There are two key pieces of proposed legislation in the New York state Legislature that would protect children and adults online.
State Sen. Andrew Gounardes, D-Brooklyn, introduced the first in the nation legislation this week to prevent social media platforms from profiting off scams.
The proposed legislation is called the Stopping Abuse and Fraud Enabled Platforms Act, or the SAFE Platforms Act.
Its introduction comes as a new report from the Consumer Federation of America finds News Yorkers and Americans are paying at least $119 billion annually to online scams and crimes, with New York ranking fourth in the nation.
The report finds out of that $119 billion, the Empire State contributes $6.5 billion a year.
“Many of these online platforms, they know that this is happening on their platform and they are facilitating these scams and they’re doing absolutely nothing to stop them because they’re deriving ad revenue from these actors,” said Gounardes.
The senator’s Stop Online Predators Act was included in Gov. Kathy Hochul’s State of the State proposals to put a stop to the potential of online grooming that sometimes happens on social media and gaming platforms.
“So, the intent to the Stop Online Predators Act is really to extend privacy protections to some of the most popular online platforms, gaming platforms and social media platforms which have a documented history of some of these features being used to exploit children,” said Gounardes. “They groom them to befriend them and try to meet in public. Most notably, platforms like Fortnite and Roblox which have been documented to be a significant problem.”
Some of the key protections in the proposed legislation include age verification, private profiles for children and turning off chat functions by default for kids so an adult can’t privately message them.