The idea that only authorized government agencies would ever use backdoor channels for getting user data was always risky and flawed.
At EFF we’ve long noted that you cannot build a backdoor that only lets in good guys and not bad guys. Over the weekend, we saw another example of this: The Wall Street Journal reported on a major bre...
If we lose sight of that, we not only compound those difficulties, we jeopardize the future of those kids and the future of a democracy dependent on a robust 'marketplace of ideas.'
These issues are incredibly important to me on a personal & professional level. Not every kid or teen has a supportive family or community, but they all are just as entitled to constitutional protections as the rest of us. Legislatures are not empowered to cut off those rights.
It's also unconstitutional, "states cannot grant parents or guardians an “on/off switch” for their children’s First Amendment rights, nor can they make an end run around the First Amendment by allowing minors to exercise their rights only if their parent or guardian consents"
These laws disproportionately harm marginalized youth by blocking their access to supportive resources and communities. The parental consent requirement compounds this problem - putting vulnerable young people in unsuportive and abusive households at risk
Laws like Mississippi's HB 1126 that prevent minors for creating accounts on social media platforms without explicit parental consent violate minors' First Amendment rights by cutting off their access to the "vast democratic forums of the internet"
Minors don't shed their First Amendment rights at the gateway to the internet. That's what we told the Fifth Circuit in our amicus brief in Netchoice v Fitch progresschamber.org/wp-content/u...
also note Meta’s “Fairness Flow”ai.meta.com/blog/how-were-using-fairness-flow-to-help-build-ai-that-works-better-for-everyone/
also - whether the signals are demographic (about the user - people of your demographic like this) or based on the content being ranked (you liked this, other people who liked that also liked this)
this is maybe a sub-point but personalized ranking is different depending on whether users have input into how content is ranked, or if the the ranking is done instead based on non-explicit behavioral signals of user preference