Alaska bill imposes severe restrictions on social media for children

A bill newly passed in the Alaska House of Representatives, which bans AI-generated child sexual abuse material, now includes “provisions that would severely limit children’s access to social media,” according to Alaska Public Media.

A report says that under the law, “anyone under 18 in Alaska would need permission from a parent or guardian to sign up for an account on a social platform, and the bill would give parents full access to their children’s accounts. Children would have a 10:30 p.m. social media curfew set by default.” The law would also require age verification mechanisms for those giving consent.

House Bill 47 was intended to update state laws to address the issue of child sexual abuse material created with generative AI.

However, it appears that Democratic Anchorage Rep. Zack Fields added several amendments at the last minute, which variously make it a misdemeanor to harass or threaten someone using a “forged digital likeness” or deepfake, and criminalize the creation of a synthetic sexual image of a real-life person – a direct response to Grok’s CSAM problem.

The bill has “broad, bipartisan support” and lawmakers added the amendments to the bill “without much discussion or objection.”

The social media restrictions also ban addictive design features and prohibit advertising to minors and tailored feeds.

“I think the fundamental question with this amendment is, do parental rights supersede the rights of predators?” says Fields. “And do parental rights supersede the rights of multinational corporations, which, as we have heard, knowingly target children with addictive, destructive algorithms?”

Some expressed concern that the social media additions could stall the bill’s path to the Senate. Republican Rep. Dan Saddler, says he likes the intent of the social media amendment, “but I fear that this is such a large issue that it imperils bogging down the rest of the good work that’s in this bill.”

It’s happened in Alaska before: in 2024, an age verification bill for pornographic stalled in the Senate after House lawmakers added social media restrictions.

The state currently offers the Thales-developed Alaska Mobile ID app, which can house digital credentials for the purpose of age assurance, including digital driver’s licenses.

Virginia court halts enforcement of social media law; NetChoice gloats

Alaska’s bill is guaranteed to attract the litigatory attention of NetChoice, the lobby organization for Silicon Valley companies, which is waging a campaign of legal challenges to various state-level age assurance laws.

Presently, it is celebrating a victory in Virginia. A release says the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia granted NetChoice’s request for a preliminary injunction, halting the enforcement of SB 854, which imposes age assurance requirements on social media platforms.

“The First Amendment is alive and well in Virginia,” says Paul Taske, co-director of the NetChoice Litigation Center. “This ruling reaffirms that the government cannot ration access to lawful speech – even if it has noble intentions. Fundamentally, parents must stay in the driver’s seat when it comes to decisions about their families.”

“Virginia sought to ban minors from accessing social media for more than one hour per day without parental consent and required widespread age verification on lawful speech. Such restrictions are no different than the government limiting the time a person can spend reading a newspaper or having a conversation.”

Article Topics

age verification  |  Alaska  |  children  |  deepfakes  |  legislation  |  Netchoice  |  social media  |  Virginia