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Minors, like everyone else, have First Amendment rights. These rights extend to their ability to use social media both to speak and access the speech of others online. But these rights are under attack, as many states seek to limit minors’ use of social media through age verification measures and outright bans. California’s SB 976, or the Protecting Our Kids from Social Media Addiction Act, prohibits minors from using a key feature of social media platforms—personalized recommendation systems, or newsfeeds. This law impermissibly burdens minors’ ability to communicate and find others’ speech on social media.
On February 6th, 2025, EFF, alongside the Freedom to Read Foundation and Library Futures, filed a brief in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in NetChoice v. Bonta urging the court to overturn the district court decision partially denying a preliminary injunction of SB 976.
SB 976 passed into law in September of 2024, and prohibits various online platforms from providing personalized recommendation systems to minors without parental consent. For now, this prohibition only applies where the platforms know a user is a minor. Starting in 2027, however, the platforms will need to estimate the age of all their users based on regulations promulgated by the California attorney general. This means that (1) all users of platforms with these systems will need to pass through an age gate to continue using these features, and (2) children without parental consent will be denied access to the protected speech that is organized and distributed via newsfeeds. This is separate from the fact that feeds are central to most platforms’ user experience, and it’s not clear how social media platforms can or will adapt the experience for young people to comply with this law. Because these effects burden both users and platforms’ First Amendment rights, EFF filed this friend-of-the-court brief. This work is part of our broader fight against similar age-verification laws at the state[…]
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