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Tech Companies Sue Arkansas Over Parental Consent Law for Social Media Access
After Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed a law that requires teens and kids to get parental consent before signing up for social media, that law is now in the crosshairs of a tech trade group called NetChoice, which filed a lawsuit against it.
According to a press release from NetChoice, the group filed the lawsuit yesterday, while the law was signed by Sanders in April and does not go into effect until September 1, 2023. NetChoice is a self-described nonprofit group of tech companies that represents the likes of TikTok, Airbnb, Google, Amazon, PayPal, and Meta.
The law — known as SB 396 or the Social Media Safety Act — would require social media platforms to verify the age of all users, and any users under the age of 18 would require parental consent before creating an account.
NetChoice argues that SB 396 is a threat to the privacy and online safety of Arkansans, especially children and teenagers since the law would require social media platforms to use a third party to run age verification checks.
Social Media Apps Will Have to Shield Children From Dangerous Stunts
Social media firms will be ordered to protect children from encountering dangerous stunts and challenges on their platforms under changes to the online safety bill. The legislation will explicitly refer to content that “encourages, promotes or provides instructions for a challenge or stunt highly likely to result in serious injury” as the type of material that under-18s should be protected from.
TikTok has been criticized for content featuring dares such as the blackout challenge, which encouraged users to choke themselves until they passed out, and a challenge that encouraged users to climb precarious milk crate stacks.
The bill will also require social media companies to proactively prevent children from seeing the highest-risk forms of content, such as material encouraging suicide and self-harm. Tech firms could be required to use age-checking measures to prevent under-18s from seeing such material.
Once the law comes into force breaches will carry a punishment of a fine of £18m or up to 10% of global turnover. In the most extreme cases, communications watchdog Ofcom will be able to block platforms.
Arizona Is Running Out of Water. Big Tech Data Centers Are Partly to Blame.
It surprised me when I heard Google was planning a massive data center in Mesa, just east of Phoenix. The deal guaranteed Google 1 million gallons of water a day to cool the facility, and up to 4 million gallons a day if it hit project milestones. (That’s a lot of water. Arizona residents each use about 146 gallons a day). I was an editor at Bloomberg at the time and we wrote about it here.
Since then, the Phoenix metro area has been dubbed “THE data center destination” by locals. Microsoft opened one in 2021 in Arizona. Meta is expanding its facility in Mesa.
These huge data centers use incredible amounts of water because the computing gear inside gets really hot when it processes all those YouTube videos, Zoom meetings, and mobile app sessions. Water is often used to cool the equipment.
Google has started disclosing data on this. In 2021, all the company’s data centers consumed 4.34 billion gallons of water. That’s so much, the company tried to put it all in context by comparing itself to that bastion of environmental stewardship: Golf courses. Google noted that 4.34 billion gallons are equivalent to the annual water footprint of 29 golf courses in the southwest U.S.
This brings us back to Arizona. The state is running out of water. A few weeks ago, the governor unveiled a plan to limit construction in areas around Phoenix after finding that the groundwater can’t support the current pace of building.
TikTok Banned in U.S.: Investors Eye Meta Platforms
The wheels of government move slowly, yet surely. Now lawmakers are taking dead aim at Chinese businesses, and their actions will have far-reaching implications for investors.
A bipartisan bill introduced last week will ban TikTok in the United States. U.S. lawmakers believe the wildly popular social media platform is an instrument of the Chinese government.
Meta Platforms has been kicked around Washington since the 2016 Presidential election when the Facebook parent company was blamed for misinformation campaigns. Meta has also steadily been losing market and mindshare to TikTok. That is likely to change, soon.
When lawmakers impede TikTok, Meta is the logical winner. With 3 billion unique members across its Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp social platforms, the Menlo Park, Calif.-based company has the scale and software dexterity to move quickly with new TikTok-like offerings.
Where Central Banks Have Issued Digital Currencies
Central bank digital currencies are controlled by governments like traditional currencies are and therefore represent the polar opposite of the idea of decentralized, self-sovereign bitcoins. As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz reports, several small nations and — since October 2021, Nigeria — have launched central bank digital currencies, and several more populous countries are getting ready to jump aboard a different crypto hype train.
The European Union today is proposing a legal framework for its planned launch of the digital euro. According to the Central Bank Digital Currency Tracker by Atlantic Council, concrete plans to launch a CBDC were also recorded in Canada, Brazil and the United States, among others.
Countries which are already in a CBDC pilot phase include Russia, Thailand, India, South Korea, Sweden, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, according to the source. It is unclear, however, which of these programs could see a proper launch next.
Ubiquitous digital payments and tight government surveillance have led to a plethora of payment data already available to Chinese administrators. This knowledge on how people spend money will only grow with the implementation of the digital Yuan, even though the country’s central bank has said it will limit traceability and create what it calls “controllable anonymity.”
Online Hate and Harassment Continues to Rise
More than half of Americans say they have experienced hate or harassment online, according to a new survey from the Anti-Defamation League, with a dramatic rise in incidents over the last 12 months, especially among teens.
Why it matters: Experts say what happens online is causing significant real-world harm and also keeping large numbers of people from fully participating in an increasingly digital society.
Between the lines: Some platforms are safer than others. More than half of those who reported being harassed said they were targeted on Facebook. Meanwhile, the number of people reporting harassment on Twitter and Reddit was up significantly from the prior year.
What they’re saying: “Online hate and harassment isn’t just ‘hurtful speech,’” Yael Eisenstat, head of the ADL’s Center for Technology and Society, said in a statement to Axios. “It pushes people out of the conversation, impinging on their own freedom of expression, causing emotional distress, reputational and economic harm.”
Texas Supreme Court Says Gov. Greg Abbott’s COVID Ban on Local Mask Rules Was Lawful
Settling a heated pandemic-era debate between Gov. Greg Abbott and leaders of the state’s major urban areas, the Texas Supreme Court ruled Friday that the governor had the legal authority to forbid local officials from requiring residents to wear masks in order to slow the spread of COVID-19.
As a contagious form of the virus raged in summer 2021 and threatened to push hospitals to the brink of their capacity limits, several local leaders put in place their own orders mandating that residents wear masks in certain public settings like businesses and schools — in defiance of Abbott’s own emergency order banning such masking rules.
City and county officials balked at Abbott using his emergency powers to block public health measures intended to respond to the emergency. But the court ruled that state law gives Abbott the authority to do just that.
