“Clear violation of the First Amendment”
Florida and Texas laws that regulate social media in other ways have been blocked by federal judges who found that the laws violate the companies’ First Amendment rights to moderate user-submitted content. Florida’s law would have made it illegal for large social media sites like Facebook and Twitter to ban politicians, while the Texas law tries to ban “censorship.” Tech industry groups won preliminary injunctions blocking both of them.
Democrats have a majority in the Minnesota House while Republicans have a majority in the state Senate. Commerce Finance and Policy Committee Chair Rep. Zack Stephenson (D-Coon Rapids) “was unimpressed by the argument that algorithms shouldn’t be barred because they are a vehicle companies use to send healthy, age-appropriate content. He compared it to saying you can’t ban cigarettes because it would prevent young people from the benefits of cigarette filters,” the article on the House website said.
“These companies are doing immense damage to our communities, to our children,” he said. “I am very determined to take some action before it is too late.”
NetChoice argued that the First Amendment case against the bill is strong, writing:
In Sorrell v. IMS, the Supreme Court ruled that information is speech and that a Vermont law could not prohibit the creation and dissemination of information including the selling of data to a database. Even more relevant here, multiple court cases have held that the distribution of speech, including by algorithms such as those used by search engines, are protected by the First Amendment. This proposal would result in the government restraining the distribution of speech by platforms and Minnesotans access to information. Thus, HF 3724 will be deemed by courts as a violation of the First Amendment.
Bill defines social media broadly
NetChoice further argued that the bill’s impact would go well beyond sites like Facebook and YouTube. On the book review site GoodReads, “young people would be unable to receive recommendations done by algorithms that guide them to books based on their previous interests and reviews by similar readers,” the group said.
The bill’s broad definition of social media could also prevent newspapers from “recommend[ing] further related news stories by algorithm to a student doing research if comments are attached,” NetChoice said. The bill defines “social media platform” as “an electronic medium, including a browser-based or application-based interactive computer service, telephone network, or data network, that allows users to create, share, and view user-created content.”
Privacy problem
The bill would force online platforms to “collect more information about users under 18” because “a company would have to know the age of the user and that they were located in Minnesota to then disable any algorithmic recommendations. In order to do so, information that might not otherwise be collected regarding age and location would be needed,” NetChoice said.
The Chamber of Progress, a lobby group for tech companies including the major social networks, also spoke out against the bill. Group CEO Adam Kovacevich said that “online platforms use algorithms to prioritize healthy content and deprioritize unhealthy content so the bill would make the situation worse for teenagers,” according to an article by The Center Square. “He said YouTube Kids uses algorithms and manual curation to surface content appropriate for children and Twitter’s algorithms to help prioritize[d] users find relevant content.”