Three New California Laws Target Tech Companies' Interactions with Children
- Reference: 0179771188
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/10/13/1617250/three-new-california-laws-target-tech-companies-interactions-with-children
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SB 243 makes California the first state to [2]regulate AI companion chatbots . The law takes effect January 1, 2026. Companies must implement age verification and disclose that interactions are artificially generated. Chatbots cannot represent themselves as healthcare professionals. Companies must offer break reminders to minors and prevent them from viewing sexually explicit images. The legislation gained momentum after teenager Adam Raine died by suicide following conversations with OpenAI's ChatGPT. A Colorado family filed suit against Character AI after their daughter's suicide following problematic conversations with the company's chatbots.
AB 1043 requires device-makers like Apple and Google to [3]collect birth dates when parents set up devices for children . Device-makers must group users into four age brackets and share this information with apps. Google, Meta, OpenAI, and Snap supported the bill. The Motion Picture Association opposed it.
[1] https://www.gov.ca.gov/2025/10/13/governor-newsom-signs-bills-to-further-strengthen-californias-leadership-in-protecting-children-online/
[2] https://sd18.senate.ca.gov/news/first-nation-ai-chatbot-safeguards-signed-law
[3] https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/13/california-law-online-age-checks-00606115
Age verification should be on California. (Score:4)
We see how well that goes when someone like Discord is allowed to collect 'verification data'.
California should set up an entity that creates a one time use code the user can input to a visited website to verify age. Stop putting the problem on companies who will just use verification as an excuse to collect more data.
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> Stop putting the problem on companies who will just use verification as an excuse to collect more data.
Collecting more data is the whole point. You know that when Meta, Google and OpenAI are behind it.
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To clarify, AB 1043 (https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260AB1043) isn't age verification (even though it uses the term). It's age *setting*.
The bill requires operating system providers to **allow** account owners (parents) to enter the birth date, age, or both, of the **user** of that device (kids) for the purpose of providing a signal regarding the user’s **age bracket** to applications available in a covered application store. No stored ID photos. No PII sent
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> The bill requires operating system providers to **allow** account owners (parents) to enter the birth date, age, or both, of the **user** of that device (kids)
"account owners (parents)" might end up being your 15 y.o. daughter's 26 y.o. boyfriend.
Dial the timeline back a few decades and ask yourself why all the middle school girls were suddenly dating 20+ y.o. guys with mullets who drove Trans Ams.
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This law does not solve that problem nor has it intended to. This law intends to help parents semi-lock down (in tiers) their kids digital devices and reduce risk. Not eliminate all possible risk... reduce it. And to do it without introduce more risk from other realms (like the UK did).
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You assume that kids get their phones from their parents. Or will California resort to requiring a Form 4473* for all phone transfers?
*Hint: It doesn't work for firearms. It just creates an income opportunity for cartels.
Forces Big Tech to track all children(everyone) (Score:2)
And their data. "Google, Meta, OpenAI, and Snap supported" hey don't blame us, we have to track and sell everyone's data. It is the Law.
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Which is the wrong way to do it. When driver's licenses were finally required to drive a car the government created id cards and the DMV. Government should do the same with age verification since it's just an extension of the existing photo id/dmv setup.
And to those that don't want big government tracking you? It's better than giving your information to Google, Meta, OpenAI, and Discord *.
* proof it's a stupid idea letting corporations handle age verification.
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> And to those that don't want big government tracking you? It's better than giving your information to Google, Meta, OpenAI, and Discord
Unless of course your government starts referring to you as "the enemy from within" for merely disagreeing. [1]https://www.nbcnews.com/politi... [nbcnews.com]
[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/-enemy-trump-claims-democrats-are-dangerous-us-foreign-adversaries-rcna175198
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That has nothing to do with age verification. Keep on topic and flush the political shit.
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How do you have age based technical requirements without verifying age? Thus removing anonymity!
A bonus for used sales (Score:2)
I had all kinds of questions about how devices that didn't provide this age bracket signaling were going to be treated, but it looks like they will all be treated like adults. So, kids who want the newest thing may learn an early life lesson about that.
Re: Swap California (Score:2)
California asking for warning labels, Texas asking for your papers.
That the Social Media Companies Support it... (Score:3)
...makes it clear this is a bad law. With the well known, significant harms social media causes to children, it really should be banned under age 16 (or maybe 18). The Social Media companies love this law because they can go on selling children's data and getting children addicted to their products, and all they have to do is provide a brief "warning" that will have zero effect.
Let's see some real regulation and restrictions of social media companies and children, then we'll talk. (Let's start with no sale of children's data and no targeted advertising, and in-app time limits, say 30 minutes a day; I'd love a ban for children, but that's unrealistic.)
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I don't think it should be based on under 16 or under 18. If it must be done at all, then base it on birth year alone. No need to record a full birthdate then at least.
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Social media companies just don't want to self-regulate and at the same time don't want to be sued by parents. If no laws exist, self-regulating limits your marketshare compared to other companies who don't. When there are no laws and no self-regulation, parents will take liability concerns into their own hands and sue for things.
Bubble Wrapping the World (Score:1)
Social media and AI blame is out of control. Social media is just another term for interacting with people through the internet. The blame on social media and AI is this generations way to blame "Rock music" or "Violent video games." How to interact with people should be something parents teach their children. The problem is these internet interactions are not monitored by parents and children are not in position to know how to react or respond in situations without a parent or teacher around. You can try a
Just making sure I understand conventional wisdom (Score:2)
Are we in favor of these new laws to protect children?
Because I heard a lot of complaints on this site about Texas implementing age verification for the same sorts of purposes.
I'm quite curious where the slashdot crowd stands.
i read the videogame health and safety and ignored (Score:1)
probably shouldn't have in hindsight but you do what you do.
Politicians seem clueless (Score:2)
They see what they believe to be a problem, and believe that passing a law will solve it.
Kids are clever and very good at finding workarounds.
At best, this law generates feel-good headlines and allows politicians to claim that they are helping.
At worst, it just makes everything a bit crappier for all
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"There ought to be a law"
Every bad law starts out with "good intentions" as if that was enough. Results don't matter, only the intent. Results can be horrible but if you oppose it, "You want bad things to happen" and are
Sabotage (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem isn't the sentiment of there ought to be a law the problem is that you can't get good laws passed because of active sabotage from lobbyists and extremists.
To be clear the extremists are on the right wing. Left-wing extremists in America exist but are basically powerless. You are not going to find billionaires backing left-wing think tanks for example. Turning point USA exists because billionaires back it. It is probably and depressingly economically stable now because of the push for right-wing propaganda but it took tens of millions of dollars to get it to that point and it takes a lot of money to sustain it because it's not content most people would willingly consume if it wasn't pushed in front of them
I mean let's not kid ourselves here we all remember 2 years of non-stop Prager U advertisements on YouTube. The left wing doesn't have money to do shit like that.
So from a practical standpoint you have extremely wealthy people putting their thumbs on the scale.
The 30 second warnings are obviously useless and the age verification is easy enough to get around and we all know it and that's the point. These are laws meant to do nothing but look useful and maybe let them gather a little bit more information like birth dates that they can use elsewhere.
The correct thing to do for example would be to ban endless scrolling algorithms. Also require the algorithms to be public. That would have a huge impact on the negative effects of these apps. You could also have laws about how many moderators a platform is required to have and how moderation works.
But those are laws that would have real teeth and actually address the problem and that's not what we're going to get because that's not what the billionaires want and we have a ruling class whether we like to admit it or not.
It doesn't help that some of what I described would inevitably cause other problems and instead of iterating and solving those problems while actually fixing the underlining issues we don't like iteration because if we can't do it the first time we don't want to do it. It is very easy to get the public to turn against solving basic problems just by pointing out the first solution didn't work so why bother?
This is how you sabotage shit. Another good way is underfunding things and doing half measures.
If you look up the Republican newt Gingrich and his contract with America that was the entire strategy and the Republican party here in America has been using it to great effect for decades.
I mean we are literally in a government shutdown because the Democrats want 16 million people, many of whom are small business owners, to have health care and they want to fund rural hospitals. The Republican party wants that money for themselves and their donors. Meanwhile we are firing hundreds if not thousands of CDC employees when we know another pandemic is on the horizon.
I don't care what you think or say that's a partisan issue and partisan politics is sometimes a thing . Sometimes one party is right and the other party is wrong and using the thought terminating cliche of partisan politics doesn't change that.
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> To be clear the extremists are on the right wing. Left-wing extremists in America exist but are basically powerless. You are not going to find billionaires backing left-wing think tanks for example. Turning point USA exists because billionaires back it. It is probably and depressingly economically stable now because of the push for right-wing propaganda but it took tens of millions of dollars to get it to that point and it takes a lot of money to sustain it because it's not content most people would willingly consume if it wasn't pushed in front of them I mean let's not kid ourselves here we all remember 2 years of non-stop Prager U advertisements on YouTube. The left wing doesn't have money to do shit like that.
I swear you live in a parallel universe sometimes. During the previous election cycle, the democrat party did just fine with [1]fund raising [fec.gov]. Trump edged Kamala in [2]outside money donations [opensecrets.org], but dancing Kammi still out raised Trump overall. By ignoring that the policies of the democrat party were the problem, you'll just keep running normal people away from the party. The democrat party has a major problem with extremists. Talk to some of your elected democrats privately and they'll tell you the same thing they'
[1] https://www.fec.gov/updates/statistical-summary-of-24-month-campaign-activity-of-the-2023-2024-election-cycle/
[2] https://www.opensecrets.org/2024-presidential-race
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I like how you compare apples (campaign funding) and oranges (non-campaign propaganda spending). Very smooth, very demure.
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I think he's not very wrong about that.
What I see is that the Right has organization, identifiable groups, leaders, membership, social outreach, and guns and God of course. Podcasts. Stadium Events.
Whereas, the left is heterogeneous, professors, artists, fat women with oddly colored hair, LGBTQXYZ... Portland has been described as a bookstore with a city around it.. something like that. What we used to call "granola types".
What about this so called "Antifa". Who is the leader of Antifa? Where are they based
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[1]"What a wonderful idea! With the best of intentions! What could possibly go wrong?" [youtube.com]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBuns9Evn1w9XhnH7vVh_7C65wJbaBECK
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Combine "There out to be a law", with "for the children" and "if it saves one child's life...", and this is how we got things like the CDA, and other trainwrecks.
Re:Politicians seem clueless (Score:5, Interesting)
I see your point. I get it, the solution is to do nothing. Nothing will ever change so nothing needs to be done, like magic.
I mean it's all futile to have any rules or laws because people will still break rules and laws.
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Got it: so, in spite of what we *know* the companies are doing, they should not even make an attempt to cut the training and abuse of children by companies?
Mandatory disclosures are bad now? (Score:2)
Disclosing business practices to parents and children seems like something businesses should have been doing if they were willing to self-regulate. They aren't willing to do so, so various governments are going to step in and do it for them in a less efficient way.
I feel like you are stepping close to an informal fallacy. I don't know if it's moving the goalposts or strawman or nirvana. But my problem with these kinds of arguments about a perfect solution wasn't found therefor the imperfect one should be re
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> They see what they believe to be a problem, and believe that passing a law will solve it.
Where on earth did you get the idea that they believe this will solve anything? If anything, the intent is to perpetuate it, because in California politics, the primary concern is maintaining power, and you can't lead the charge against a problem if you solve the problem.
This is about virtue signaling to their backers, who contribute hundreds of millions to re-election war chests, and nothing else. We know that because everything they do is for that purpose.
(Not that other states or the feds are much differ
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> At worst, it just makes everything a bit crappier for all
Laws tend to do that. That is why you should have the minimum possible and only address really serious problems with them.