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Utah becomes first state to enact a law limiting kids’ use of social media

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Utah becomes first state to enact a law limiting kids' use of social media

“We’re no longer willing to let social media companies continue to harm the mental health of our youth. Today we signed two key bills in our fight against social media companies into law.”
Source – Utah Gov. Spencer J. Cox

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox signed a pair of measures Thursday that requires parental consent before kids can access social media sites.

The two bills the Republican governor signed into law also prohibit kids under 18 from using social media between the hours of 10:30 p.m. and 6:30 a.m., require age verification for anyone who wants to use social media in the state, and seek to prevent tech companies from luring kids to their apps using addictive features.

The measures also require companies to give a parent or guardian access to their child’s social media accounts. Adults will also have to confirm their ages to use social media platforms or they’ll lose account access.

According to the Associated Press, the measures also open the door to lawsuits on behalf of children claiming social media harmed them. A number of tech companies are expected to sue before the laws take effect in March 2024.

“Youth rates of depression and other mental health issues are on the rise because of social media companies,” Cox said in a tweet Thursday. “As leaders and parents, we have a responsibility to protect our young people.”

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Tech giants like Facebook and Google have enjoyed unbridled growth for over a decade, amid concerns over user privacy, hate speech, misinformation, and harmful effects on teens’ mental health.

Lawmakers have made Big Tech attacks a rallying cry on the campaign trail and begun trying to rein them in once in office. Utah’s law was signed on the same day TikTok’s CEO testified before Congress about, among other things, the platform’s effects on teenagers’ mental health.

And while legislation has stalled on the federal level at reining in tech companies, Utah is not the only state stepping up to deal with the problem. Lawmakers in red states including Arkansas, Texas, Ohio, and Louisiana, and blue states including New Jersey are advancing similar proposals.

The flip side of the coin

Ari Cohn, a free speech lawyer for TechFreedom said last week that the then-bills “violate the First Amendment and threaten to fragment the Internet.”

He argued that the governor shouldn’t sign bills that force social media users to provide ID showing their age and, for minors, parental consent.

Jim Steyer, the CEO, and founder of Common Sense, a nonprofit advocacy group focusing on kids and technology, hailed the law aimed at reining in social media’s addictive features.

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But Steyer said the other bill Cox signed giving parents access to children’s social media posts would “deprive kids of the online privacy protections we advocate for, a violation of their First Amendment rights.

The law also requires age verification and parental consent for minors to create a social media account, which doesn’t get to the root of the problem, said Steyer. “Kids and teens will still be exposed to companies’ harmful data collection and design practices once they are on the platform.”

Tech industry lobbyists quickly decried the laws as unconstitutional, saying they infringe on people’s right to exercise the First Amendment online.

“Utah will soon require online services to collect sensitive information about teens and families, not only to verify ages but to verify parental relationships, like government-issued IDs and birth certificates, putting their private data at risk of breach,” said Nicole Saad Bembridge, an associate director at NetChoice, a tech lobby group.



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Kenya court orders suspension of mass layoff of Facebook moderators

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Meta said it intends to appeal the ruling

Meta said it intends to appeal the ruling – Copyright AFP/File Lionel BONAVENTURE

A Kenyan court on Friday ordered the suspension of the mass sacking of scores of content moderators by a subcontractor for Facebook’s parent company Meta and directed the social media giant to provide counselling to the employees. 

A total of 184 moderators employed in Nairobi by Sama, an outsourcing firm for Meta, filed a lawsuit in March, claiming their dismissal was “unlawful”.

In a 142-page ruling, labour court judge Byram Ongaya said Meta and Sama were “restrained from terminating the contracts” pending the determination of the lawsuit challenging the legality of the dismissal.

“An interim order is hereby issued that any contracts that were to lapse before the determination of the petition be extended” until the case is settled, the judge added. 

Meta — which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp — was also ordered to “provide proper medical, psychiatric and psychological care for the petitioners and other Facebook content moderators”.

The company told the court of its intention to appeal the ruling. 

The California-based tech behemoth has held that it has no official presence in the East African country and that the complainants are not employed by Meta. 

It is facing two other legal cases in Kenya.

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In 2022, a former South African employee of Sama, Daniel Motaung, filed a complaint in Kenya against Sama and Facebook claiming, among other things, poor working conditions and lack of mental health support.

The labour relations court in Nairobi declared in February it had the jurisdiction to try Motaung’s case. Meta has appealed the decision.

The social media giant is also facing another complaint in Kenya, where a local NGO and two Ethiopian citizens accused Meta of failing to act against online hate speech in Africa.

The complainants alleged this inaction resulted in the murder of a university professor in Ethiopia and called for the creation of a $1.6 billion fund to compensate the victims. 

AFP is involved in a partnership with Meta providing fact-checking services in Asia-Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, Latin America and Africa.

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Companies Using Twitter Tools to Keep Ads Away From Musk’s Tweets: NYT

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Companies Using Twitter Tools to Keep Ads Away From Musk's Tweets: NYT

While Elon Musk claims that “almost all advertisers have come back to Twitter,” some still don’t want anything to do with the company’s CEO.

The New York Times, citing four people familiar with Twitter’s advertising situation, reported that certain brands that have returned to advertising on the platform are using Twitter’s adjacency controls to keep their content clear of increasingly troubling content — including Musk’s own tweets.

Jason Kint, chief executive of Digital Content Next, told the Times that Twitter is “unpredictable and chaotic” adding that, “Advertisers want to run in an environment where they are comfortable and can send a signal about their brand.”

Announced in December 2022, just a few months after Musk took control of the company, adjacency controls aimed to enable advertisers to prevent their ads from appearing adjacent to Tweets that use keywords they’d like to avoid.

“Empowering brands to customize their campaigns to prevent their ads from appearing adjacent to unsuitable content is an important step towards increased ad relevance on Twitter,” said an undated December blog post written by Engineering Lead Nina Chen and Head of Brand Safety AJ Brown.

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Both Chen and Brown are no longer with the company. Neither immediately responded to Insider’s request for comment.

Insider previously reported that Brown attempted to counter the growing perception that Twitter wasn’t safe for brands with a later blog post about the company’s partnerships with adtech companies DoubleVerify and IAS, which were meant to help with brand safety. 

One individual at the company who seems unconcerned with brand safety is Musk himself.

He has deployed an array of bizarre tweets, from antisemitic conspiracy theories to anti-transgender content and anti-vaccine misinformation.

Citing a series of Musk tweets about financier George Soros, Ted Deutch, the chief executive of the American Jewish Committee, told the Times that “the lie Jews want to destroy civilization has led to the persecution of Jewish people for centuries.”

He added, “Musk should know better.”

Twitter responded to Insider’s request for comment with a poop emoji. 



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Snapchat Reaches 15 Million Monthly Active Users in Germany

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Snapchat Provides Posting Tips on How to Maximize Your Platform Presence

Snapchat has reported another growth milestone, with the app now reaching 15 million monthly active users in Germany.

The ephemeral messaging app, which reached 750 million total monthly actives in February, continues to steadily expand its global footprint, with EU users now making up around 25% of its total audience. The majority of Snapchatters now actually come from India, which reached 200 million monthly actives last month, while North America makes up around 190 million of its global audience.

Snapchat has been working to build its European audience, with the company also reporting 21 million monthly active users in the UK two weeks back. It’s not expanding in the region as fast as it is in India, which is rapidly rising with the rate of mobile adoption, but Snapchat is still growing, despite being a relatively smaller player in the global social media market.

At one stage, it seemed that Snap would be killed off entirely, after Instagram stole its mojo by copying Stories back in 2016. That led to a significant drop-off in Snap usage, but since then, the app has continued to double-down on its niche of being a more private connective app for friends, which has helped it maintain and maximize its growth momentum.

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And now it’s firming its footing in Europe, while Snap has also shared some trend notes on German app usage.

  • Although we are loved by Generation Z, almost 40% of Snapchatters in Germany are 25 years or older
  • In Germany, Snapchatters open the app an average of 30 times per day – to chat with friends and family, watch highlights of their favorite shows, or share moments from their lives
  • 75% use our augmented reality lenses daily to express themselves creatively, have fun, and even try on and buy clothes.

Most of these are fairly universal Snap trend notes, though it is interesting to note the aging user group, as Snap continues to investigate more ways to maintain relevance as its audience ages up.

That’s a key challenge, because while Snap is a valuable connector for teens, it hasn’t, historically, held the same appeal for older users, who end up focusing more of their time in other apps instead.

If Snap can capitalize on this element, that could be a valuable growth path, as it continues to expand its global network.

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