Senate Institutions committee advances House-amended S.69, an "age-appropriate design" bill for social media

At a Senate Institutions Committee meeting Wednesday, May 28, the committee took a straw poll to advance the House-amended S.69, the Age-Appropriate Design Code, aimed at curbing risks social media platforms pose to children by requiring defaults and behind-the-scenes design changes.

The bill’s House sponsor, Representative Tony Mickles, told the committee S.69 is intended to “put some protections on the children” by focusing on algorithmic design and default privacy settings rather than regulating content. He said the bill would tell platforms to default to the most private settings for child accounts and to restrict unsolicited adult contact with minors unless the adult can verify a prior relationship. “If that adult does not know the child, they should not be able to have access,” Mickles said.

The measure,…