Rumble Among 15 Reasons for Private Investigation of Texas Attorney General’s Son

Privacy experts who spoke to WIRED described Rumble, Quora, and WeChat as unusual suspects but declined to explain why they were included in the investigation. Josh Golin, director of the non-profit organization Fairplay, which promotes digital safety for children, says concerns are not always recognized. A few advocacy groups complain about Pinterest, for example, until the story of a British teenager who died of self-inflicted injuries after encountering problems on the platform, he says.

Paxton’s press release last month called his new research “an important step in ensuring that social media and AI companies comply with our laws to protect children from exploitation and harm.”

The United States Congress has never passed it secret privacy policyand this It has not significantly changed child protection laws on the internet in a quarter of a hundred. This leaves state policymakers and regulators to do the heavy lifting.

Paxton’s research focuses on Texas’ Securing Children Online compliance through the Parental Empowerment Act or SCOPE, which began to work this September. It applies to any website or application that has a social network or chat and registers users under the age of 18, making it broader than the federal law, which only applies to services for people under the age of 13.

SCOPE requires support to request users’ age and to give parents or guardians control over children’s account settings and user data. Companies are also prohibited from selling information collected about children without parental consent. In October, Paxton sued TikTok for violating the law by providing parental controls and disclosing information without consent. TikTok has denied the allegations.

A study announced last month also covered the Texas Data Privacy and Security Act, or TDPSAwhich went into effect last July and requires parental consent before using data about users under the age of 13. Paxton’s office has asked the companies under investigation to detail their compliance with the SCOPE Act and the TDPSA, according to legal requests obtained through a request of public records. .

In all, the companies must answer eight questions by next week, including how many Texas children they count as users and have blocked registrations with incorrect birthdays. The list with whom children’s data is sold or shared should be translated. We cannot tell if there are companies that have already responded to their demands.

Tech lobby groups are challenging the SCOPE Act in court. In August, they scored an early and small victory when a federal judge in Austin, Texas ruled that the law requiring companies to take steps to prevent children from witnessing self-harm and abuse was unconstitutional.

But even total success may not be beneficial for the tech industry. States including Maryland and New York are expected to enact similar laws starting later this year, says Ariel Fox Johnson, attorney and chief counsel for Digital Smarts Law & Policy. And federal attorneys general can pursue limited prosecutions under their tried-and-true laws against fraudulent business practices. “What we see is often shared or sold or disclosed in ways that families don’t expect or understand,” Johnson says. “As more and more laws are being passed that create stricter requirements, it seems to be clear that not everyone is following them.”