1. United States
2. Calif.
3. Letter

Over the past year or two the invasiveness of Big Tech has really exploded out into the open: Microsoft prematurely discontinued Windows 10 in favor of Windows 11’s built in AI snapshots of everything a user does, and Google introduced mandatory identity verification for Android app developers, to give a couple of examples. I personally have been able to move to Linux and was pleasantly surprised that it’s remarkably close to being a viable Windows replacement for normal people, but now last year’s AB 1043 has opened the door to age verification there as well - and while this in itself is easily circumvented, unfortunately the vagueness of the law has left the door open for much more invasive and harmful requirements to come (AI age verification seems like the obvious logical follow-up to actually ensure compliance, as long as most lawmakers and news outlets don’t seem to know that LLM’s are just supercharged versions of the auto-predict on the keyboard I’m writing this with). The Digital Age Assurance Act was pushed by Google and Meta in particular, both of whom were just found guilty of not giving a s*** about kids in a federal court, and is designed to shift liability to operating system providers (extremely broadly conceived) rather than the platforms on which offensive content is overwhelmingly found and promoted. Other than Microsoft, Google, and Apple, the vast majority of operating system “providers”, which as defined by this law includes developers and possibly even anyone who owns a computer with one installed, work on open-source operating systems as volunteers and would be ruined by the financial penalties. Meanwhile, even after finally being prosecuted and found guilty in a court of law, giants like Google and Meta are only made to pay a pittance compared to their astronomical assets. Child safety in technology and against tech privacy is a complex and difficult issue - Big Tech and even many smaller computer programmers love to try to solve social problems programmatically, and legislators should absolutely resist that kind of thinking and develop a holistic, comprehensive solution instead of “moving fast and breaking things”. Unfortunately AB 1043 is an ill-defined start to what I’m afraid will be a series of inadvertently oppressive laws, hacked onto 1043’s frame once its shortcomings are exposed in court. Before the AB 1043 model is adopted in other states like Colorado, please replace the Digital Age Assurance Act with tight legislation that requires tech platforms with content harmful to children to disclose this information prominently (like how McDonald’s has to tell you they sell carcinogens, but if the signs had to be front and center), and that applies significant penalties to companies like Meta and Google whose algorithms promote such content. And in general, California needs to disentangle itself from Big Tech by cutting subsidies (e.g. tax breaks, lax oversight) and join other Middle Powers in promoting digital sovereignty - it’s going to be better for people and the planet.