Earlier this week, Utah became the latest state to pass a law claiming to “protect child influencers.” The bill, HB 322, was signed into law by Governor Spencer Cox. Throughout the week, Gov. Cox’s latest law was hailed as a success in the media.
Outlets ran stories about how this would curtail abuse and get justice for children appearing in online content. The only problem: the law doesn’t remotely protect child influencers. It gives abusive parents even more power over their children, and it makes it harder for journalists and commentators to call out wrongdoing in the family vlogging world. This law creates a terrifying and dangerous legal precedent to dismantle free speech protections.
“This bill is not going to solve a problem, and it may even lead to more exploitation,” said Maureen Flatley, a child exploitation and safety expert who has advised on child safety legislation and advocacy efforts since 1994.
Under the new law, any content creator who makes at least $150,000 a year must maintain a meticulous record of any minors who appear in their content. Those records include precisely how many minutes or seconds they appear on screen to track the moment that they become a “qualifying minor”.
Minors become a “qualifying minor” if they appear in 30% or more of a creator’s content. Once that happens, the creator must establish a trust for that child. A percentage of their earnings must be transferred into that trust to be held until the child reaches the age of 18. The content creator also must contact the parents of minors featured in their content to inform them that their child is featured.
The bill was written without any apparent industry input by a group of lawmakers with zero knowledge of the business models of family vloggers. Far from safeguarding minors, the law places substantial control and responsibility directly into the hands of potentially abusive parents. “It’s like the fox is guarding the hen house,” Flatley said.
Parents, which the whole law is meant to guard against, can exert even more control over a child’s online presence and monetization through this law. Not only does HB 322 give parents even more control over their children’s online presence and discourage young people from expressing themselves online, but it also has dire implications for free speech.
HB 322 sets a terrifying precedent by creating vague and burdensome record-keeping requirements. First amendment experts like Ari Cohen, lead counsel for Tech Policy at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), say it will undeniably lead to de facto censorship.
“The compliance burden dissuades [people from speaking],” Cohen told Passionfruit. Jessica Miers, visiting assistant professor of law at the University of Akron School of Law, seconded Cohen’s concerns, arguing creators may avoid including minors entirely in their content, even in socially important contexts, to dodge costly litigation.
The tracking burden alone creates chilling effects, she said, particularly for creators and journalists reporting on child abuse online. “We’re creating this elaborate set of legal obligations that are not narrowly tailored to specific things,” she said.
This leads to the law’s most pernicious effect, severely harming journalists and accountability-focused creators. Miers said that the content removal requirements of the law were deeply troubling. Qualifying minors upon turning 18 could silence very important reporting, she said. “Creators who produce regular commentary… might cross the threshold,” she said, which would deter important public-interest reporting.
“The right of deletion is particularly pernicious,” Cohen said. “The idea that a judge could order deletion of content, even of a person in a public place, because a minor appears in it is disquieting, to say the least.”
Like many other kids and tech-related laws out of Utah lately, this law is deeply flawed, counterproductive, and dangerously irresponsible. It violates core free speech principles, provides avenues for further exploitation, and utterly fails its stated mission of protecting children.
Protecting minors effectively demands informed policy grounded in reality, not superficial, ill-informed, and potentially harmful legislative virtue signaling.
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While many of us have been inundated with Musk-related content as of late, episode 797 of This American Life, “What I Was Thinking As We Were Sinking,” is worth revisiting.
It includes an insider account from Yoel Roth, who ran Trust & Safety at Twitter at the time that Elon Musk took over. He discussed what the day of the takeover was like and the events that followed. Check it out.
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