Senator Josh Hawley Wants to Protect You From Yourself
Three
Bills to Fight the Scourge of Social Media: Two Pending, Part 1
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DALL-E:
Prompt: "landscape background in the style of edvard munch the scream"
Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) wants to save you from yourself. Specifically, save you from your addiction to Social Media. The 43 year-old Senator wants to restrict your time on Twitter and like platforms. To this end, the Missourian introduced, January 30, 2019, The Social Media Addiction Reduction Technology (SMART) Act. This act "would ban certain features that are designed to be addictive, would require choice parity for consent, and would give users the power to monitor their time spent on social media," according the Senator's Press Release.
The Bill would have drastically affected how all users of Internet platforms, like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram — just too name a few — use social media. As Vox.com described the measure's affects when the bill was introduced in 2019.
✓ Banning infinite scroll, auto
refill, and badges and awards users get for engagement, except for in
certain circumstances — such as music streaming or badges that
“substantially increase” access to new services or functions, like
giving a person access to a premium version of a product.
✓ Requiring social media
platforms to include “natural stopping points” for users, which would
basically end scrolling after a certain amount of content.
✓ Requiring platforms to make
it a neutral process for users to accept or deny consent terms — meaning
accept and decline boxes would have to look the same.
✓ Requiring social media
companies to make it easier for users to track the amount of time they
spend on their platforms.
✓
Automatically limiting the time users can spend on a platform across all
devices to 30 minutes a day. Users would be able change the limits, but
they would have to do so every month.
The bill, thankfully, died in Committee without one vote being taken.
source:
https://www.billtrack50.com/BillDetail/1136918
Well, the Social Media Big Tech Busting Senator is at it again. February 14, 2023, the Missourian introduced two bills concerning Social Media in the current Congress. The first bill is titled "Making Age Verification Technology Uniform, Robust, and Effective Act" or the "MATURE Act". (8pp pdf will open.) The purpose of the bill is, according to the Senator's Press Release:
The legislation, which is entitled the Making Age-Verification Technology Uniform, Robust, and Effective (MATURE) Act, would require social media companies to not allow a person to make an account unless the platform verifies that the user is at least 16 years old.
The bill proposes an age verification regime be implemented on Social Media websites to restrict minors under the age of 16 from being allowed access to their favorites platforms. According to the language in Hawley's bill, Section 2, details what the Senator thinks is a "large social media platform," and what should be done about them.
The term "large social media platform" means a social media
platform that-
(3) SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORM; LARGE SOCIAL (A) SOCIAL
MEDIA PLATFORM.-
(A) The term -"social media platform" means
any electronic medium, such as Facebook, Instagram, You Tube, or Twitter
( as such services existed in 2023), a live-chat system, or an
electronic dating service that-
(i) primarily serves as a medium for
users to interact with original content generated by other third-party
users of the medium;
(ii) enables users to create accounts or
profiles specific to the medium or to im-port profiles from another
medium; and
iii) enables 1 or more users to generate original
content that can be viewed by other third-party users of the medium.
(B) LARGE SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORM.-
(i) averages more than 1,000,000
unique users on a monthly basis; or
(ii) has more than 1,000,000 user accounts
Specifically excluded in the bill are:
(C) EXCLUSION.-The term "social media platform" shall not include a platform that only permits users to interact via a predetermined set of phrases, emoticons, or nonlinguistic symbols.
I tried to search on the phrase: "a platform that only permits users to
interact via a predetermined set of phrases, emoticons, or nonlinguistic
symbols." And I got back nothing that seemed remotely relevant.
The
bill requires ALL USERS of the major Social Media platforms to upload an
acceptable form of identification issued by a government body to
establish an account with any web platform that comes under the bill's
requirements. Section 5, paragragh 2, declares and details
this requirement:
GOVERNMENT-ISSUED IDENTIFICATION.- The term "government-issued
identification" means, with respect to an individual, a
government-issued document that demonstrates the individual's identity
and age, including-
(A) a passport or visa;
(B) a birth
certificate;
(C) a driver's license;
(D) an identification card
issued by a State or
(E) another document determined appropriate by
the Commission ..
So, in Josh Hawley's worldview, in order to exclaim the wonders of
Aunt Sally's Big Boss Banana Bread Loaf on
Twitter; or to share the recipe for Aunt
Sally's Big Boss Banana Bread Loaf on Facebook; or upload those
tantalizing photos of Aunt Sally's Big Boss
Banana Bread Loaf to Instagram, you will need to have a digital copy of
your driver's license handy and readily available to upload before any such
recipe sharing can be done. I don't know anyone who would do such
a thing. And Senator Hawley wants that to be the Law Of the Land.
Of course, there are equally
unworkable enforcement mechanisms. SEC. 4. ENFORCEMENT
details the bill's means of enforcement:
(1) IN GENERAL.-Any parent or guardian of an individual less
than 16 years of age to whom a social media account is provided in
violation of this Act may bring a civil action against the social media
company in an appropriate district court of the United States or a State
court of competent jurisdiction for-
(A) injunctive relief;
(B)
damages; and
(C) attorney's fees and costs.
In other words, if a parent cannot control his or her child's use of
Social Media, then that irresponsible parent can sue the media company for
the parent's inability to be a parent. Or, more perversely, if a
Mother decides that
Aunt Sally's Big Boss Banana Bread Loaf
would be a good candidate for the Girl Scouts Bake Sale, and therefore
instructs her daughter to go on Facebook and print the recipe for
Aunt Sally's Big Boss Banana Bread Loaf,
then what might be that Mom's liability, according to Senator Hawley?
Can Dad, who hates the bake sales and
Aunt Sally's Big Boss Banana Bread Loaf,
sue his spouse for such an infraction?
Section 4 further
outlines the arduous procedures the FTC will employ to conduct audits to ensure compliance.
Such pointless grandstanding efforts by showboating politicians
only serve to increase the public's cynicism about real problems
that exist in our ever more technology dependent society.
source AI Generated Image
https://deepai.org/ :
Prompt: Graphic image of
a child holding a smartphone in the style of edvard munch