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Tom Philp is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial writer and columnist who returned to The Sacramento Bee in 2023 after working in government for 16 years. Philp previously wrote for The Bee from 1991 to 2007.
America’s youth spend more time on social media than on homework. Popular media outlets like YouTube and TikTok have unfettered freedom to keep kids addicted to their businesses by analyzing their interests and sending a non-stop feed of images. Researchers are increasingly concerned about how all this exposure is affecting behavior and self-esteem.
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The information age is outpacing the government’s ability to monitor or manage it. With Washington in a perpetual state of gridlock, states need to set some reasonable limits. The California Legislature is trying to do just that with a series of bills this year that have caught the attention of the industry. While finding some sensible and workable reforms is not easy, it is definitely worth the effort.
Some examples:
Senate Bill 976 by Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, seeks to prevent social media platforms from targeting children with unsolicited notifications.
By using complex algorithms to gauge users’ age and interests, social media companies can create an addictive usage cycle that can keep young people glued to these spots and their screens, regardless of the hour. SB 976 would prevent these platforms, when the age of the users is known, from serving notices to minors between midnight and 6 a.m. and weekday school hours from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.
SB 976 seeks to give parents the ability to completely shut down a food addict. Each platform must establish a parental consent process after identifying the new user and his/her parents. This would be a new tool for parents looking to reduce their children’s exposure to social media. While this concept has some technical and logistical challenges, it shifts decision-making from social media companies to families. There is no substitute for parenting.
Ticketmaster controls most of America’s major concert and sporting event ticket sales. It can also exercise vertical economic power when it contracts the performer, the venue and the ticketing machine.
The Legislature hopes to lower ticket prices by creating legislation that encourages more consumer options for purchasing tickets. Assembly Bill 2808 by Buffy Wicks, D-Oakland, would prohibit Ticketmaster or any major ticket seller from having a long-term exclusive contract with venues such as arenas.
Shaking up California’s entertainment industry is no small task, with AB 2808 remaining a work in progress since the first hearings last month. But with neither Congress nor the executive branch taking decisive action in Washington, that leaves Sacramento as the seat of progress.
Search engines like Google and social media companies like Facebook have become the main sources of news for many American consumers, although these companies do not produce news content. The migration of advertising revenue from news companies to these Internet giants has accelerated the decline of newsgathering in California and around the world.
Wicks is again at the forefront of this battlefront in the new economy, seeking to redirect some of the news-related profits to the media that produce the news. Assembly Bill 886, the California Journalism Preservation Act, would require search engines/social media platforms to either reach profit-sharing agreements with news providers or settle the matter through arbitration.
McClatchy is among the media outlets supporting AB 886.
The legislation passed the Assembly last year and awaits a Senate hearing later this year. The stakes have only risen, with search engine giant Google recently announcing that it had begun limiting the availability of California news on its platform in protest of the legislation, raising some sharp legal questions about censorship purely for economic reasons. .
The information age has produced a consolidation of economic power that rivals that of the industrial age generations ago. It took years to destroy those monopolies. And that exercise was straightforward compared to reforming the algorithms of search engines or social media companies to protect the public.
Sometimes it makes sense for California to be a leader in a national policy challenge, even if it’s difficult. This is one of them.
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