What you see below is part one of a two parter about a terrible bill in California. It started out as a single post, but there was so much nonsense, I decided to break it up into two parts. Stay tuned for part two.
You may recall last year that California, in addition to the obviously unconstitutional Age Appropriate Design Code, also tried to pass a “social media addiction” bill. Thankfully, at the last minute, that bill was killed. But, this year, a version of it is back and it has tremendous momentum, and is likely to pass. And it’s embarrassing. California legislators are addicted to believing utter nonsense, debunked moral panic stories, making themselves into complete laughingstocks.
The bill, SB 680, builds on other problematic legislation from California and basically makes a mess of, well, everything. The short explanation of the bill is as follows:
This bill would prohibit a social media platform, as defined, from using a design, algorithm, or feature that the platform knows, or by the exercise of reasonable care should have known, causes child users, as defined, to do any of certain things, including experience addiction to the social media platform.
What the bill will actually do is enable it so that social media companies can be fined if any kid that uses them gets an eating disorder, inflicts harm (on themselves or others), or spends too much time on social media. That’s basically the law.
Now, the framers of the law will...
The lawsuit alleges the CCRB’s online database, 50-a.org, unfairly harms officers by listing serious accusations including sexual misconduct, racial profiling and making false official statements ...