Two Roads Converge to Arrive at a More Censored Internet
Mark Twain famously observed that, when the state wants to abrogate its citizens’ rights, an effective way to do so is under the pretext of “protecting children.”
“Censorship,” said Twain, “is telling a man he can’t have a steak just because a baby can’t chew it.”
More than 100 years later, Congress and attorneys general of 48 states and the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, American Samoa, and Northern Mariana Islands are pursuing the same goal by different routes: an internet where platforms must strip away anonymity by pretending to want to know who is a minor. Whatever Americans think of that goal, the infrastructure deserves scrutiny.
Using Litigation
The first path to this objective started with a settlement. Meta Platforms, Inc. (the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and many other Big Tech platforms) agreed on August 26 to pay states up to $17.1 billion, to limit 13-to-17-year-olds to two hours a day on social media, and to use “enhanced age-assurance measures” for new and existing users. Within a year, Meta must apply an age-assurance method to each user in the participating states, replacing self-reported birthdates. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) reads the terms this way: Accounts that haven’t completed age verification after 14 days are treated as teens regardless of stated age, and existing users who decline would likely be treated the same.
The agreement caps how often teens are misclassified as adults, but according to the EFF, it sets no ceiling on adults wrongly flagged as minors, offering only an appeal. By mis-categorizing adults as teenagers on the internet, what they are in effect doing is turning Americans of legal majority into fractional citizens.
(The concept of “fractional citizenship” exists among legal scholars. Though minors are nominal U.S. citizens, they don’t have full citizenship rights such as voting, signing contracts, and drinking alcohol.)
The ruse is designed to spread. Roughly 30 percent of Meta’s payment depends on whether TikTok and YouTube adopt similar guidelines, which, as the EFF observes, gives the states a financial incentive to press those companies to follow suit.
KIDS Legislation
A second path to more internet censorship resides in legislation. On June 29, the House passed the Kids Internet and Digital Safety (KIDS) Act, 267-117. The EFF warns that its rules apply whenever a website or app “knows or should have known” a user is a minor, a negligence-style standard that pushes platforms to check ages instead of risking liability. The group also cautions that every age-check method requires handing over sensitive information linking offline identity to online activity, and age-verification providers have already suffered breaches.
The bill’s future is uncertain. Authors of the bill’s Senate counterpart object that the House version dropped the “duty of care” provision, the part that would legally require platforms to “exercise reasonable care” to prevent harms to minors. In the words of Connecticut Democrat and Senate bill co-author Richard Blumenthal, the House version is “dead in the Senate.”
The House version had also scaled back another controversial feature: federal preemption. The original House package would have preempted all state child-safety laws, which alarmed Democrats. The final version was scaled back: It sets a federal floor, and states are still free to pass stronger (but not weaker) laws.
A separate track is still open, though. The White House has reportedly told groups that a Senate package could include the House’s App Store Accountability Act and language preempting some state laws. The settlement points in the same direction, since Meta pledges to consider age signals from Apple’s and Google’s operating systems and app stores.
Users Must Surrender Anonymity
The new law and the parallel legal ruling with Meta are designed to be paired. One route runs through Congress and the other through litigation, and both make the same demand: Prove your age by proving your identity, or accept restrictions. A settlement negotiated by attorneys general can accomplish what a legislature might not vote for, and once the checkpoint exists, its data is a target. For constitutionalists, the question is not whether to protect children. It is who holds the identity layer, who can subpoena it, and whether adults must surrender anonymity or be reduced to fractional citizens.
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