FTC Commissioners Rebecca Kelly Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya on Friday asked a federal court to expedite their reinstatement at the agency, arguing the law is clear that their firings were illegal.
Google was hit with a class-action complaint Monday alleging the company's education products secretly harvest mass amounts of student information and data without their or their parents’ knowledge or consent.
The FTC should investigate allegations that Meta violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) by knowingly allowing children to use its virtual reality platform without parental consent, Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Rep. Kathy Castor, D-Fla., said in a letter to Chairman Andrew Ferguson on Thursday.
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey (R) announced a rule requiring commercial pornographic websites to verify the age of users on both the website itself and on the device being used to access the site, for what he calls a “first-in-the-nation” standard to safeguard children. However, the Age Verification Providers Association (AVPA) said Thursday that the technology for this doesn't exist, while the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) raised privacy concerns.
Despite claims that age-assurance methods for those younger than 18 are insufficient and inaccurate, that's not the case, the Age Verification Providers Association (AVPA) said in a white paper Tuesday. Age verification methods are just as accurate for minors as they are for adults, the organization argued.
TikTok doubled down on a dismissal motion in a case against it that alleges the social media platform violated consumer protection and product-liability laws.
Assemblymember Josh Lowenthal (D) doesn’t believe tech industry opposition can stop his bill to set civil penalties for big social media platforms that breach their “responsibility of ordinary care and skill” to children under 18, he said at an Assembly Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday. Also, Lowenthal disagreed with concerns that AB-2, moving in the Assembly after a court blocked California’s age-appropriate design code (see 2503140063), could lead to more litigation.
In a lengthy hearing Tuesday in front of Vermont's House Commerce and Economic Committee, lawmakers weighed testimony from concerned parents, youth and other advocates of a kids code bill. However, the tech industry opposed the bill for privacy and First Amendment reasons.
The House Commerce Committee on Tuesday passed the Take It Down Act on a 49-1 vote. Democrats failed to attach the Kids Online Safety Act and language that would restore two fired Democratic commissioners at the FTC.
Two social media safety bills are advancing in the Arkansas legislature after a court recently blocked the state’s 2023 age-verification law. Meanwhile, as many states consider age-verification bills aimed at protecting kids’ privacy online (see 2503060022), a social media age-assurance bill passed Montana's House Friday.