Are Big Tech and Big Tech Making Big Tech Profitable? The Online Abuse of Minority Groups is a Challenge for Kids and the LGBTIA Community
For the past ten years, the biggest companies in the tech industry have effectively been allowed to mark their own homework. They’ve protected their power through extensive lobbying while hiding behind the infamous tech industry adage, “Move fast and break things.”
” Big Tech has exploited kids and parents’ pain so much that they have become profitable,” Blumenthal said during the hearing. We must double down on the Kids Online Safety Act.
In 2023, legislation aimed at tackling some of these harms will come into effect in the UK, but it won’t go far enough. Some people in this area are concerned about the effectiveness of the online safety bill. The think tank Demos emphasizes that the bill doesn’t specifically name minoritized groups—such as women and the LGBTQIA community—even though these communities tend to be disproportionately affected by online abuse.
According to the two research firms, over one million people suffered threatening online behavior over the course of a year. Twenty-three percent of those surveyed were members of the LGBTQIA community, and 25 percent of those surveyed said that they had experienced racist abuse online.
Biden’s State of the Union Address on the Child Online Privacy and Privacy Problem: An Open, Open, Non-Comercial Perspective
The president attempted to rally bipartisan support to finally resolve a number of long-standing privacy, safety, and competition issues facing the tech industry. Biden urged Congress to pass new rules to protect user data and boost competition for tech companies.
Biden said a lot during his first State of the Union address last year. The child online safety problem has been bothering Congress and the Biden administration for years, and reached a new height in 2021, after Facebook whistle baller Francis Haugen leaked internal company documents detailing the mental health risks children face when using Meta platforms. Haugen attended the president’s last address as a guest of First Lady Jill Biden, a testament to the administration’s desire for stricter online protections.
Biden said that he would not apologize for investing to make America strong. “Investing in American innovation, in industries that will define the future, and that China’s government is intent on dominating.”
If you talk to US House Republicans, President Joe Biden delivered an offensive, hyperpartisan diatribe last evening. Hell, if you just listened to the State of the Union address, you’d have heard the commander-in-chief heckled as a “liar,” blamed for the opioid epidemic—“It’s your fault!”—or heard him met with a thunderous and sustained Republican “BOOOOOOOOOOO!”
Most of the Republicans who control the gavels, televisions, thermostats, and magnetometers in the US House of Representatives set aside their rowdy ways when Biden spoke about Silicon Valley.
“We must finally hold social media companies accountable for the experiment they are running on our children for profit,” Biden said, as newly minted Speaker Kevin McCarthy, of California, and Vice President Kamala Harris rose to their feet in ovation. “And it’s time to pass bipartisan legislation to stop Big Tech from collecting personal data on kids and teenagers online, ban targeted advertising to children, and impose stricter limits on the personal data these companies collect on all of us.”
Lawmakers should pass a strong data privacy law instead of the current bill, said Evan Greer, director of Fight for the Future, which headed the coalition, adding that she sees the current bill as “authoritarian” and a step toward “mass online censorship.”
“You saw the people on both sides of the aisle stand up, so that’s a good sign,” says US senator Cory Booker, a New Jersey Democrat. “A lot of the data we’re seeing already, teenagers, preteens—it has a very, very negative impact on their self-esteem, their self-concept, and their well-being. I think he’s right to be alert to what’s going on in our nation.
“Oh yeah. Tina Smith is a Democrat from Minnesota and she says it is a big deal. I interpreted that to mean we don’t fully know the impact of social media on kids. The child psychologists and the experts that I talk to say there’s a lot of evidence that it’s so dangerous.”
The Kids Online Safety Act: Sens. Blumenthal and Blackburn, Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Conn.) Senate Bill
The bill that will hold tech companies accountable is something that will be passed this year.
Last year, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., introduced the Kids Online Safety Act, which made it out of committee with unanimous support, but didn’t clear the entire Senate.
Popular apps like Instagram and TikTok have outraged parents and advocacy groups for years, and lawmakers and regulators are feeling the heat to do something. They say that social media companies feed teens with content that leads to suicide, drug abuse, and eating disorders.
Emma Lembke talked about getting her first internet account when she was young on Tuesday. She spent five to six hours a day mindless scrolling and the constant screen time gave her depression, anxiety and caused her to bulimic.
Lembke’s story is representative of his generation and it should not be viewed in isolation. “As the first digital natives, we have the deepest understanding of the harms of social media through our lived experiences.”
They’d also have to create mechanisms to protect children from stalking, exploitation, addiction and falling into “rabbit holes of dangerous material.” Algorithms that use kids’ personal data for content recommendations would additionally need an off switch.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/14/1156905760/blumenthal-blackburn-kids-online-safety-senate-bill
How Do Big Tech Companies Protect Children’s Online Privacy? A Brief Letter to Schumer, Schumer & Blackburn at Tuesday’s Hearing
Trying to get companies to self-Regulate is like talking to a brick wall, according to Blackburn at Tuesday’s hearing.
“Our kids are dying from things they’re exposed to online, from suicide kits to sex traffickers,” she said. Children and teenagers who are suffering, because Big Tech refuses to protect them, need to be saved.
In November, a coalition of around 90 civil society groups sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., opposing the legislation. They claimed it could jeopardize the privacy of children and lead to more data collection. It would also put LGBTQ+ youth at risk because the bill could cut off access to sex education and resources that vulnerable teens can’t find elsewhere, they wrote.
According to OpenSecrets, no of the big tech companies attended Tuesday’s hearing, but they all have lobbyists working on this legislation.
As Congress debates passing a bill, California has tightened the rules on how tech is provided to children. The California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act prohibits data collection on children, and requires companies to put in place additional privacy controls. New Mexico and Maryland introduced similar bills earlier this month.