Opinion: A California Bill Can Save Our Children from Big-Tech Social Media Abuses

Social media platforms are not in the child-protection business. But, our elected officials are. Enter Senate Bill 287 by state Sen. Nancy Skinner, now pending in Sacramento. The bill would make it unlawful for platforms, knowingly or carelessly, to cause children to become medically addicted to their platforms, to allow their algorithms to deliver “how to” suicide videos into the hands of depressed children, to repeatedly pummel girls with pro-anorexia content, or offer children easy ways to buy lethal fentanyl. 

Proving the bill is about harm prevention, if a platform operates appropriately and audits their practices to make sure they don’t cause these harms to children and reforms their practices if they find they do, there is no liability under the bill at all.

For the full op-ed, click here.