Bill would prohibit teenagers from creating an account, and is now headed to the state’s Republican-controlled senate
Florida lawmakers advanced a bill on Wednesday that would prohibit social media platforms from allowing young teens to have an account while requiring everyone else to verify their age.
The measure prohibits anyone under 16 from creating a new social media account and requires platforms to delete existing accounts held by minors who are younger than 16. It also would require social media companies to delete any personal information from the accounts and for the platforms to use a “nongovernmental, independent, third-party not affiliated with the social media platform” to verify users’ age.
The bill passed the Florida house with a bipartisan 106-13 vote and now heads to the Republican-controlled senate.
It just sounds like they don’t want kids to be able to talk to each other about how fucked their state and their educational system is becoming.
Ding Ding Ding!
That’s exactly it, pre Internet it was easy for them to keep small town kids indoctrinated as a conservative because they could thoroughly control the flow of information
Post Internet it’s simply not feasible without crazy ass laws like this, the second a kid gets online/on social media they see right through the conservative bullshit. It’s not 100% ofc, but the majority yes and they’re seeing it play out with gen z right now and that’s what they’re scared of
100%.
Hahahaha the internet has practically become like, 4 websites. Three of which are social media platforms. What the fuck are they supposed to do?
Ideally, touch grass.
Law’s never gonna work tho. What are they gonna do? Start IDing social media users? I bet all the conspiracy theory wackjob MAGA Qanon types down there will just love that.
Firearms not Facebook!
So “plausible deniability for groomers” ?
If the kids can lie about their age they will just lie about their age.
Freedom!
It’s so weird how the party of family values and limited government consistently aim to impose restrictions on parents.
I’m not opposed to kids being restricted from social media (I might go as far as fully supporting it), but that’s the job of the parent, not Florida.
“These dopamine hits [from social media] are so addictive, it’s like a digital fentanyl,” Fiona McFarland, a Republican state lawmaker who cosponsored the legislation, said on the house floor on Wednesday, according to Politico. “And even the most plugged-in parent or attuned teen has a hard time shutting the door against these addictive features.”
You said it yourself… kids AND parents are both susceptible to the addiction. Are you going to ban social media for adults, legislators, grandmas? Trump lives in Florida. Please, can you ban him too??
Your logic doesn’t hold up, we already restrict some addictive things only to adults, the big two being nicotine and alcohol
So happy to not have florida tweens calling me woke on lemmy anymore
Bahahahahaha ahhh what a bunch of degenerate overreaching fuckheads
How they think this is gonna go: “Haha, now that we got all those youngins off the ticktoks they have to listen to us and believe what we tell them”
How it’s really gonna go: “JUNIOR GET THE FUCK IN HERE! I need to see the new Trump meme from aunt Karen, why the hell does my facebook have ‘blocked in the state of Florida’ all over it? What’d you do to it?”
They’re not wrong about the addiction to dopamine hits. However, this is such a big waste of time and money on such a poor way to handle this.
It also would require social media … platforms to use a “nongovernmental, independent, third-party not affiliated with the social media platform” to verify users’ age.
Quick, let’s go check which State Legislators own shares in third-party age verification firms…
I’d be shocked if there were such a firm without any official API from the states or feds to provide that verification
It also would require social media companies to delete any personal information from the accounts and for the platforms to use a “nongovernmental, independent, third-party not affiliated with the social media platform” to verify users’ age.
How to get every Florida adult’s identity stolen through a data leak.
this isn’t to “protect children” and you should know better by now. it’s a censorship bill because they want to keep kids ignorant and brainwashed. we should all oppose this
