In Sacramento there was a bill that passed the senate on a 37-0 vote. The bill is to protect kids under the ages of 18 and give these kids the right to “erase” content on social media sites (like Facebook) freely. The bill also bans the collection of minors personal information for the purpose of marketing or advertising products that minors cannot legally obtain. – So while tobacco companies cannot market cigarettes to minors, other products such video games can be marketed to these teens. In theory the bill seems like a good idea, since its primary goal is to protect children (and even our own children in the future) however, in reality this bill would not add much value to the privacy of teens/tweens. Once something is on the web, other users can download it, and re-post it to other sites like Reddit, also even if the bill bans collection of minors personal information for marketing certain products or services, wouldn’t parents want to ban the collection of their child’s information from all sites? If parents wanted to protect their children from advertising agencies and telemarketers, then it is most likely they want them kept out of the light of advertisers and information brokers.
All in all this bill seems like a minimalistic solution to an ever growing problem of privacy for children. Lets not also forget that kids can set their age to anything on Facebook and other social media sites with/or without the consent of their parents. What are your thoughts on this bill – Is it a positive solution, negative solution, or a temporary band-aid to solve the issues of privacy for individuals under 18?
Article:
http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20130505/ARTICLES/130509739/1036/business?p=1&tc=pg
I agree with you that this is a poor solution. The California state senate is wasting time and effort on this. First, it is impossible to implement. How is Facebook supposed to magically create a delete button, then prevent other people from reposting, and making it exclusively available to minors? This is way too hard to enforce, and is a waste of time. Also, I believe that there is nothing inherently wrong with a minor making a mistake online. By dealing with the consequences of their controversial post, they will learn to become smarter web users and gain a sense of responsibility. By shielding them from accountability online, they will develop poor cyber habits.
I think that this is a temporary band-aid solution that probably won’t go anywhere. The only solutions I see to the problem would be to stop kids from using social networking sites or setting them up in a way that restricts their usage and what they are allowed to post or share and I highly doubt that would ever happen.
I also agree that this is a poor attempt to protect the privacy of internet users. I also find it interesting that this bill targets a specific age group. I understand that teenagers are tweeting and posting pictures now more than ever, but what about everyone else? At this point, I think it might be inevitable for us to protect ourselves from invasion of internet privacy. The world is getting smaller and smaller at an exponential rate, and its pretty hard to hide from a small crowd.