• by Wendy Davis , 2 hours ago

Google, TikTok and Meta on Wednesday pressed a federal judge to prevent California from enforcing a law that prohibits social platforms from algorithmically recommending posts to minors without their parents' consent.

That ban will "prevent YouTube from providing safe, interesting recommendations to minors" and also violate "fundamental First Amendment principles," Google writes in a legal memorandum urging U.S. District Court Judge Edward Davila in the Northern District of California to issue an injunction.

"YouTube’s personalized recommendations reflect its own editorial judgments about the videos it believes will be relevant, valuable, and enjoyable for each particular user at a particular moment," the company argues.

Google adds that minors have a constitutional right "to access and receive YouTube’s curated recommendations" without their parents' consent.

TikTok writes in a separate request for an injunction that it uses "content moderation, personalized recommendation systems, and video promotion and filtering processes to identify and prioritize content TikTok thinks an individual is likely to find interesting and that reflects TikTok’s own content preferences."

TikTok also notes that companies other than social media platforms make personalized recommendations to users.

"Nearly all online publishers and streaming platforms -- from the New York Times to Netflix -- now consider individualized preferences in determining what content to publish and how to present it to their users," the company argues.

Meta writes in a separate motion that the law wrongly hinders its ability to curate speech.

"If a teen demonstrates an interest in science experiments or content about local scholarships, the Act would preclude Meta from recommending additional content about science experiments or local scholarships to that user unless they specifically search for 'science experiment' or 'local scholarships' every single time they log in," the company writes.

"Rather than users seeing recommended posts on topics that have meaning and value to them, the state’s standards would push Meta’s feeds towards recommending whatever content is popular among the majority -- drowning out smaller communities’ voices, interests, and preferences in the process."

The platforms' new arguments come several days after they sued over California's Protecting Our Kids From Social Media Addiction Act (SB976), which was passed last year. 

The tech industry group NetChoice previously sued to block the law, but the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in September that NetChoice was not the appropriate party to bring suit. The appellate judges said in the ruling that only individual social media companies could sue over the constraints.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta is expected to respond to the platforms' arguments by December 8.