• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, December 12, 2024

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is investigating 15 companies -- including the social platforms Instagram, Reddit and Discord, as well as chatbot service character.ai -- over their practices regarding minors' data, he said Thursday.

He is specifically examining whether the companies are violating two separate state laws – the Securing Children Online through Parental Empowerment Act and the Texas Data Privacy and Security Act.

The Securing Children Online through Parental Empowerment Act (HB 18), passed last year, requires social platforms to use filtering technology to prevent "harmful" content from being served to minors under 18, and has privacy provisions include restrictions on data collection from minors and targeted advertising to them.

In September, U.S. District Court Judge Robert Pitman in Austin blocked provisions of that law relating to “harmful” content on First Amendment grounds, but allowed the restrictions on data collection and targeted advertising to take effect.

Pitman said at the time that restrictions on the collection and use of data might be blocked at a future date, but added that wasn't immediately clear to him that they are unconstitutional. He specifically said those portions of the law “seem to regulate conduct and only incidentally burden speech (if at all).”

The Texas Data Privacy and Security Act, also passed last year, includes provisions requiring businesses to allow state residents to opt out of targeted advertising –defined by the bill as serving ads to people based on their online activity over time and across nonaffiliated websites or apps. That law also requires companies to obtain parental consent before collecting or harnessing data from children younger than 13.

Paxton recently sued TikTok for allegedly violating the Securing Children Online through Parental Empowerment Act by sharing teens' personal data without first obtaining verifiable parental consent.

He claimed in a complaint filed in Galveston County that TikTok shares "personal identifying information" of minors under 18 with "business partners, including advertisers, and search engines,” and that the app shares minors' names and usernames with other users.

Paxton's new investigation comes the same week that character.ai was sued for allegedly harming minors.

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That complaint, brought in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, alleges that character.ai “poses a clear and present danger to American youth causing serious harms to thousands of kids, including suicide, self-mutilation, sexual solicitation, isolation, depression, anxiety, and harm towards others.”