute last year after it was challenged by NetChoice, a trade group that advocates against content restrictions on the internet.

But a different law in Arkansas, where state lawmakers sought to require age verification and parental consent before young children could create an account on social media, was placed on pause by a federal court in April. 

It had also been challenged by NetChoice, which did not immediately comment on the finalized rules announced Tuesday in New York.

Carl Szabo, the group’s vice president and general counsel, told the Times Union last year that a lawsuit wasn’t off the table.

“NetChoice has defeated similar unconstitutional bills in three other states, where the judges in each of those cases highlighted the serious First Amendment and privacy concerns with this type of legislation,” Szabo said.

The law was approved by both chambers of the state Legislature two years ago with bipartisan and near-unanimous support despite a robust lobbying campaign from tech companies.

“These new regulations bring the law to life by keeping young people safe while protecting New Yorkers’ online privacy and holding social media corporations accountable,” said state Sen. Andrew Gounardes, a Democrat who sponsored it.

It was carried in the state Assembly by Assemblywoman Nily Rozic, also a Democrat. Only one lawmaker — now-retired Republican Assemblyman Andrew Goodell — opposed the measure.