SALT LAKE CITY — In the face of lawsuits and push back from social media companies, Utah's tough new laws regulating the apps are getting a rewrite.
On Monday, a pair of bills were introduced that rework rules governing social media sites that the state just implemented. The old law was the subject of a pair of lawsuits from a tech group and a group of Utahns who alleged requirements for age-verification and other restrictions violated their constitutional rights.
The state has its own litigation against social apps TikTok, Facebook and Instagram, accusing them of crafting addictive algorithms and serving up personalized content that harm the mental health of Utah youth. It is part of a long-running campaign Utah political leaders have had against social media platforms.
"I use social media to share free clinic days and free financing classes and resources that are out there," said LuAnn Cooper, a former member of the Kingston polygamous group who is among the plaintiffs suing the state.
Cooper said in a recent interview with FOX 13 News that she uses social media to reach people leaving polygamous communities and the law hinders that.
"If polygamists have to have ID to be able to access their social media, some of them don’t have that and some of them don’t have the access to that," she said. "They won’t have the ability to reach out to help. So this law is essentially aiding and abetting polygamous groups in keeping their women and children in confinement."
The lawsuit by Cooper and others, part of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, is still pending in the courts. But lawmakers are looking to make it moot by rewriting the laws they just passed.
Rep. Jordan Teuscher, R-South Jordan, introduced House Bill 464 that puts social media companies on the hook for alleged harms to children.
"Social media companies that are curating algorithms that display what content someone sees and they’re using engagement-driven design elements like push notifications, endless scrolling, auto features, and they’re using that and harming minors? Parents can sue for any mental health damage that’s caused," he told FOX 13 News in an interview.
But the bill also carves out a way for social media platforms to avoid litigation.
"If social media companies will do five things: If they limit the time that minors are on the apps to three hours, if they limit the time at night so they’re not on from 10:30 at night to 6:30 in the morning, if they get parents' permission, if they disable those engagement driven design elements and display things in chronological order, then they have a safe harbor from the lawsuit that can be filed from those elements," he said.
Sen. Mike McKell, R-Spanish Fork, introduced Senate Bill 194, which mostly strips out a requirement that parents must consent to their child opening a social media account.
"We deal with age-verification again and once we verify that we do have a minor? We’re going to have some tools that are just a little bit different. A minor account will look different than an account for somebody like you, an adult," he said Monday.
The bill also crafts a legislative intent to guard children's privacy online, which is a new idea. The bill demands less data collection without parental consent. The old law required all Utah social media users to provide some kind of proof of age. It still does, but in a different way now.
"Certainly you’re not going to need to load up a government ID," Sen. McKell said. "There’s a lot of vendors that do it in a lot of different ways."
Rep. Teuscher said the bills likely make the lawsuits against the state a moot point. But one of the plaintiffs, the tech trade group NetChoice, told FOX 13 News it still had issues with the bills.
"Unconstitutional laws help no one. Despite going back to the drawing board, Utah is still not on the right side of the Constitution. We look forward to a court hearing our case," the group said in a statement.
Cooper, who is the mother of eight children, said she understands the need to protect children online. But she said she believes the legislature can do better.
"They need to put more funding into educating the parents and kids on how to be appropriate and safe on social media and put more funding into keeping social media safe for the rest of us instead of putting laws on how our kids use it," she said.
