Social media giants say California’s “Protecting Our Kids from Social Media Addiction Act” blocks human editorial choices, but a federal judge raised the issue of AI in social media feeds.<\/p>\n
SAN JOSE, Calif. (CN) \u2014 A handful of tech giants fought on Wednesday to bar a California law they say violates their First Amendment rights by blocking minors from accessing personalized social media feeds.<\/p>\n
TikTok, Meta Platforms and Google, along with its subsidiary YouTube, claim<\/a> in a series of related federal civil cases that\u00a0Senate Bill 976<\/a>, known as the Protecting Our Kids from Social Media Addiction Act, unlawfully blocks the companies from making editorial judgments on what goes into its recommended and personalized feeds.<\/p>\n Arguing for a preliminary injunction, they say restricting recommended content \u2014 both the human decisions on what to put on their social media feeds and the algorithms that determine what users see when they scroll \u2014 regulates protected expression and imposes unconstitutional burdens on First Amendment-protected actions.<\/p>\n YouTube attorney Elizabeth Prelogar, a former solicitor general under the Biden administration, said the algorithms and decisions involved in recommending videos or organizing a 13-year-old\u2019s feed to reflect her most viewed content based on engagement is part and parcel to content moderation, and cannot be parsed.<\/p>\n \u201cHumans have a tight, close connection and link to how the outputs match up with the inputs and the system is functioning to match the editorial goals,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Prelogar said personalized feeds are especially important for minors to recommend new, interesting and age-appropriate content, and are how \u2014 through user signals, subject and viewership \u2014 the online platforms will know what to recommend based on if a user is a teenager or a child under 13 years-old.<\/p>\n But U.S. District Judge Edward Davila said he was concerned about artificial intelligence\u2019s role in creating the recommendations and ultimately curating feeds that may be inappropriate or harmful to minors.<\/p>\n Davila, a Barack Obama appointee, was curious at what point machines took over the curation of feeds from humans.<\/p>\n Prelogar pushed back on the narrative that engineers or other decision-makers stop having a touchpoint to the feeds at any point of the process, and that the \u201cblack box\u201d of the algorithm may make the feeds unpredictable, optimizing the personalization in a way that is unknown to the people that trained it.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is simply incorrect to say it is wholly inexplicable and beyond human comprehension,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n But California Deputy Attorney General Shiwon Choe argued the platforms\u2019 algorithms \u201cfill in the blank\u201d without human direction and without \u201cactually understanding the content or messages\u201d that are selected, aiming for increased engagement \u2014 and more viewership of ads and therefore more money for the platforms.<\/p>\n California contends the unknowability of algorithms\u2019 recommendations create harm. Choe gave an example of a minor girl going unconscious after choking herself because of a \u201cblackout challenge,\u201d a social media trend of filming a participant experiencing asphyxiation and sharing the content, based on recommended videos in her feed.<\/p>\n Choe said secondary harms of optimizing engagement through personalization, regardless of the content viewed, include sleep deprivation, decreased attention at school and other mental health effects.<\/p>\n The algorithm is just number crunching based on millions of datapoints, Choe said, and the humans aren\u2019t making the decisions on what is recommended in personalized feeds.<\/p>\n Meta attorney Mark Mosier and Prelogar said Davila should apply strict scrutiny to evaluate the balancing of harms between the law the restricting First Amendment protected speech rights and the harms created by teens and minors viewing social media feeds.<\/p>\n The online platforms argued a less restrictive alternative to the law was available, including modifications and parental controls that they hope California would advocate for, instead of blocking personalization.<\/p>\n Davila said he was looking forward to additional briefing and took the case under submission.<\/p>\n In their arguments, the social media giants relied heavily on the landmark 2024 Supreme Court ruling in Moody v. NetChoice**LLC, where the high court determined that online platforms content moderation decisions have First Amendments protections.<\/p>\n