A privacy expert who spoke to WIRED described Rumble, Quora, and WeChat as unusual suspects but declined to speculate on the reasons for being included in the investigation. Josh Golin, executive director of the non-profit Fairplay, which advocates for digital safety for children, said concerns are not always clear-cut. Some advocacy groups are concerned about Pinterest, for example, until the case of a British teenager who died of self-harm after being exposed to sensitive content on the platform, he said. that social media and AI companies comply with our laws designed to protect children from exploitation and harm. a quarter of a century. That has left state legislatures and regulators to play a big role. Paxton’s investigation centers on compliance with Texas’ Safeguarding Children Online through Parental Empowerment Act, or SCOPE, which went into effect in September. This applies to any website or application that uses social media or chat functions and that registers users under the age of 18, so it is broader than the federal law, which only covers services for users under the age of 13. SCOPE requires services to request users. ‘ age and give parents or guardians control over their children’s account settings and user data. Companies are also prohibited from selling information collected about minors without parental permission. In October, Paxton sued TikTok for allegedly breaking the law by providing inadequate parental controls and disclosing data without consent. TikTok has denied the allegations. The investigation announced last month also referenced the Texas Data Privacy and Security Act, or TDPSA, which became effective in July and requires parental consent before processing data about users younger than 13. Paxton’s office has asked the companies under investigation to explain their compliance. against the SCOPE Act and TDPSA, according to a lawsuit obtained through a public records request. week, including the number of Texas minors who are considered users and have been prevented from registering inaccurate birth dates. Lists on which minors’ data are sold or shared should be turned on. Whether the company has responded to the request could not be learned. Tech company lobby groups are challenging the SCOPE Act’s constitutionality in court. In August, they scored an early and partial victory when a federal judge in Austin, Texas, ruled that a provision requiring companies to take steps to prevent minors from viewing self-harming and violent content was too vague. be a salve for tech companies. States including Maryland and New York are expected to adopt similar laws starting later this year, said Ariel Fox Johnson, an attorney and head of the Digital Smarts Law & Policy consultancy. And state attorneys general can pursue narrower cases under tried-and-true laws that prohibit deceptive business practices. “What we’re seeing is often information is being shared or sold or disclosed in a way that the family doesn’t want or understand,” Johnson said. “As more and more laws create strong requirements, it becomes more and more clear that not everyone is complying.”
