A lobby group that represents major tech companies like TikTok, Snapchat, Meta etc is suing Ohio's Republican Attorney General Dave Yost for introducing a bill that mandates children to obtain parental consent before using social media apps

A new law, signed by Republican Governor Mike DeWine in July, is considered as a way to safeguard children’s mental health, citing concerns about the intentionally addictive nature of social media.

  • regul@lemm.ee
    1·
    10 months ago

    If you take it at face value, which you should really never do when conservatives are involved.

    By my estimation, this (and bills like it) are intended to do two things:

    1. Reduce younger people’s access to points of view outside of the US political mainstream. In particular, Republican politicians seem very convinced that TikTok is turning kids gay/trans/atheist/communist/etc.
    2. Allow for aggrieved conservatives to extract money via lawsuit from corporations Republican politicians view as hostile to them. Because laws like this will obviously be circumvented, and these laws are written such that the platform is liable in these cases, these laws open them up to potentially millions of lawsuits every time a teenager gets an Instagram account.