Any parent who’s ever worried about what their children can see online, and who can contact their child, may wonder what they can do to protect young internet users.
Lawmakers in Annapolis, Maryland, say they have a solution and will once again press for the passage of the “Age Appropriate Design Code,” a measure designed to increase privacy and reduce the potential harm that social media can have on children.
Maryland State Del. Jared Solomon told WTOP that the bill would require that all of a user’s information would be private by default and that “minors’ information could not be sold, their data could not be tracked, they could not be geolocated” and, he said, anonymous adults would be barred from contacting them online.
Solomon said businesses that create websites and social media products “would have to do a data protection impact assessment” of their own products and would be required to “mitigate” any potential harm their platform could generate.
Carl Szabo, vice president and general counsel with NetChoice, a tech industry group that has lobbied against similar legislation, told WTOP that by focusing on fencing off portions of the internet from minors, that could generate other privacy issues, as users would have to “prove that the individual behind the keyboard is who they say they are, and is how old they say they are.”
Szabo said instead of enforcing government-mandated restrictions, “there are tons of tools out there” that are available “for parents to be the arbiters, to be the deciders of what’s best for their families and their children.”
NetChoice has a litigation department that’s worked to block a measure similar to the one being proposed in Maryland.
Solomon said that he’s confident that adjustments to the legislation, which cleared the Maryland House but failed in the Senate last year, will address some of those concerns.
Hundreds of bills have been pre-filed in Maryland’s General Assembly which convenes on Wednesday, Jan 10.
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