By Alana Chun and Meher Kaur
Forum Media
“People like you and me are all online and we are all targets for online harassment,” Lucy Dorosin, a lobbyist in the Privacy and Social Media Committee, said about the committee’s bill. The Privacy and Social Media Forum Committee is currently working on this bill to enhance online safety by implementing a two-step age verification system on all social media platforms based in California. Delegates in the Privacy and Social Media Committee have expressed concerns about online predators, such as older people pretending to be younger to gain the attention and trust of the youth. The bill aims both to promote transparency in users’ interactions and to prevent age misrepresentation online. This can be done by having users submit an image of a government document to prove their age while creating an account. If users refuse to verify their age, their profile will say “age not verified” to warn other users of a possible risk.
“This bill is for young people all over the world…we need to hold social media companies accountable for allowing things, such as grooming and predation on young people and I think this bill is the best way to do that,” said Dorosin. Her group has been working together since Camp Roberts to ensure that this bill reaches its fullest potential. When asked about the cost of the bill, she responded, “We think this is a good bill because it’s cost-effective… it’s entirely online based [and] the majority of the funds would be going towards support staff, which would be creating more jobs in the online community.” She believes that this bill is the best way to “help protect [young people] from online harassment, catfishing, and grooming.” Currently, there are no regulations about age verification to protect minors in the state of California. This bill hopes to change that.
While finalizing the bill, one question that arose was: How do we prevent companies from stealing and selling users’ information? The solution that was agreed upon was to ensure that the social media company responsible would pay a fine of 1% of their yearly taxes. For example, last year Meta paid $7 billion in taxes; if they were found selling users’ information they would be fined $70 million, or 1% of their annual taxes.
As Dorosin said, this bill aims to prevent “lifelong trauma [and] emotional damage and everything that comes with being sexually harassed.” If passed, this bill strives to add a layer of safety to social media platforms. Dorosin and her team hope to help prevent future cyber attacks on unknowing minors through this bill.
The bill will be debated on February 17th at 12 p.m.
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