Major tech, child safety reform bills face Senate vote | Wilnesh News

The Senate is set to hold a key vote on Thursday on major legislation to keep children safe online, the most sweeping regulation of the tech industry in more than a decade.

The package consists of the following parts two bills – Both have strong bipartisan support, and one already has 69 co-sponsors, surpassing the 60-vote threshold needed to advance in the Senate.

If the Senate approves the measure today, they could pass it early next week before leaving Washington in August.

Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass., said the measures taken by social media companies “are not enough.” He cited data from the Centers for Disease Control that said one in 10 teenage girls and one in five LGBTQ teens have attempted suicide.

“Whatever safeguards were put in place, they were clearly not working,” he told CNBC.

The package consists of two bills. One of them, called the Children and Youth Online Privacy Protection Act, would ban targeted advertising to children and teenagers. Companies will be prohibited from collecting personal information from users under 17 and may delete the data, and a new Youth Marketing and Privacy Division will be created at the FTC.

Another bill, known as the Children’s Online Safety Act, also imposes a “duty of care” on social media platforms to prevent their products from harming children, including exposing them to content that promotes drugs and alcohol, or aggravates, including dietary of mental health issues. Social media companies must automatically enable the strongest privacy settings for children.

While the second bill has received support from some major tech groups, including snapshot companyX and Microsoftwhich was opposed by NetChoice, a trade association whose members include Yuan, Google and Yahoo said the bill was so restrictive that it would be impossible for the company to implement it.

While the bill explicitly states that websites don’t need to verify the age of users, Carl Szabo, NetChoice vice president and general counsel, said the law would actually require websites to verify the age of everyone who uses them, and collect a lot of data in the process. data.

“Suddenly, the government is requiring the collection of massive amounts of data, which conflicts with several privacy laws we’re seeing at the state level,” he said.

While the bills are likely to pass the Senate, their fate is less certain in the House, where concerns about the bill’s breadth remain worrisome. But House Speaker Mike Johnson said in an interview that Americans need more power over what their children see online.

“We will look at the details of the specific legislation, but I suspect it will have a lot of support. Clearly we need to protect children in terms of online activities,” he said. “The internet is the Wild West and some of these reforms are long overdue.”