Category Archives: Social Media

California Governor Signs Bill Protecting Children’s Online Data And Privacy

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California Governor Newsom announced that he has signed bipartisan landmark legislation aimed at protecting the wellbeing, data, and privacy of children using online platforms.

AB 2273 by Assemblymember Buffy Wicks (D-Oakland) and Assemblymember Jordan Cunningham (R-San Luis Obispo), establishes the California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act, which requires online platforms to consider the best interest of child users and to default to privacy and safety settings that protect children’s mental and physical health and wellbeing.

AB 2273 prohibits companies that provide online services, products or features likely to be accessed by children from using a child’s personal information; collecting, selling, or retaining a child’s geolocation; profiling a child by default; and leading or encouraging children to provide personal information.

The bill also requires privacy information, terms of service, policies, and community standards be easily accessible and upheld – and requires responsive tools to help children exercise their privacy rights. This bipartisan legislation strikes a balance that protects kids, and ensure that technology companies will have clear rules of the road that will allow them to continue to innovate.

The Children’s Data Protection Working Group will be established as part of the California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act to deliver a report to the Legislature, by January 2024, on the best practices for implementation.

AB 2273 requires businesses with an online presence to complete a Data Protection Impact Assessment before offering new online services, products, or features likely to be accessed by children.

Provided to the California Attorney General, the Data Protection Impact Assessments must identify the purpose of the online service, product, or feature, how it uses children’s personal information, and the risks of material detriment to children that arise from the data management practices.


The New York Times reported that despite opposition from the tech industry, the State Legislature unanimously approved the bill at the end of August. It is the first state statute in the nation requiring online services likely to be used by youngsters to install wide-ranging safeguards for users under 18.

According to The New York Times, the measure will require sites and apps to curb the risks that certain popular features – like allowing strangers to message one another – may pose to younger users. It will also require online services to turn on the highest privacy settings by default for children.

The New York Times also reported that the California measure could apply to a wide range of popular digital products that people under 18 are likely to use: social networks, game platforms, connected toys, voice assistants and digital learning tools for schools. It could also affect children far beyond the state, prompting some services to introduce changes nationwide, rather than treat minors in California differently.

Personally, I think that California’s AB 2273 is a great idea! I believe that every parent wants to make sure that their children will be safe when engaging in online video games, social networks, and other things that kids tend to like. It will be even better when these protections are established nationwide, to provide protection for all children in the United States.

Governor Newsom Signs Social Media Transparency Measure

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California Governor Gavin Newsom announced that he has signed a first-of-its kind social media transparency measure to protect Californians from hate and disinformation spread online. Bill 587 was proposed by Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel (D – Encino) and is called “Social media companies: terms of service”. The law requires social media companies to report data on their enforcement of the policies.

Obviously, this bill, which has been signed into law by Governor Newsom, provides protection to people who live in California. It does not to cover people who do not live in California.

This is, in some ways, similar to the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) which became law in 2018. It gave Californians the right to know about the personal information a business collects about them and how it is used and shared; the right to delete personal information collected from them (with some exceptions); the right to opt-out of the sale of their personal information; and the right to non-discrimination for exercising their CCPA rights.

“California will not stand by as social media is weaponized to spread hate and disinformation that threaten our communities and foundational values as a country,” said Governor Newsom. “Californians deserve to know how these platforms are impacting our public discourse, and this brings much-needed transparency and accountability to the policies that shape the social media content we consume every day. I thank Assemblymember Gabriel for championing this important measure to protect Californias from hate, harassment and lies spread online.”

The Verge reported that Governor Newsom signed a law aimed at making web platforms monitor hate speech, extremism, harassment, and other objectionable behaviors. The Governor signed it after it passed the state legislature last month, despite concerns that the bill might violate First Amendment speech protections.

According to The Verge, AB 587 requires social media companies to post their terms of service online, as well as submit a twice-yearly report to the California Attorney General. The report must include details about whether the platform defines and moderates several categories of content including “hate speech or racism,” “extremism or radicalization,” “disinformation or misinformation,” “harassment,” and “foreign political interference.”

The law also requires social media companies to offer details about automated content moderation, how many times people viewed content that was flagged for removal and how the content was handled. AB 587 fits well with AB 2273, which is intended to tighten regulations for children’s social media use.

Personally, I think that AB 587 is a great idea. It might be exactly the push that social media companies need in order for them to actually remove hate speech, racism, extremism, misinformation, and everything else the bill requires. It would be great if social media companies removed the accounts of people who are posting threats of violence and/or engaging in harassment on their platform.

I remember when Twitter was brand new, and we all had less characters to use to say something. Back then, it was easy to find like-minded people who were also on Twitter. (For me, it was mostly fellow podcasters). I’d love to see Twitter go back to the good old days.

White House Creates Guiding Principles For Big Tech Platforms

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The White House held a “Listening Session On Tech Platform Accountability”. A varied group of people were invited, including Assistants to the President of various parts of the federal government, some people involved in civil rights causes, Chief Executive Officer of Sonos, Patrick Spence, and Mitchell Baker, CEO of the Mozilla Corporation and Chairwoman of the Mozilla Foundation.

The listening session resulted in a list of six “Principles for Enhancing Competition and Tech Platform Accountability”:

Promote competition in the technology sector. The American information technology sector has long been an engine of innovation and growth, and the U.S. has led the world in development of the Internet economy. Today, however, a small number of dominant Internet platforms use their power to exclude market entrants, to engage in rent-seeking, and to gather intimate personal information that they can use for their own advantage.

We need clear rules of the road to ensure small and mid-size businesses and entrepreneurs can compete on a level playing field, which will promote innovation for American consumers and ensure continued U.S. leadership in global technology. We are encouraged to see bipartisan interest in Congress in passing legislation to address the power of tech platforms through antitrust legislation.

Provide robust federal protections for Americans’ privacy: There should be clear limits on the ability to collect, use, transfer, and maintain our personal data, including limits on targeted advertising. These limits should put the burden on platforms to minimize how much information they collect, rather than burdening Americans with reading fine print. We especially need strong protections for particularly sensitive data such as geolocation and health information, including information related to reproductive health. We are encouraged to see bipartisan interest in Congress in passing legislation to protect privacy.

Protect our kids by putting in place even stronger privacy and online protections for them, including prioritizing safety by design standards and practices for online platforms, products, and services. Children, adolescents, and teens are especially vulnerable to harm. Platforms and other interactive digital service providers should be required to prioritize the safety and wellbeing of young people above profit and revenue in their product design, including by restricting excessive data collection and targeted advertising to young people.

Remove special legal protections for large tech platforms. Tech platforms currently have special legal protections under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act that broadly shield them from liability even when they host or disseminate illegal, violent conduct, or materials. The President has long called for fundamental reforms to Section 230.

Increase transparency about platform’s algorithms and content moderation decisions. Despite their central role in American life, tech platforms are notoriously opaque. Their decisions about what content to display to a given user and when and how to remove content from their sites affect Americans’ lives and and American society in profound ways. However, platforms are failing to provide sufficient transparency to allow the public and researchers to understand how and why such decisions are made, their potential effects on users, and the very real dangers these decisions may pose.

Stop discriminatory algorithmic decision-making. We need strong protections to ensure algorithms do not discriminate against protected groups, such as by failing to share key opportunities equally, by discriminatorily exposing vulnerable communities to risky products, or through persistent surveillance.

The part that I think it going to upset the big social media companies the most is the bit about Section 230. Investopedia describes it as: “a provision of federal law that protects internet web hosts and users from legal liability for online information provided by third parties. In addition, the law protects web hosts from liability for voluntarily and in good faith editing or restricting access to objectionable material, even if the material is constitutionally protected.”

It is unclear to me if President Biden is interested in having Congress make legislation of the “six principals” – or if he will sign it. What I’m certain of is that this is likely going to make a whole lot of people talk about Section 230 on social media.

TikTok Launches “Elections Center” To Combat Misinformation

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TikTok announced its midterms Election Center will go live in the app in the U.S. starting August 17, 2022, where it will be available to users in more than 40 languages, including English and Spanish, TechCrunch reported.

According to TechCrunch, the new feature will allow TikTok users to access state-by-state election information, including details on how to register to vote, how to vote by mail, how to find your polling place and more, provided by TikTok partner NASS (the National Association of Secretaries of State).

TikTok also newly partnered with Ballotpedia to allow users to see who’s on their ballot, and is working with various assistance programs – including the Center for Democracy in Deaf America (for deaf voters), the Federal Voting Assistance Program (overseas voting), the Campus Vote Project (students) and Restore Your Vote (people with past convictions) – to provide content for specific groups. The AP will continue to provide the latest election results in the Elections Center.

TikTok posted a Safety post titled: “Our commitment to election integrity”. It was written by Eric Han, Head of US Safety. From the post:

At TikTok, we take our responsibility to protect the integrity of our platform – particularly around elections – with the utmost seriousness. We’re proud to be a place that brings people together over creative and entertaining content, and we work hard to keep harmful misinformation and other violations of our policies off our platform. As the US midterm elections continue, we’re sharing more on the work we’re doing to protect our community during this time.

Here are some things TikTok says it will do:

Promoting digital literacy skills and education. TikTok says its in-app center will feature videos that encourage our community to think critically about content they see online, as well as information about voting in the election.

Users will be directed away from TikTok for any action that requires a user to share information, such as registering to vote. Users will be directed way from TikTok onto the website for the state or relevant non-profit in order to carry out that process. TikTok will not have access to any of that off-platform data or activity.

TikTok will also add labels to content identified as being related to the 2022 midterm elections as well as content belonging to governments, politicians, and political parties in the US. These labels will allow viewers to click through to TikTok’s center and get information about the elections in their state.

TikTok will provide access on popular elections hashtags, like #elections2022 and #midtermelections, so that anyone searching for that content will be able to easily access the center. Users can also use TikTok’s tools to automatically filter our videos with words or hashtags they don’t want to see in their For You or Following feeds.

It appears that TikTok is actually going to put some effort into preventing its site from becoming a quagmire of political misinformation. TikTok appears to have done its homework and connected with reliable sources of political information. My hope is that these efforts will work. Unfortunately, it is not unheard of for users of a social media site to get angry whenever something is put in place that prevents them from easily spreading election misinformation.

Snapchat Adds Summer Drops for Snapchat+ Subscribers

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Snapchat announced new drops for summer. Starting August 15, 2022, Snapchat+ subscribers can access even more exclusive features as part of your subscription.

The features include:

Priority Story Replies: Your replies will be more visible to Snap Stars.

Post View Emoji: Pick an emoji you want friends to see after they view your Snaps. It’s a signature way to sign-off your Snaps.

New Bitmoji Backgrounds: Give your Bitmoji background more flair with special backgrounds like gleaming gold and a beach paradise.

New App Icons: Change up your home screen Snapchat app icon with new designs.

According to Snapchat’s internal data, as of August 8, 2022, in just over six weeks since they launched Snapchat+, they are thrilled to share there are over 1 million paying subscribers.

Snapchat+ costs $3.99/month. Snapchatters can enable Snatchat+ anytime by visiting their Profile. Snapchat says it will continue to drop more features in the coming months.

Obviously, Snapchat is pointing all of this out in an effort to convince more people to purchase Snapchat+. Those who don’t choose to pay for it will not receive the exclusive monthly drops. To me, it sounds as though Snapchat might be attempting to get non-Snapchat+ users to experience FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out).

Snapchat+ is now available in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, India, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Bahrain, Egypt, Israel, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Netherlands, Switzerland, Ireland, Belgium, Finland and Australia.

TechCrunch reported that Sensor Tower stated that Snap already registered $7.3 million in in-app revenue within 30 days of Snapchat+ launch – with the paid tier estimated to contribute more than $5 million of that sum. The analytics firm said that while the $3.99 monthly plan was a top choice, many folks also opted to get six-month or 12-month subscriptions priced at $21.99 and $39.99 respectively.

Variety reported additional features in Snapchat+ that include:

  • Ghost Trails on the map: to see where your friends who share their location with you have been in the past 24 hours
  • Best Friends Forever: pin your No. 1 BFF
  • 
Story rewatch indicator
  • Custom app icons/themes
  • A Snapchat+ badge
  • Friend solar system: See a “Best Friends” badge on someone’s Friendship Profile, which means you’re one of each other’s eight best friends.
  • “Friends” badge: Which means you’re one of their eight closest friends, but they’re not one of yours
  • Ability to access Snapchat messaging functions on the web.

The “eight closest friends” feature makes me think of the “Top 8” feature that was on MySpace (when it was new). Back then, it was entirely possible for people to get mad at you they discovered that they were not in your “Top 8”.

Social Media Companies Killed A California Bill To Protect Kids

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California lawmakers killed a bill Thursday that would have allowed government lawyers to sue social-media companies for features that allegedly harm children by causing them to become addicted, The Wall Street Journal reported.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the measure would have given the attorney general, local district attorneys and city attorneys in the biggest California cities authority to try to hold social-media companies liable in court for features that knew or should have known could addict minors. Among those targeted could have been Facebook and Instagram parent Meta Platforms, Inc., Snapchat parent Snap Inc., and TikTok, owned by Chinese company ByteDance Ltd.

In June of 2022, Meta (parent company of Facebook and Instagram) was facing eight lawsuits filed in courthouses across the US that allege that excessive exposure to platforms including Facebook and Instagram has led to attempted or actual suicides, eating disorders and sleeplessness, among other issues. More specifically, the lawsuits claim that the company built algorithms into its platforms that lure young people into destructive behavior.

The Wall Street Journal also reported that the bill died in the appropriations committee of the California state senate through a process known as the suspense file, in which lawmakers can halt the progress of dozens or even hundreds of potentially controversial bills without a public vote, based on their possible fiscal impact.

The death of the bill comes after social media companies worked aggressively to stop the bill, arguing that it would lead to hundreds of millions of dollars in liability and potentially prompt them to abandon the youth market nationwide. Meta, Twitter Inc., and Snap all had individually lobbied against the measure according to state lobbying disclosures.

This doesn’t mean that a similar bill cannot be passed by the federal government. Politico reported earlier this month that the Commerce Committee advanced the floor considerations for two bills: It approved the Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act on a voice vote and the Kids Online Safety Act by a unanimous 28-0.

According to Politico, The Kids Online Safety Act was co-sponsored by Richard Blumenthal (Democrat – Connecticut) and Marsha Blackburn (Republican – Tennessee). That bill, if passed, would require social media platforms to allow kids and their parents to opt out of content algorithms that have fed them harmful content and disable addictive product features.

The Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act was sponsored by Bill Cassidy (Republican – Louisiana) and Ed Markey (Democrat – Massachusetts). That bill, if passed, would extend existing privacy protections for preteens to children up to age 16 and bans ads from targeting them. It would also give kids and their parents the right to delete information that online platforms have about them.

Personally, I think that parents of children and teenagers who have allowed their kids to use social media should have complete control over preventing the social media companies from gathering data on their children. Huge social media companies need to find other ways of sustaining revenue that doesn’t involved mining underage people in the hopes of gaining money from ads.

WhatsApp Users Can Delete Messages Up To 2 Days After Sending It

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WhatsApp tweeted: “Rethinking your message? Now you’ll have a little over 2 days to delete your messages from your chats after you hit send.” At a glance, it looked as though some Twitter users were happy about this announcement while others were unsure what they thought about it.

9To5Mac reported that while iMessage is getting the option to “unsend” messages for the first time with iOS 16 beta, WhatsApp already provides a similar feature. However, the Meta (Facebook)-owned messaging app is now releasing an update that will let users delete messages up to two days after they were sent.

According to 9to5Mac, WhatsApp users will have 2 days and 12 hours to delete a message after sending it. Previously, this limit was only 1 hour, 8 minutes, and 16 seconds- that was specific. In order to delete a message sent in WhatsApp, all you need to do is tap and hold it for a few seconds, then tap the “Delete” button.

9to5Mac also stated that In the first beta versions of iOS 16, users had 15 minutes to unsend a message. Now with the latest betas, this limit has been reduced to only two minutes. WhatsApp and iMessage competitor Telegram lets users edit and delete messages without any limits.

The Verge provided more details. To start using the new WhatsApp feature right now, open up the WhatsApp group or individual chat where you sent the message(s). Make sure to tap and hold the content you want to get rid of, click “Delete,” and then select either “Delete for everyone” or “Delete for me.”

The Verge also reported in order to use the “Delete” options, you have to be updated to the most recent version of WhatsApp in order for this to work. And you won’t actually receive a notification if the message didn’t delete.

Overall, the best way to be comfortable on social media is to never post something that you wouldn’t want the world to see. Try and avoid saying mean things about a mutual friend who also uses WhatsApp. The thing you said could be passed around by one or more of your other WhatsApp friends.

You also shouldn’t post NSFW content, or details about whatever crime you want to commit (or have already committed) on any social media site. The first one might lead to embarrassment for yourself (and potentially others who saw it). The second one could potentially connect you to whatever crime you intended to do (or already did).

In short, be smart! Don’t post personal things on social media, especially in a public post.