MIAMI.- Ron DeSantis, Governor of Florida, signed the HB-3 law that prohibits children under 14 years of age from having an account on a social network in the state.
DeSantis ratified the law this Monday, March 25 at the Classical Academy school in Cornerstone, in Jacksonville, in an event in which Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody, Education Commissioner Manny Díaz and the Speaker of the House of Representatives participated. Paul Renner.
The rule, also known as the “child online protection law,” requires social media platforms to prohibit minors under the age of 14 from creating new accounts and cancel their existing accounts.
The law does not name any specific social network. But in their descriptions many see platforms such as YouTube, X, Instagram, Facebook, Tik Tok, Telegram or Reddit reflected.
According to the text of the rule, the affected platforms would be those that meet the following criteria: allow users to upload content and view the content of others, in which more than 10% of active users are under 16 years of age and spend average two hours a day or more on the forum; those that use algorithms to analyze user data or information about users in order to select content for users. It will also affect “infinite scroll” networks, whose content is loaded continuously and the user scrolls endlessly. , without having to open a page. Includes networks with notifications or alerts sent by online forums, to inform the user of events related to their account. It affects platforms that display personal interactive metrics that indicate how many times other users have clicked a button to indicate their reaction to the content or shared or reposted the content. As well as, platforms that show automatically playing videos or videos that begin to play without the user activating it with a click and networks that transmit in real time.
The rule excepts those online services whose exclusive function is the sending and receiving of emails, text messages, photographs or videos, as long as they are shared only between the sender and the recipient and cannot be displayed publicly or to other users.
On the other hand, the law establishes that parents or guardians of minors can request the cancellation of the account of a child under 14 years of age and the company must cancel it within a period of no more than 10 days. In this context, parents or guardians can give their consent so that the account of their child under 14 years of age is not canceled.
Likewise, legal actions are planned against platforms that violate the provisions of this law in the form of fines and legal claims for damages to a minor. Authorizes the Department of Legal Affairs to bring actions under the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act for knowing or reckless violations of the new rule. Companies that violate the law could receive fines of up to $50,000 per violation and the injured minor could receive compensation of up to $10,000 in damages.
According to the governor, one of the objectives of the rule is to keep minors away from predators and the addictions that social networks create.
“The way the law is structured does not violate freedom of expression, what it does is identify certain functions of the platforms that cause harm and create addiction,” said the governor.
“We do not focus on the content (of the networks), but on the addictive technology used by companies. If I tell you that a company takes a child, uses the addiction that causes harm to make a profit, what does that sound like? “It sounds like human trafficking to me,” said the president of the Florida House.
Renner himself considered the law historic and stated that more crimes against minors occur on social networks than anywhere else.
The Online Minors Protection law will come into force on January 1, 2025.
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