Meta asks California lawmakers for shield from child harm penalties
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Social media giant Meta is pressuring California state lawmakers to protect them from pending legislation that would increase statutory penalties in child harm cases, according to two people familiar with the effort.
Meta lobbyists have approached Senate Judiciary Chairman Tom Umberg, a Santa Ana Democrat, with draft amendments that would create a path for social media companies to gain immunity from the legislation, people granted anonymity to discuss private negotiations told POLITICO. EU 2.
The bill from Assemblyman Josh Lowenthal, a Long Beach Democrat, threatens fines of up to $1 million per child for platforms found responsible for harming children through negligent product design. Umberg’s committee will hold a hearing on Tuesday.
Meta’s defense comes when confronted hundreds of cases accuses the company of not protecting the safety of children on its platforms. The proposal is the latest example of how the company is politically maneuvering at a time of pending product safety lawsuits and growing global efforts to remove strict safety guardrails for children on social media platforms.
The draft amendment would exempt social media platforms from increased penalties for cases that harm children if companies enable a set of default child safety settings. These settings include disabling autoplay, restricting geolocation data sharing, muting nightly notifications, preventing children from receiving direct messages from unknown adults, protecting minors’ profiles from public view, and preventing sexually explicit material from being shown to children.
The changes would also require companies to enable tools that allow parents to limit their children’s screen time, hide their children’s profiles from public view, monitor who their children interact with online, and report abuse if they want to be protected from liability.
If adopted by lawmakers, the changes could lead to reduced payouts in pending lawsuits in which parents and teens accuse Meta, Google, TikTok and Snap of designing platforms that harm teens, including addiction, depression and suicidality. Meta and Google were ordered to pay 6 million dollars in compensation Los Angeles jury finds companies liable In such a situation in March.
Spokespeople for Umberg and Meta also declined to comment on the changes.
Just last week, Reuters reported The company was lobbying Congress for legal immunity against child harm claims.
Meta employed a similar lobbying tactic when faced with another Lowenthal bill that was almost identical to AB 2 almost two years ago. Lowenthal withdrew that legislation after being asked to accept tech-friendly changes that weakened its coverage (language matching the changes Meta had requested, as detailed in an email seen by POLITICO at the time).
Tech industry trade groups TechNet and the Computer and Communications Industry Association, which both count Meta among their members, oppose Lowenthal’s bill, arguing it would violate the platforms’ First Amendment rights.
