← The Tech Policy Press Podcast
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Good morning. I'm Justin Hendricks, editor of Tech Policy Press. We publish news, analysis and perspectives on issues at the intersection of tech and democracy. 2026 is poised to be another landmark year for the child online safety debate in the United States. In recent years, states have passed dozens of bills aimed at expanding protections for kids as they navigate risks on social media platforms, AI chatbots and other tools, with more likely on the way. Meanwhile, lawmakers in Washington are considering a flurry of proposals that could set a national standard on the issue. But many of these efforts are facing legal limbo as industry and some digital rights groups allege they violate constitutional rights and trample on privacy. Tech Policy Press senior editor Cristiano Lima Strong spoke to three experts tracking these issues to assess the current policy landscape in the US and how it may shift in 2026, particularly as state legislators continue to take up the cause. Amina Fazlullah is head of tech policy advocacy at Common Sense Media, a group that advocates for child online safety measures. She previously served as a tech policy fellow for Mozilla and as director of policy at the Benton Foundation. Joel Thayer is the president of the Digital Progress Institute, a think tank that advocates for age verification policies. He previously clerked for Federal Trade Commission official Maureen Olhausen and served as policy counsel for the tech trade group the App Association. Kate Ruane is the director of the Free Expression Project at the center for Democracy and Technology, a nonprofit that advocates for digital rights. She previously served as lead public policy specialist for the Wikimedia foundation and a senior legislative counsel for the aclu.
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C
Here's Christiana Kate Amina Joel, thanks so much for joining us. I wanted to set the table for our discussion a little bit before we got started. We have seen an explosion of activity around children's online safety in the United States in recent years, with states passing dozens of bills to require social media sites and AI tools to implement greater safeguards for kids, to require companies to vet users ages, and to prevent harms like harassment or abuse. Many of the highest profile laws have faced industry challenges or been blocked, with their statuses still being hashed out in court. Meanwhile, lawmakers on Capitol Hill continue to have discussions around potential federal standards that could override many of these state laws. That all signals that we are in for yet another pivotal year for children's online safety in the US in 2026. So with that, we thought it'd be a great time to check in with some of the folks who have been tracking this most closely to get a sense of where things stand and where we may be headed this year. I wanted to start off getting a sense of the state of play at the state level where legislators have been very active. Kate, would be curious to hear from you. What do you see as some of the main approaches or most notable models that states have sort of taken up to try to address the varied concerns around children online safety in the U.S. yeah, sure.
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D
And I invite my co panelists to jump in here because states have been doing quite a bit and quite a bit in a kind of like varied way. I tend to think about it in a few separate buckets. So the first bucket is like the various age appropriate design codes that we have seen being enacted, starting with California's, which has now been enjoined multiple times by courts for potential First Amendment violations. But other states have attempted this similar model and have tried to tweak it to, to deal with some of the issues that that the courts have identified. Another version of this is to require age verification by websites for access to content on the websites. One of the most common ones of these is requiring websites that host a large amount of adult content to do age verification of all of their users to ensure that people under the age of 18 aren't accessing that content. A law like this was actually upheld by the Supreme Court recently. A law from Texas was upheld by the Supreme Court. Another version is to sort of ban children from accessing social media generally either under either children under the age of 16, the way that Australia does, or children under the age of 13 from accessing social media at all. These laws are all facing First Amendment challenge as well. And then another way, another, another kind of bucket of laws that is cropping up and that has recently started to see some court action are the laws that require app stores to do age verification so that apps can have that data and know kind of the age categories of their users. Those laws are also now being challenged in the courts. So we're seeing a lot of activity both at state legislatures to try to require companies to amend the content that they deliver to children or to prevent children from accessing certain content or certain app stores, and then also to require these types of entities to engage in age assurance or age verification so that they know the ages of their users. And I expect that trend to continue. We're also seeing a lot of court action around those types of efforts.
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C
Yeah. Does that align with sort of your view of the landscape? I mean, are there other sort of notable trends that you've been tracking in terms of what states have been doing so far.
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E
Yeah, that definitely aligns with what we are seeing. I would add to that social media labels, which is a newer approach following the Surgeon General's bed piece and call for social media labels that has been passed in three states already, so Minnesota, California and New York. There are a lot of similarities between the versions in California and New York. I suspect we're seeing a model for that type of legislation that we'll likely see come up in, in the year ahead.
- [06:04]
D
I would throw one more in there too, now that I just thought of it. And also just specifically laws directed at generative AI outputs, some of which are required, would require age verification and either ban children from accessing those types of services under a certain age, require labeling or disclosures that it is not a person that that the user is engaging in or requiring disclosures or preventing the out the chat bot from producing output, attempting to protect to prevent the chat jap up from producing output that claims that it's like a medical professional or someone that is qualified to give certain advice.
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E
I would just add to that. On AI and kids, I think there is a lot of interest and concern in state legislatures and I think we are seeing already codification of some baseline guardrails.
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So.
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E
So as Kate mentioned, notifications, mental health redirects when you're talking to a chatbot, so that you know that you're talking to a chatbot, that if there is concerning or crisis intervention that's required, that there is some kind of mental health redirect. Those baseline guardrails I think have popped up in at least two states in New York and in California. But there's also interest in more comprehensive safety measures. So looking at things like risk based audits and also as Kate was alluding to more limitations on the operation of harmful chatbots to kids.
- [07:45]
C
So Joel, as Kate had alluded to, at the heart of this is age verification. You know, if you're crafting laws around children on the Internet, you need to have a sense of how do you figure out who's a child, who's a teen. And so this has been an issue that's been contention, contentious and is still being sort of hashed out legally. But states have been taking a few different approaches in terms of thinking about who should be responsible. Some have focused on platform sites, some have focused on App Store, some on the manufacturers. Could you talk about how states are splitting on this issue and your view of the different approaches?
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As you can imagine, you heard a multitude of different approaches to resolve Issues that are, I think are pretty, I think it's fair to say acute issues that you're seeing in the digital space with respect to kids, their interactions with these applications. It really comes down to where the politics are in the various states. And when it comes to age ratification in particular, it's a pretty easy political cell to want to block pornography sites, for instance, from kids. And but on the age ratifications, again, like we, we have seen some success in the courts. Kate alluded to the Texas porn law that was just upheld by the Supreme Court under intermediate scrutiny there. There's some good dictate in there to explain that, you know, this could be applied to general Apple in general applications. But typically the court kind of wavered on like the type of content that would, that would fall under this category specifically if it's, you know, adult content or obscenity as obscenity to children, that those types of applications seem to be in play. The question is what does that mean? And I think courts are start, well legislators are starting to look at that and saying okay, well what kind of guidance does this give us for general applications like social media? And you saw that with, you saw that with Florida and their law that was directed specifically at imposing age verification mechanisms. And also a straight up, I wouldn't say it was prohibition, but basically design prohibitions in their law that was upheld by the 11th Circuit. And so courts I think are really, I think right now everyone's testing it out, but I think the app for age verification mechanism seems to be something that most folks understand a little bit more. And then you also have the added benefit that you know, Apple and Google basically run the gamut on most, if not all mobile app distribution. And you're seeing most of the harms that we that, that are alleged happening on in the mobile space over your standard laptop. I think that it really comes down to a couple of things. One is how comfortable the legislators are with, with the case law at least those are the conversations I've had. And two, like do they want a more targeted prohibition? And three, like what are the harms that they're actually trying to address? So it's, it comes down to those three factors for me mostly. But in terms of an actual split, I'm getting the sense that every state wants an all the above strategy and everyone who's worked in state legislators, I'm sure everyone on this call has, everyone has their favorite flavor of ice cream. And so they all have their, their, their various solutions. And it seems like states are pretty eager to Test out these theories and test out the these. Test out these applications of law. I don't see like a 50, 50 split or 2080 split. It really just comes down to what the political will is for the particular legislator and where. And where they see. Where they see the most acute issues and what they think the most effective mechanism.
- [11:22]
C
So, Kate, you alluded to a lot of the court challenges that we've seen. How much is actually of these laws that we're talking about has actually been able to take effect, to be enforced, and how much of this is still up in the air in terms of ongoing litigation?
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D
There's a ton of it that's still up in the air in terms of ongoing litigation. Very few of these laws, as far as I can tell, have been allowed to actually take effect. And to the extent that they have, it has been even with a caveat from the justices on the Supreme Court that they actually think that the law probably violates the Constitution. Joel mentioned that there. That he believes that there was some dicta in the case about the Texas law that relates to online adult content, that there was some dicta that indicates that it could be acceptable as applied to kind of like generally applicable content. But I actually disagree with that interpretation. I think the court in FSC V. Paxton, which is the case that dealt with the Texas law that that requires age verification to access websites that host a certain amount of content that is obscene as to minors, was pretty clear that they were only talking about access to content that is not constitutionally protected for minors to access. Minors have the constitutional right to engage in and access a lot of speech as long as it is not obscene for them. In fact, they have a constitutional right to access all constitutionally protected speech as long as it is not obscene for them. And what we've started to see is courts grappling with some of these state laws which would block or burden minors ability to access constitutionally protected content on social media or. Or constitutionally protected content through app stores, for example. And courts by and large are saying no, that type of a restriction is subject to strict scrutiny, unlike the, unlike the FSC vs. Paxton court's application of intermediate scrutiny to access obscene content. And they are saying that this probably violates the Constitution. We just saw it happen with respect to Texas's App Store Accountability act, where I believe the district court said that likened it to. To creating age verification requirements to enter a bookstore. So we are absolutely seeing courts begin to grapple with the significant First Amendment and free expression issues here. But we're also Seeing them think clearly about it and say when you apply this generally, when you say that children aren't allowed to access publicly available spaces and engage in speech that is constitutionally protected for them, you have a very high bar to clear and states currently haven't done it. And I do kind of think that state legislators should be thinking, really should be thinking really deeply about that, because no law that we pass, that any state legislature passes that runs into constitutional barriers like this is going to protect a single child in any way.
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Obviously, we have a firm disagreement on exactly what the court said. And I think the dicta I'm referring to specifically is the qu. Is the, is Justice Kavanaugh going in there and describing the, the burden that age of vacation actually applies and the burden with respect to what time we're actually in. So he basically points out and says, like, this is basically, in his words, a modest burden and on adult speech. And then he goes on to say that, well, with the, with the advent of smartphones, with the advent of devices in your pocket, it is unimaginable that the courts in Reno and Abstract, which are the cases that, that are mostly the ones that are guiding, that were guiding the courts up until that point and even before TikTok, the TikTok case, that this is a completely different scenario. I think the court, you're seeing a court that's far more open, or at least the springboard, is far more open to evaluating this not on total strict scrutiny territory. And indeed, he even said that the idea that age revocation or age verification mechanisms already triggered strip scrutiny is already inappropriate. Like we, they're going to evaluate it based off of what the law is. They're not going to say there's a categorical rule, strict scrutiny. Now, I think Kate did a very good job of explaining that. Look, well, you know, there's some ambiguity here. It depends on, on what you're trying to do. I do think that the, the complication here is how do you apply Paxton, how do you apply TikTok v. Garland, how do you apply the Net Choice case or the nitrous case in Moody? And it's tough. It's not, I don't think it's an easy analysis to say, like the courts seem to seem to believe that these, like whether it's an app store or any sort of social media that it's accessing to a library. I think courts are getting more skeptical of that. You saw that in the 11th Circuit. You're seeing that with the Supreme Court not, not upholding injunctions obviously, in the Tennessee law, that. Which, which the Supreme Court was reviewing, where they didn't decided not to uphold the injunction. They did, I agree, had a caveat. Well, let's see how the likelihood in the merits case works out and then we'll review it. But again, I think you're seeing a high level of skepticism that age verification mechanisms is immediately. This bar, this barrier of entry on the front end, on the back end. It's also very clear to me that. Or it's becoming clearer that they are looking at the laws themselves and not just saying restriction on social media means strict scrutiny. I think that that is. That. I think it's gonna. It's gonna require net choice to do and CCIA and others to do a little bit more legwork on describing what their speech interest is. Because again, part of the issue that you saw Even in the TikTok case was a fundamental question, what is the speech interest that you are trying to protect? And also, are we protecting the listener? Are we protecting the speaker? Maybe it's a bit of both. But at the end of the day, they are going to have to articulate what that speech interest is, which the tech companies have not done a very good job of, at least when it gets up to the Supreme Court or the appellate level, particularly at the fifth Circuit, where the, where the OPS or Accountability act will be reviewed, which is a pretty favorable, I think, jurisdiction if you're one of these laws. So, again, it's a very much of a mixed bag, but I just wanted to make sure I responded a little bit to that, because I think I was called out of it. But I totally appreciate your perspective.
- [17:32]
D
And obviously we're going to disagree on this, Joel. Like, that's just, that's just how we're. That's just how we're going to. That's just how it's going to be. And that's okay. Yeah, that's okay. And I, and I acknowledge that.
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A
Like, I just want to make sure that I at least got on record, like, Absolutely, absolutely.
- [17:44]
D
And I'm glad you did. I'm glad you did. I do want to respond just like, briefly to a couple of the things that you said, and I want to make sure that I'm responding correctly. You're talking about FSC versus Paxton, which was authored by Justice Thomas. Right. There's not a. There's no, there's no concurrence from Justice Kavanaugh in there.
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A
Oh, sorry. Yeah.
- [17:59]
D
I'm just making sure that I'm thinking about the right thing. Okay. Like, I hear what you're saying in that case that they were willing to. That they did call, you know, age verification a modest burden, but they were doing so, as you were pointing out, in the context of speech that is not constitutionally protected when delivered to minors. That is a different ballgame. And the court was clear within that particular opinion that it is a different ballgame when we're talking about the targeting of constitutionally protected speech for which strict scrutiny remains the standard. And I think that that's an important distinction that the court in FSC itself did make. I will stop there because I know we want to talk about other things, and Joel and I can go back and forth on this for hours and hours and hours. And like, he has. He's made good points here, and I. And I get it. And there's going to be legal arguments in the courts, and we'll see how that shakes out.
- [18:45]
A
Yeah. And like, I'll just add one extra thing. Look, First Amendment jurisprudence is very messy. It's not like there's a linear line between when this fits into one category or another category there. I think what the courts are doing, and I agree with Kate, is that they're trying to firm up a little bit more of what they're talking about, and we. So it's. Again, I. I don't think that Kate, are that far apart on, like, where things ultimately are. I think it just turns into. It's with, like, when you get two lawyers in the room, you're always going to have, like, varying opinions. But, no, I very much appreciate Kate's perspective on this, and I think ultimately we're. We're going to see a little bit more fleshing out of what. What it means to have a First Amendment. What is the speech interest that we're talking about? And I think that's what the courts are trying to get. Trying to grapple with as it goes through the appellate process.
- [19:29]
C
Thank you both so much for that. It's really interesting, and I think it speaks to the fact that the jurisprudence here is still very much evolving and perhaps unsettled to an extent. And so, I mean, I did want to get your thoughts on how state legislators are sort of dealing with that and grappling with that. Are they refocusing efforts? Are there. There are some approaches that you think might gain more momentum in light of some of this and sort of how it's factoring into priorities at the state level.
- [20:00]
E
As we just heard, there's a lot of uncertainty. It's somewhat unsettled and so these questions are front of mind to state legislators. So I think as a result you're probably seeing more of an attraction towards policy measures that are focused on feature based legislation to try to avoid content issues. You're seeing, like I said before, I think a new interest in the social media warning label, which has its own pathway to First Amendment issues as a label. But that's sort of different from the discussion that you just heard. And then like I said in the, in the AI space, I think the focus is on the product and how it's interacting with the customer or the user and what are the duties and responsibilities there. And so I think you're seeing legislators move until I think things are more settled, move away from or not expand, expand what they're working on to include maybe different territory like features based legislation or legislation that's focused on improving and protecting kids as they use AI products.
- [21:20]
C
So talking a little more concretely about 2026 and what we might see this year, Joel would be curious to hear from you. What trends do you think are likely to continue intensify? Where might states reorient their priorities in terms of what we get this year?
- [21:35]
A
So I think you're gonna see a lot of the same. I don't see them deviating too far off of the ACE verification issues. I do agree with Amina and I think Kate also remarked on this as well. You know, generative AI is going to be a major political boondoggle, especially now that you have the White House putting out their AI, which I think put a steroid in the water with a lot of, with respect to a lot of these different conversations happening at the state level. And you're seeing a lot of federal legislators responding to that too. And the question is like, you know, who's going to get to the finish line first? Is it going to be a federal law or is it going to be a state law? And I mean even though I have significant doubt that a AIEO is going to prohibit, you know, the enforcement of all of these state enforcements, I do think that it has added some extra little umph in or a little more pep in the step of a lot of these legislators who are trying to solve these solutions at the state level. And almost, it's almost like a call to them to figure out more or to invite them to find different solutions, especially when it comes to generative AI. But my instinct is that you're probably going to see more of that too. I think the issue of chat, I mean, for lack of a better term, like, the chatbot issue is something that constantly gets brought up in every conversation that you have, whether it's describing, you know, age revocation for the App Store level to social media or whatever, there's always this conversation, whether rightfully or unrightfully turned into a, well, what about chatbots and how do we stop that? So I think that that is going to be another focus. You're seeing that both at the state level and also at the federal level. Senator Josh Hawley is with Senator Blumenthal. Have already, you know, staked their, planted their flag on that. I think you're going to see more of that. And you saw bits of that in the ENC hearing with all those, with all the kid bills. Of course, it was more of like a footnote more than it was like a, one of the marquee conversations they were trying to have. But I do, I do not see that going away. And especially now that you're having a pro accelerationist perspective from the, from the executive branch on AI, there's going to be those questions from child safety groups like, wait a minute. Well, we don't want, you know, to, like, we all, we're all for winning the war on AI, but, you know, we don't want kids to be the casualties of that. So how do we, excuse the pun and the terrible pun, how do we split the baby on this? And how do we ultimately get to a place where the child advocates feel like they have been heard, listened to, at the same time promote this idea of, you know, AI dominance? And I think that's going to be the, the major fight both at the federal and state level. And you're, but I think you're going to continue to see a lot of the same on, with respect to social media and also with age verification, especially as these court cases come through. And we just, I think that that's, that's the state of play in my mind. I just, I'm very open to hearing it where Kate and Amina feel like that things are going.
- [24:31]
E
Yeah, I think that there is definitely tension between the AI preemption efforts at the federal level and in the efforts at the state level. I think it's interesting to hear Joel say that it's boosted enthusiasm potentially at the state level to do more. I'm not sure that that's the case, but there's certainly a spotlight on what states are doing in a way that might not have previously been there. And I think there are a few different components of kids AI safety efforts that we're seeing. One is, like I said, the risk based assessments and audits. Another is around updating privacy protections for the inputs of kids. That's a pretty big gap considering how kids are using generative AI chatbots already and our understanding of the willingness of children to divulge incredibly rich in personal information about themselves and others through chatbots. So it's a pretty big hole. There's also new interest in targeted advertising specific to adding AI products into the ecosystem. But then there's the suite of bills that are looking at setting baseline guardrails and then going beyond that to try to get specific about harmful features of chatbots and really digging into issues around manipulation and other sort of harmful features from the chatbots. I think driving this is some of the research we've done and others have done to lift up this usage that's emerging and how quickly it's coming into the scene. We found 70% of teens are already using what we've described as AI companions having more of this relationship, dependent relationship with an AI chatbot. About 50% of them were regular users and 30% were already preferring conversations with the chatbot over or similarly to other humans. And that was research that we did many months back. So the pace of uptake of these products and the potential impact is pretty dramatic. And so I think that's what's animating a lot of legislators right now.
- [27:06]
D
I just want to add to what Amina and Joel have both said and create kind of a wish list for myself a little bit here too, because I'm not sure a lot of what Aminah just said made me think that. I also wish that state legislators were really looking into the privacy aspects of generative AI models with respect to everybody, but also specifically with respect to kids, because as Amina highlighted, they are having intimate conversations with these companion systems. They are telling them things about themselves. The system is ingesting this data. What is it doing with it? It, does it have any restrictions at all on what it can do with it? And as these systems and as these companies that are offering these systems seek to monetize these services, how is that going to interact with kids data and what are the restrictions on how they can use that data? I'm not sure we're seeing enough energy behind that question. And it also leads to my second point, which is it's another reason that it makes no sense for the federal government currently to prevent states from engaging in legislation in this space. We have not seen the federal government step up and engage in creating comprehensive consumer privacy legislation that applies to social media, let alone to generative AI systems. If they were to if they were to broadly preempt state's ability to protect kids online or to protect kids data, we could see a blocking of efforts that could create some significant protections for harms that we see coming down the pike.
- [28:41]
C
You all have talked about the executive order dealing with artificial intelligence legislation at the state level. There's also the specter of federal legislation that could preempt state laws. Kate Joel, you recently testified on this on Capitol Hill. How are you thinking about and what will you be watching for in terms of the interaction between states moving ahead on some of these issues and legislators on Capitol Hill looking at standards that could potentially override them in the coming year?
- [29:11]
A
Well, I think this is the area where Kate and I actually agreed and when I say I don't mean actually we never agree, but I think in this area we were both pretty skeptical of the broad preemption and that relates to standard. And that was one thing that I as as an organization we offer bipartisan solutions that are incremental in approach. We don't think the relates to preemption standard is meets that Mark. I would rather see a conflict preemption or something similar to that where like you where the federal government has identified specific things that they do not want to see in the market and they leave it up to states to decide whether or not the federal government has fully protected their interests versus it relates to standard, which needs to be very, very broad and it's not clear where.
- [29:59]
C
Could you unpack that a little bit just for folks that relates to.
- [30:02]
A
Sure. So the rel. So conflict preemption is what it sounds like. If there is a federal law up there that you if law A directly if law A and law B can't live in the same universe, it's granted by the federal government. Assuming that the state B state law B is the is the federal government on a relates to side it's far more ambiguous because some will argue that it relates to works a lot like a conflict preemption which it doesn't relates to can mean literally whatever this thing is describing. Like so if we're talking about a certain preemptions or certain prohibitions against chatbots and let's say it requires labels, let's say it requires some sort of notification but there's no age verification mechanism on there. If a state wanted to do an age verification mechanism on chatbots, there is a very good argument that the relates to standard would preempt that because it would basically Be saying the federal government has already spoken on this issue of chatbots and they decided that they did not want to go down that route. So the state would therefore be preempted by that because it would. Well, it works as like a giant swallow up preemption where, where like you can't. The state cannot do that because it's basically been taken up by the federal law. So essentially the federal government does not have to precisely articulate what they want to regulate. They can basically say we want to regulate this and everything else is preempted. That is a, that might be a little bit too far for, for at least my, a little too rich for my blood. I think that states do have a say here and I think ultimately that's how we're going to get things. Some of the things that I think Kate was I want to. Which is more of a uniform privacy law or I do believe that there are aspects of state laws, that there's aspects of state laws just works better than how the federal law would operate. And so that's the one thing I'm looking at when it comes to these preemption conversations. I don't, I'm not a big fan of, you know, the white swath preemption if I would rather it stay narrow in the conflict zone. But yeah, I'm very interested to hear Kate's. Kate's view on that as well.
- [32:13]
D
I mean, I generally agree with Joel about the preemption question. The thing that I would add like, I think we might disagree on like the specific things that we would want states to enact. But the thing that I would add that that relates to preemption standard which Joel described ably would do is it would also preempt the application of laws of general applicability that have existed within the states for a long time to children. So state consumer protection laws might not apply to children anymore and that if the federal government says that we have that we're preempting every state law that relates to kid safety, that to me is an even bigger problem. So even if so, it's not just like the specific targeted things that states wants to do. It's also the broad, generally applicable regular tort law that we've all been using forever and ever that would be swept into this as well. And I think that's hugely concerning.
- [33:07]
E
I just add that like for if we're thinking of something like AI but even generally with respect to tech, these are fast moving industries, you know, the products change quickly, the threats evolve over time. And so you want to have every cop on the beat, you want to have those state legislators engaging and lifting up ags, identifying, using their existing tools and enforcing based on those existing tools against harms that are emerging. And that all feeds into, I think, a very healthy federal level process so that federal regulators and folks in Congress have a very clear sense of where the gaps actually are and where the best policies actually lie. So you eliminate all of that forward looking thinking as well.
- [34:06]
C
So we certainly could spend more time talking about what the federal standards could look like. As I alluded to Kate and Joel testified on this recently, I'd recommend folks check that out if they're interested in hearing more. And common Sense, of course, has been very active on that front. I just wanted to close out, giving you all a chance to offer final thoughts on things you're watching out for this year in the child online safety space at the state level and in the interaction with federal government.
- [34:30]
E
The first thing I'm going to be keeping an eye out for is bills on moving forward related to generative AI and kids safety, but also broader bills around generative AI and general consumer protection. I think we'll see both of those moving forward. And in those broader bills I think we'll also see protections for kids. And then I think we'll also see futures based legislation or warning label type legislation moving through the states. We're going to be keeping an eye out for the advancement of age assurance through whatever mechanism starts to move, whether it's at the state or the federal level. And then finally I think keeping a close eye on any potential updates to privacy. As I mentioned before, I think they're really critical in light of AI technologies. And so I'll be interested to see what states do.
- [35:31]
A
I'm actually very encouraged that these conversations are happening and they're still happening. And that I do think that whether you're a Democrat or Republican, I think everyone really agrees that there is an issue in this market that need to be resolved. And you're going to see a whole swath of different attempts to quell the concerns. And I won't reiterate what I mean is I think she stated it very well that we're going to see all of those issues. But I am actually hopeful that we will see something that Kate wants and I want as well, which is a real at bat for privacy. And especially now when you're talking about the sheer amount of data that's going into these AI systems, without a doubt there's going to be a question as to like who owns that data? What data can be used? How can it be used? How can it be monetized? How can it not be monetized? All of those questions are embedded in this larger, broader conversation about our interactions with these tech companies and platforms. And so I, I don't see this issue going away. I think this issue is probably going to going to show up in multiple contexts. I don't think it's going to be limited to the child safety space. I think you're going to see it pop up in the competition space. You're going to see it pop up in consumer protection. And I, and it just, it's going to be a, I just say grab your popcorn, people, because it's going to, it's going to get fun wild.
- [36:44]
D
I love bad and cleanup because I get to say I agree with everything that Joel and Amina have said and reiterate that I think Amina did a really good job of running down the various topics that I would look for that I'm looking for state legislatures to engage with over the next year and that I expect them to do. I'm also going to look at sort of how court decisions start to come out and how those interact with state policy proposals, how state legislators react to some of what the courts say in order to try to build up their case that what they're doing or change what they're doing in order to respond to some of the concerns. And the other thing I want to see, I would love to see is, is for some of the age verification proposals that exist out there to start to really deal with and create safeguards around the privacy issues that exist within. Requiring age assurance to be used because I believe in harm mitigation. I might, I might not think that using or requiring age verification is the right thing in many circumstances, but if you're going to require it, it is very clear that privacy risks are being created and, and not being sufficiently dealt with within these statutes. So I would love to see some of the state legislators start to grapple with that and build some of these protections into the statute itself, requiring the companies that are required to do these processes or contract with companies that already do these processes to properly collect and use this data only in certain ways and delete it immediately. We're not seeing enough of that being clearly articulated in these laws.
- [38:14]
A
Kate's preaching to the choir here. So in Even so, I it's no secret that I helped design the App Store Accountability act of Texas, or at least was consulted. One of the things that we really were concerned about was that privacy concern that you described, which is why there is, there's potentially there's a right to delete it or well, basically there's a requirement to delete all those information and make sure that the privacy stuff cannot go by the wayside. So just want to make sure there's another area of agreement that can't and I actually have which is that you have to have a privacy focused approach when reviewing statutes or when enacting statutes. And I too, I'm going to be a keen watcher of the, of what the courts ultimately come out to. So I appreciate Kate bringing that up.
- [38:54]
C
So I'll, I'll bad cleanup in the end. Thank you all so much for joining. It's been a great discussion and I really appreciate it.
- [39:11]
B
That's it for this episode. I hope you'll send your feedback. You can write to me at justinnedtechpolicy Press. Thanks to Cristiano, thanks to my co founder Brian Jones and thank you for listening.
- [39:30]
D
Tech policy press.