• by Wendy Davis , Yesterday

California Governor Gavin Newsom on Thursday signed a bill that prohibits social media platforms outright from providing "addictive features" -- including algorithmically recommended content and videos that play automatically -- to users under 16.

Newsom said at the signing ceremony that the law is "better" than the one in Australia, which bans young teens from social media. 

"This is about the features themselves," Newsom said referring to the new statute. "This is about actually addressing the problem -- the scrolling, the algorithms."

He continued that the new law addresses "substantive issues around the engineering."

"If you address that, then the age issue is not the essential issue," he said.

The new law (Assembly Bill 1709) amends California's existing Protecting Our Kids From Social Media Addiction Act -- a 2024 statute that requires platforms to obtain parental consent before algorithmically recommending posts to users under 18.

That 2024 law already faces a challenge by Google, Meta and TikTok, which argue the statute violates their First Amendment right to wield editorial control over their platforms.

The digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation unsuccessfully urged Newsom to veto the new measure, arguing that it "cuts young people off from essential information and experiences."

The organization writes that platforms' recommendation systems "allow all users to share their content widely and find new friends, communities, and audiences."

The group also said the bill would force young social media users onto "a dysfunctional, stripped-down version of social media heavily burdens their constitutional rights to access information and participate in public discourse."