Browser Engines Carved Out From California Opt-Out Preference Bill
Pleasing businesses, California lawmakers further scaled back a privacy bill requiring support for universal opt-out signals so it now covers only browsers. At a hearing Tuesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted 11-0 to advance AB-566 to the Appropriations Committee. In addition, the Judiciary Committee forwarded a bill that would require social media platforms to treat consumers deleting accounts as requests to delete their information under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). The panel also supported requiring warning labels on social media.
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The universal opt-out bill originally covered browsers and mobile operating systems, but last month, it was pared to “browsers and browser engines” prior to passing the Assembly (see 2506030035 and 2506060008). AB-566's sponsor, Assemblymember Josh Lowenthal (D), told the Senate Judiciary Committee at Tuesday's hearing that his legislation soon won’t cover browser engines, either.
“This year's bill includes changes that make it more palatable, including an amendment that I'm committed to making to remove the reference to browser engines in the bill,” said Lowenthal. An earlier version defined browser engines as “the software component of a web browser or web-enabled application that interprets and renders web content, including HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, transforming code into interactive visual output on a consumer’s device, including, but not limited to, Blink, Gecko, and WebKit.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) vetoed Lowenthal’s similar bill last year due to concerns that mobile OS companies like Apple and Google might struggle to support opt-out preference signals (see 2502130036). While a dozen states require businesses to honor universal opt-out signals, AB-566 would make California the first to require browsers to provide a way for consumers to send those signals. Some browsers already do, including Brave, DuckDuckGo and Mozilla Firefox, but more widely used browsers like Google Chrome don't.
Lowenthal’s promise to remove browser engines from the measure pleased the California Chamber of Commerce. “One of our long-standing concerns with this bill and its predecessor had to do with its application to mobile operating systems, as it raised practical questions with legal implications,” said Ronak Daylami, a policy advocate for the group, during her testimony at the hearing. “To that end, we were very pleased to see explicit references to mobile operating systems removed in the Assembly, but we were concerned to see browser and browser engines added back in. That undermined the clarity that was intended.”
“We are very much pleased and appreciate the author's statement that he is looking to remove those provisions moving forward,” Daylami added. “We will still likely be in opposition, but that is the vast majority of our existing position, and so we greatly appreciate that.”
The California Privacy Protection Agency sponsored and still supports AB-566, said Maureen Mahoney, its deputy director of policy and legislation, at the hearing. “We are concerned about consumer access to these signals, because the biggest browsers don't offer native support for them.”
In a blog post this week, Tom Kemp, the agency's executive director, suggested opt-out preference signals as one "simple and easy way" for consumers to limit tracking of their online activity. Installing a browser-based ad blocker is another way, he said.
Also at the meeting, the Judiciary Committee voted 13-0 to clear the Assembly-passed AB-656, which would require social media sites “to treat a user’s decision to delete an account while logged in to that account as a verified consumer request ... to delete [their] personal information under the CCPA." The Consumer Federation of California endorsed the bill.
“This is a way to make sure that there's a delete button that is clear in the settings, that there's two-factor authentication, that it prohibits dark patterns to dissuade people from canceling or deleting their account, and also uses deletion as a verification to delete data,” said AB-656's sponsor, Assemblymember Pilar Schiavo (D). The bill could go next to the floor.
Additionally, the committee voted 12-0 to clear another Assembly-passed bill requiring mental health warnings on social media platforms. AB-56 will go next to the Health Committee.