Utah’s Governor Live Streams Signing Of Unconstitutional Social Media Bill On All The Social Media Platforms He Hates
from the utah-gets-it-wrong-again dept
On Thursday, Utah’s governor Spencer Cox officially signed into law two bills that seek to “protect the children” on the internet. He did with a signing ceremony that he chose to stream on nearly every social media platform, despite his assertions that those platforms are problematic.
Yes, yes, watch live on the platforms that your children shouldn’t use, lest they learn that their governor eagerly supports blatantly unconstitutional bills that suppress the free speech rights of children, destroy their privacy, and put them at risk… all while claiming he’s doing this to “protect them.”
The decision to sign the bills is not a surprise. We talked about the bills earlier this year, noting just how obviously unconstitutional they are, and how much damage they’d do to the internet.
The bills (SB 152 and HB 311) do a few different things, each of which is problematic in its own special way:
- Bans anyone under 18 from using social media between 10:30pm and 6:30am.
- Requires age verification for anyone using social media while simultaneously prohibiting data collection and advertising on any “minor’s” account.
- Requires social media companies to wave a magic wand and make sure no kids get “addicted” with addiction broadly defined to include having a preoccupation with a site that causes “emotional” harms.
- Requires parental consent for anyone under the age of 18 to even have a social media account.
- Requires social media accounts to give parents access to their kids accounts.
Leaving aside the fun of banning data collection while requiring age verification (which requires data collection), the bill is just pure 100% nanny state nonsense.
Children have their own 1st Amendment rights, which this bill ignores. It assumes that teenagers have a good relationship with their parents. Hell, it assumes that parents have any relationship with their kids, and makes no provisions for how to handle cases where parents are not around, have different names, are divorced, etc.
Also, the lack of data collection combined with the requirement to prevent addiction creates a uniquely ridiculous scenario in which these companies have to make sure they don’t provide features and information that might lead to “addiction,” but can’t monitor what’s happening on those accounts, because it might violate the data collection restrictions.
As far as I can tell, the bill both requires social media companies to hide dangerous or problematic content from children, and blocks their ability to do so.
Because Utah’s politicians have no clue what they’re doing.
Meanwhile, Governor Cox seems almost gleeful about just how unconstitutional his bill is. After 1st Amendment/free speech lawyer Ari Cohn laid out the many Constitutional problems with the bill, Cox responded with a Twitter fight, by saying he looked forward to seeing Cohn in court.
Perhaps Utah’s legislature should be banning itself from social media, given how badly they misunderstand basically everything about it. They could use that time to study up on the 1st Amendment, because they need to. Badly.
Anyway, in a de facto admission that these laws are half-baked at best, they don’t go into effect until March of 2024, a full year, as they seem to recognize that to avoid getting completely pantsed in court, they might need to amend them. But they are going to get pantsed in court, because I can almost guarantee there will be constitutional challenges to these bills before long.
Filed Under: 1st amendment, age verification, children, parental permission, parents, privacy, protect the children, social media, social media bans, spencer cox, utah
Comments on “Utah’s Governor Live Streams Signing Of Unconstitutional Social Media Bill On All The Social Media Platforms He Hates”
Of course, the courts will dismiss the challenges to the legislation on the grounds of standing, because the legislation hasn’t yet gone into effect so nobody has been harmed.
So what we’ll see is that the tech companies will do … nothing, and wait for Utah to make the first move. They have the resources to stand up in court. In the meantime, smaller players might be forced either to fold or geoblock the state (because the law, as you correctly observe, is impossible to comply with as drafted). Which is a win for the big players (FAANG) – it knocks out the competition.
Anyone have pointers to open-source geoblocking, so that I can make sure that nobody in Utah sees my website?
Re: how about
A reason to raise taxes in the state?
All this going to court, and the court has to Pay someone.
Why not themselves?
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Not so sure. In fighting other state regulations, the argument has been that websites have to put in place many resources to get set up to abide by it, so the costs begin immediately. I guess we’ll see.
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I plan to go another route: if someone in Utah sees my website and Utah takes me to court, I’ll just ignore that. I never plan to go to Utah, and they have no jurisdiction outside the state. If they try to involve outside state actors, I’ll just point out the unconstitutionality of the law I broke and be on my way.
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Platforms outside the United States do not have to obey this.
If they are not in the America, they do not have to obey Utah laws.
Yandex, and TikTok are two examples of thowse. Yandex only has to obey Russian laws and TikTok only has to obey Chinese laws.
In short, I could platforms moving out of the United States to avoid this law.
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A better idea is to pull up stakes and move you, and your site, outside of the United States. US laws have no effect outside of the USA.
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“They have the resources to stand up in court. In the meantime, smaller players might be forced either to fold or geoblock the state”
And geoblocking can be cirrumvented using a VPN.
Using a VPN for this purpose does not break any laws anywhere in the United States.
Contary to what some people think, there is no law in the United States that makes it a crime for the end user to circumvent geoblocking with a VPN or proxy,
Re: Laws And Effect
That’s not entirely true. Where it can be shown that a law likely will create a constitutional harm, even before coming into effect a plaintiff can sue to enjoin that effect. And the proof is in the pudding, as witness the 11th circuit and their handling of De-Insane-tis’ attempts at purging 1A from Florida.
And on another tack, as pointed out, banning the collection of data whilst verifying age, that’s known as a ‘strained construction’. Courts are known to toss the whole thing back in the lap of the legislatures and tell them to make their own decision as to which way they want it, strongly implying that said legislature can’t have it both ways.
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It will be bypoassed with either VPM or Tor.
And conrary to what some people think, there is no law on the books that makes it a crime to circumvent filters or geoblocking.
Whern I bypass the filters are Mickey D’s to to tune in to the ball game, when I am there, I am breaking any laws circumventing their firewall
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Age verification doesn't work.
Breaks a lot of things in trying, so stipulated.
But I really want you to look at your coverage of this vs similar moves by Newsom in CA. Oh I know you covered it and said it was a bad idea, fine credit for that. But did you use the same sorta language? Count the pejorative words. Did you mock Newsom or CA legislators for having press releases on the internet as being somehow hypocritical, merely because CA intended to limit access for minors? Did you call the CA initiative wildly unconstitutional and the legislators dumb poo poo heads? Or did you mostly just raise much pedestrian concerns about practical concerns that made it unworkable?
Pretend you’re not you when you read the two sets of coverage. Flip the political affiliations in your head.
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Go for it. Knock yourself out:
https://www.techdirt.com/2022/09/15/gavin-newsom-fucks-over-the-open-internet-signs-disastrously-stupid-age-appropriate-design-code/
I’d argue that I was even more pejorative there.
Re: Re:
At least he provides the entertainment watching him get his shit handed to him over and over and over again.
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No, I really don’t think you were. And I was not talking about just one article, either.
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Ultimately, that’s a matter of opinion. How you would make that determination is fairly subjective. Are you going to explain why you don’t believe that?
Okay, then explain which ones you were talking about and how they prove your claim.
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Everyone can read the two articles and see for themselves.
As for other articles, I can’t see how they’re any less harsh.
I mean, there’s this one, which is pretty pointed:
https://www.techdirt.com/2022/08/24/dear-california-law-makers-how-the-hell-can-i-comply-with-your-new-age-appropriate-design-code/
And I’m participating in the lawsuit to stop the law.
https://www.techdirt.com/2023/02/22/i-explained-to-a-court-how-californias-kids-code-is-both-impossible-to-comply-with-an-attack-on-our-expression/
But, go on, tell me how I’m not critical of Newsom when I called literally said he’s “fucking over the open internet.”
People can read, Matthew. They can tell you’re full of shit.
Re: Re: Re:2
More entertainment watching Matty getting his shit handed to him!!
🍿🍿🍿
Re: Re: Re:3
Screw just handing his shit to him, I recommend that we throw it at him, full force!
Re: Re: Re:4
A “rebuttal” is the term used for when Mike hands Matt’s ass back to him, as here.
Re: Re: Re:5
I see what you did there, and I’m jealous that I didn’t think of it first.
Re: Re: Re:2
Mike, Mike, you know it’s not serious criticism unless you called Newsom a ‘dumb*tch’, and used ‘fuck’ every second word.
That’s how you really prove you’re antagonistic. Screw pointed rhetoric. Just use all the slurs and swears!
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Go ahead and check for yourself. Seems like he was at least as insulting in that article as he was here. Let us know what you find.
I’m unaware of either having streamed themselves regarding such bills on the targeted platforms to begin with, which is what happened with the signing of this bill in Utah. Do you have any specific examples in mind?
Yes, he did. Again, read for yourself.
I don’t think he used those words for legislators in either state, but he was equally clear that he didn’t think highly of either.
No, he did both.
Again, I have no idea why you’re asking these questions when you could easily find out the answers yourself.
I did, and I don’t see any material differences in the coverage of the two that would make his coverage of the CA bills the tamer between them.
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Re: Re:
“Coverage” is not just one article, Mr. Bari Weiss. I don’t think it WAS as insulting, actually, (I’ll admit it was more insulting than the other articles I was thinking of), but anyway that’s when I stopped reading your reply. Go home. I have nothing for you but Brietbart and Infowars links.
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Sure, but one article is a part of the coverage.
I still wonder why you keep sending me stuff meant for Bari Weiss.
(Because you don’t get sarcasm or jokes, this is a joke, btw.)
Okay… but others could reasonably disagree.
Okay, and what articles are you thinking of? We’re not mind-readers.
I mean, do what you want, but that seems kinda lazy to me. I at least try to read the entirety of responses to me even if I only address part of them. But hey, that’s just my opinion.
Why should I? It’s not like it’s ever gotten you to shut up when someone tells you to do so.
That’s… odd, given the context. Why would you even have those to begin with?
This may be or may not be the place to list this but if anyone that challenges the state needs a resident for that, I’m happy to put my name on it. This is pure bullshit.
‘Merica where we demand corporations have more of a duty of care for children than their parents.
Utah residents can just use a VPN or proxy to hide the fact they are in Utah
Is this the same state that thought it could tell people on airplanes flying over, not landing in, Utah that they were not allowed to consume alcohol while within Utah airspace.
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Can you cite a source for that? Not pushing back; just couldn’t find anything on it.
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I did not find a source either was a long time ago I read that. Probably was just some politician mouthing off
Mike, this seems like a weak attempt to manufacture controversy. Bad as the bill is, I doubt this person claimed social media only caused problems. We could just as well write something like “governor proposes to regulate the very banks in which their government deposits tax rebates”. There’s nothing wrong in principle with pointing out problems with a thing, and proposing to regulate it, while still using it.
(What do children have to do with it anyway? Political stuff like this is pretty much the definition of adult content, especially when children are denied voting rights.)
The problem is that everything being proposed here is totally fucking braindead. Which means the governer is a frickin’ idiot; or knows it’s bullshit and just feels like grandstanding; or is executing the earliest stages of some devious and brilliant long-term plan to make the existing platforms so unpalatable—especially to children—that people end up creating some kind of anonymous social-media protocol that no company or government could hope to monitor or control. (These, of course, are listed in order from probable to extremely unlikely.)
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They certainly imply as much.
No, because that involves something that is necessary to use. Governor Cox does not regularly live stream his signing ceremonies. The fact that he is doing so here, across multiple social media platforms seems worth highlighting.
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Can you quote something to support this? In my view, announcing and livestreaming via these platforms would seem to rule that out.
Not really; checks can be cashed at places other than banks, and apparently 7.7% of American adults don’t have bank accounts at all. But I’m sure there are many examples of regulators using the things they’re regulating, where those things are not “necessary”. There’s nothing wrong with that. They neither have to wait till things are perfect to begin using them, nor pretend they’re perfect after they start.
I see your point now. But if you meant to highlight this as unusual, I didn’t see and still don’t see anything in the post to suggest the governor is not normally using social media, or not in this way. Did I miss something, or are we just supposed to know which governors do what on social media?
California: We just signed the most restrictive social media law in the nation. Nobody will outdo this.
Utah: Hold my non-alcoholic, non-caffeinated beverage.
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You can still get Coca Cola in Utah.
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And coffee, and tea, and beer, and wine, and liquor… still a good joke though.
Time place and manner
are the three restrictions governments are usually able to apply to First Amendment speech. These bills seem to specifically encompass (the bad juju of age verification aside because my knowledge is more limited in that area) those sorts of restrictions. I could see them failing when taken as a whole. If there’s severability, we could have some provisions upheld individually.
These bills do not prevent any words or subjects in particular-that is, they are content-neutral. That’s a point in Utah’s favor. Further, if Utah is able to to explain a compelling state interest (and the standard might even be lower depending on the 1A analysis) it might get away with these laws as applied solely to minors. The data, especially as to female children, is at least concerning and could be judged compelling enough and the laws not more restrictive than necessary in the situation for the state to apply these rules to minors.
The addiction nonsense, to dispense with quickly, seems void for vagueness at the very least. Also, that section doesn’t deal with speech issues, so I don’t really care to opine further.
The curfew seems pretty safe. I can’t see a problem there (again, the thorniness of age verification aside). Meatspace minor curfews are perfectly fine, speech or no speech, and I can’t see why it wouldn’t work similarly online. The kids can say whatever they want, just not for eight hours daily. Not a good thing at all, but probably constitutional.
The minors in question may not be having their free speech rights violated merely by being prevented from speaking on a particular platform, in this case social media. The manner children might prefer mustn’t necessarily be provided to them. Further, they still have voices and can still say whatever they want, just not in some particular “places”. This one is shakier than the curfew because the use of specific platforms might be seen as a vital interest to be protected, but also might be upheld if judicially analogized to “manner” or “place”.
Parental consent is probably fine. This section won’t be decided on the speech aspect, I’d suggest. It’s the usage of an interactive service that collects personal data, and I can’t see much of a constitutional argument against requiring parental consent for any such service regardless of its specific online niche.
Requiring parental access? I don’t know much of anything about what the state of the law is there, so I won’t hazard a firm opinion. If the new law requires that the platforms make such access possible, as opposed to the minors disclosing, maybe that’s fine. Not sure.
Anyway, as an armchair 1A observer, I could easily see a portion of these laws standing. I’d really much prefer that the parents decide (or not) these issues for their kids and leave the government out of it, but just because something is “bad” doesn’t make it unconstitutional.
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Why are you supporting bad mormons that Sexually abuse kids there?
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Alright, for the parental consent and access part, let’s look at some very possible situations.
Re: Re:
Not only that but sex abuse victims can’t speak about bad mormans from the churches in utah
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No, it isn’t. Imaging you’re a minor signing up for an account on some random website:
Enter your email:
toadalog@gmail.comEnter your age:
17Sorry, you must get a parent’s or guardian’s permission to continue. Enter their email address:
toadalog+whatever@gmail.com(yes, it is the same email address even though it doesn’t look like it)/The minor gets the permission email, clicks the link and then their account is active./
/Also, now that a third party—the parent—has access to the account, it is that much less secure. If the parent picks a shitty password, doesn’t enable 2FA, or whatever other antipatterns, the account is more likely to be cracked./
Questions:
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The obvious answer is that schools will no longer be permitted to require students to access the internet, period. Even if a parent has already signed up his/her child at one or more websites, the school won’t be allowed to use that to do an end run around the intent of the new law.
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Letting people “say mean things” and “avoid repressive copyright” has consequences.
If tech won’t regulate itself, the government will.
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“I heard somebody say these things and I really liked the bit about consequences, and even though I have no idea what they really mean, I repeat them whenever I get a chance.”
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That interpretation is completely bogus. The reality is that “Letting people use a tool to ‘say mean things'” is protected under the First Amendment. Ergo, no consequences can accrue.
IOW, I don’t need to be ‘let’ (allowed) to say mean things, 1A already says I can blurt out whatever I want, regardless of how others may feel about it. If you don’t believe me, just ask Devin Nunes about how that works.
Re: Re: WTF?
What the fuck does copyright have to do with the subject at hand?
No amount is problematic when you're not paying it
Amazing how confident someone can be when they know that no-matter what happens it’s not their money that’s going to be spent defending their (contradictory, blatantly unconstitutional) actions.
They fail to list a required timezone. This goes a little funny if you have kids and travel, since you don’t stop being a resident even if you’re not currently physically in the state.
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Heck, I wonder if the idiot Utah politicians have a clue what a VPN is and how using one gets around any geo based law they might try to enact.
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You got that right.
And do note there is no law on the books anywhere in the USA that makes using a VPN for that purpose a criminal offense
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Yet
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If the VPN dues not keep logs and only accepts Bitcoin the user cannot be traced
That ould be why one Chinese pirate streaming site with almost every cable channel known to man,7000 if them,only accepts Bitcoin
Ij Britain, Japan,Italy, and the uae, where viewingbtge cuannejs is illegal, users cannot be tracked down if there is no credit card or bank info is there.
In most countries,including the USA,it is not illegal for the end user to use services like thisine,but in handful of countries it is
Re: Re: Re:3
VPNs comply with warrants which can be obtained for address that connect to a vpn, to see what the vpn connected the address to.
Re: Re: Re:4
Another way to do it is to use Tor. The way Tor works makes you untracabole/
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What if the VPN does not keep any logs?
The cannot sunpeona what is not there.
And if the provider is not in the United States, the USA has no jurisdiction over them.
And besides, providers could go Bitcon only, leaning no credit card information likw one “pirate” streaming site in China does not, so that users in the UAE, UK, Japan, and Italy cannot be indentified.
Re: Re: Re:4
Nope!
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They fail to list a required timezone.
Shit, I wanna hear how they plan to enforce it.
There’s got to be at least a handful of fucked up cops salivating over the possibility that there’ll be no-knock warrants involved.
(No /s tag because we all know there’s more truth to this than we’d like to admit)
I could see sites having to do age verification for the entire world.
Geoblocking is not 100 perecent accurate. On some networks, evryything, no matter where it is, flows through one gateway.
When AOL dialup was around, everything went through the company gateway in Virginia, so if AOL were still around, someone could use them, and AOL would not know they were in Utah.
Also, some public Wifi some places may go through a gateway.
The free wifi at Firestone tire shops all runs through the the company gateway, which I believe is in Indiana.
Someone who wanted to avoid the Utah law, could site outside a Firestone Complete Car Care outlet, and use the Wifi there to access social media.
This would not violate the CFAA, contary to what some youTube videos might think, as a felony conivctin requires that you have used an illegally obtained password AND have intended to do damage fo the network, and sitting outside Firestone and using their wifi does not meet requirement.
This is why I think sites might have to implement this worldwide to solve this problem.
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Are you a Christian nutjob?
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You might want to tell that to Aaron Schwartz…. oh, wait, you can’t – he’s dead. Look him up, if you’re not up to speed on that one.
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You know age id is very ineffective and i say Christian nutjob cus majority that supports age id is Christian extremists and wants to censor sexual abuses that happens in churches
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Or censor anything they don’t like
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Bypassing geoblocking doea not break any laws
Re: Re: Re: Geoblocking and VPNs
I wasn’t talking about bypassing geo-blocking, especially with a VPN, I was speaking to the fact that Aaron Schwartz committed suicide because a chest-thumping neanderthal of a prosecutor was greatly abusing the CFAA. Aaron’s acts were nowhere near the threshold you mention, but the prosecutor didn’t let that stop her from hounding him with a threat of 35 years in prison.
But since you’re spouting off a bit…. here, try this on for size:
https://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/security/are-vpns-legal/
Sure, those aren’t America, but we’re now contemplating the possibilities of having to globally geo-block, not just here in the USA.
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Big Porn called.
They tried. They failed.
If Big Porn can’t even do it, what makes you think the world can?
Pffft. Please! It’s only nanny statism when it’s (what in America passes for) the Left doing it.
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“It’s only nanny statism when it’s (what in America passes for) the Left doing it.”
Nannies are everywhere, no two are alike.
– for example:
Lefty nannies might yell at you when you’re being a bigot.
Righty nannies might yell at you when you’re being human.
What about wards of the state?
Who has to be punished if wards of the state break this law?
The state right?
[6] here
Fair enough, I didn’t know some VPNs had done away with logging.
About jurisdiction mentioned in another reply you’d also want to look at treaties and other agreements. It has been a long time since I read up on it so I can’t remember the names of agreements or who agreed to what with who.