Many parents don't like this ruling, but a federal judge ruled Friday that social media companies cannot be forced to block certain content for teens. The court was brought into the matter after technology companies challenged a new law in Texas called the Securing Children Online Through Parental Empowerment (SCOPE) Act. The law requires social media platforms to verify the age of their users and adds other guidelines that social media companies must follow.
The law was supposed to take effect on Sunday, September 1, but Judge Robert Pitman described the “monitoring and filtering requirements” in his ruling as a threat to online expression. In addition to verifying a user's age, the Scope Act also limits the collection of data from anyone under 18, prevents teenagers from seeing targeted advertising, and also prohibits them from making financial transactions without parental consent.
The law also required social media platforms to implement a plan to “prevent minors from being exposed to harmful material.” Such harmful material includes content that “glorifies” or promotes topics such as suicide, drug abuse, and grooming. Any platform that displays content that is more than one-third harmful or obscene (the latter would be based on the applicable laws of the respective state) would have to find a method to verify a user's age.
The plaintiffs who initiated the legal proceedings were the technology companies NetChoice and CCIA. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) also filed a lawsuit against the law. The judge on Friday ruled in part in favor of NetChoice and issued a temporary restraining order against the monitoring and filtering rules while the case is still being heard.
Currently, some parts of the Scope Act remain in effect. The rule preventing platforms from collecting personal information from teens under 18 will continue to be enforced, as will the rule requiring age verification for sites with large amounts of adult content. It should be noted that Texas already had a law requiring websites to verify the age of visitors to adult sites. Judge Pitman believed the law's language was too vague. His criticism echoed objections from FIRE, who said words like “grooming” could apply to all LGBTQ content.
“Terms such as 'promotion,' 'glamorization,' 'substance abuse,' 'harassment,' and 'grooming,' are undefined despite their potentially broad scope and politically charged nature. At what point, for example, does alcohol consumption become 'substance abuse'? At what point does an extreme diet cross the line into an 'eating disorder'?” said Judge Robert Pitman.
Judge Pitman noted that an attorney general seeking to enforce the law could do so selectively, ruling that content about smoking marijuana glorifies drug abuse even when smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol do not. The judge also noted that while social media platforms must remove controversial content, the same content could be found on other media platforms.
The bottom line is that you can't currently legally prohibit teenagers in Texas from watching marijuana-related content. That could change depending on how Judge Pitman rules at the end of the case.