in June 2024.<\/a> The new law tasked James\u2019 office with developing regulations for age verification systems to enforce its provisions.<\/p>\nThe regulations released Tuesday require large social media platforms to use third-party systems to document age. Government identification documents can be used, but aren\u2019t required, according to the regulations.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s still relatively easy to determine whether an Internet user is over 18, said Andy Lulham, chief operating officer of Verifymy, which offers age-verification services. His company does so by scanning someone\u2019s face or simply taking in their email address.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s got nothing to do with the email account or your emails,\u201d he explained. \u201cBut it can analyze where that email address was previously used. \u2026 So it could be compared on a database where there are mortgage providers or credit card companies or utility providers, and it can build an age profile or a minimum estimated age of the user.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trade groups representing social media companies lobbied against the measure. Tech:NYC President Julie Samuels said her group, which includes Facebook-parent Meta, is reviewing the new regulations.<\/p>\n
“We support the goal of protecting young New Yorkers online, but it is essential that key provisions of this law, including age verification requirements, actually work in practice and can achieve this goal without creating unintended consequences for New York families, consumers, and impacted companies,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The national group NetChoice \u2013 which has filed lawsuits against other state laws that restrict social media \u2013 said the state should prioritize helping law enforcement agencies that police child predators. NetChoice lawyers previously questioned whether the New York law\u2019s restrictions on curation amount to unconstitutional regulation of speech.<\/p>\n
“New York doesn’t need to replace parents,” said Amy Bos, a NetChoice spokesperson. “Similar laws targeting algorithms and content moderation in the name of keeping kids \u2018safe’ have already been overturned or are being challenged in other states, because they’re categorically unconstitutional.\u201d<\/p>\n
James said she was confident the law could withstand a legal challenge.<\/p>\n
Several teenagers spoke in the governor\u2019s office about navigating adolescence in the age of social media. They said they supported the restrictions in the new law, which could be overridden with the explicit consent of parents.<\/p>\n
James Steyer, president of the advocacy group Common Sense Media, praised the release of the new rules.<\/p>\n
\u201cNew York is setting a national standard for protecting kids online by focusing on curbing addictive social media feeds and limiting late-night notifications that disrupt children\u2019s sleep and well-being,\u201d he said. \u201cThere is more work to do to protect kids from the risks of AI and social media, but this law and its final rules are groundbreaking.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New Yorkers will need to prove they\u2019re adults before continuing to scroll through their social media feeds starting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":308083,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,9,24,63],"class_list":["post-308082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=308082"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308082\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/308083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}