North Carolina bill will require people to share their ID with social media companies
In North Carolina, lawmakers are considering a bill that would give consumers more control over the data collected and sold by companies. Great! Who can object to this? But that's not all. Following national trends, it will also put forward disturbing social media age verification requirements. While these laws stand out in the framework of “Save the Kids”, they can do more harm than good.
Last month, state Senators Terry Brown (D) and Allen Chesser (R) introduced the NC Personal Data Privacy Act, which sets out six consumer rights regarding personal data. In it, people can ask to see the information collected about them, the correct inaccuracy, and opt out of whether the company sells its data to a third party. Some information is exempt, such as HIPAA-protected health information. Additionally, companies do not need to comply with this that reveals trade secrets.
The bill appears to follow in part North Carolina’s Consumer Privacy Act, which was previously introduced in the state Senate but died on the committee. But Eric Null, co-director of the Center for Democracy and Technology’s Privacy and Data Project, told Gizmodo via email that the bill is “another example of industry-friendly privacy legislation” and that “the protections for data minimization (essentially surrounding deceptive practices) are associated with extremely broad exemptions, with little protection “data minimization protection (essentially restarting deceptive practices)”.
Unlike its predecessors, the bill isn’t just focused on consumer privacy. In the second half of the year, it also asked social media to establish a “reasonable age verification method” to prevent minors from creating accounts without their parents’ permission. By law, social media platforms must leverage third-party vendors to perform this process. Approved methods include providing a driver's license or another form of government-issued ID card to a third party. There are some exceptions to this process, such as gaming websites or platforms earning less than $100,000 per year.
Age verification legislation is often associated with restricting porn access, such as HB 1181 in Texas is now the center of Supreme Court cases. Last year, North Carolina even passed its own pornography bill, known as the Pavement Act. But legislation extending age verification to social media has been erupting nationwide. In 2023, Arkansas passed its version, and many states are considering bills including Minnesota, which actually want to implement anonymous verification and Pennsylvania. This year, U.S. senators also reintroduced the Social Media Act to verify social media age by the federal government.
However, anyone who is conscious will be shocked by the legislation. First: They won't work. It's already easy to do age verification on porn sites. But according to NULL, age verification is “privacy intrusive”, especially when using a third-party vendor.
“Requiring … there is no benefit beyond the age verification provider,” Null said. “Forcing things like this is more privacy intrusive because social media companies can not only access it [to] User ID, service provider will do it. ”
Although most bills prohibit social media platforms and/or suppliers from retaining people’s information, you cannot guarantee it. Companies have been introducing the data they have or how they use it. (This makes the irony of age verification a little ironic, making it a bill that constitutes data protection, but I digress.) Furthermore, data breaches are becoming increasingly common, which can have real-world consequences, such as identity theft.
Privacy advocates like the Electronic Border Foundation also noted that age verification legislation would disproportionately limit already marginalized communities. In the United States, millions of adults do not have or cannot obtain government IDs. The most affected people include low-income people, older people, young people and people of color. Overall, while the law seems to be solving the problem, age verification belongs to the American moral panic that is usually disguised as progress.
