PROTECT Kids Act introduced in the House

House lawmakers have introduced new legislation that attempts to modernize the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). Dubbed the "Preventing Real Online Threats Endangering Children Today," or PROTECT Kids act for short, Representatives Tim Walberg (R-MI) and Bobby Rush (D-IL) sponsored the bipartisan bill.

If Congress enacts the bill, online services, websites and apps will need to give parents the ability to delete any personal information related to their children. That's a power that COPPA, in its current form, doesn't provide parents. The legislation also aims to raise the age at which companies can collect data from an individual without parental consent from 13 to 16, in addition to broadening COPPA's protections to include mobile apps, as well as geolocation and biometric data. When it comes to sites such as Facebook, this means kids won't be able to create an account until they're 16 or older.

https://www.engadget.com/2020/01/09/us-lawmakers-introduce-protect-kids-act/

Uh-oh! COPPA and the FTC have already damaged YouTube's reputation as being for the over-13's. If the PROTECT Kids Act is enabled, it will remove and/or privatize videos for people from 13-15, and eventually pull the plug on YouTube when it removes all the videos except for those 16 or 18 and older! We don't want that to happen!

https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2020/01/13/lawmakers-look-to-spread-coppa-out-to-cover-kids-up-to-16/

YouTube is slowly becoming shite anyways.

Google has messed with the algorithms so it's becoming harder and harder to find anything that isn't MSM.

It's stupid, if I wanted to watch that garbage I would pay for cable.

This nation has given up on proper parenting.

Ain't that the truth.

Meeting her new kid Apple.

@vl4d_l3nin: But what is "propper parenting" when it comes to new tech? I've changed my thinking on cell phones and social media for my kids a lot over the last few years, as new research comes out, and new interpretations of that research are presented.

We are presented with a lot of new situations, that beg a lot of new questions, and there aren't a whole lot of consistent answers yet. The current crop of kids and parents are guinea pigs in a giant sociological experiment being performed on the whole human race, and results are still pending.

Regulating this could be riskey, but I can appreciate the idea of at least atttempting to shift more control toward parents and away from corporations.

I believe this legislation would be a very good thing. It's about time someone starts fighting back against big tech, even if many parents would prefer to be hands off and let their phones entertain their kids.

It's been the same thing over and over. People said electricity was going to ruin kids, then radio, TV, Video games, Phones and now social media. It's just the same thing different generation.

Yup

Kids have potential problems with all of those things if they don't have parents that moderate them

Kids have potential to have problems with anything if parents don't parent.

Yup.

This is bullshit! I'm sorry, but moving the internet consent age to 16? Parents fault they don't bother, why should everyone else suffer with this?

Too much government.

I know. This is reminiscent of the movie South Park: Bigger, Longer, & Uncut, when Kyle tells his mother Sheila, "Whenever I get in trouble, you go off and blame everybody else. But I'm the one to blame. Deal with me!"

@npiet1: And many parents are lazy, so they ask the government to do it for them. That was pretty much my initial post in this thread. We've come full circle.

Can you source that parents are behind this?

This bill came around because Google was hit with a fine for taking metadata from kids. This was completely inadvertent because it violates YouTube's TOS for kids to make an account, but kids did it anyway because parents were either ignorant or lazy, so now the government is coming in to save the day.

So just don't collect metadata on anyone making an account and in that account stating they are under 18...

And every one of those things you mentioned were regulated in some way, especially where kids were concerned. This is what the FCC does, and the FTC before Reagan killed any and all rules about marketing to kids. The direct result of which are Millennials, who are apparently obese whiny narcissists with short attention spans and are terrible with money.

@horgen: Problem is the kids were lying about how old they were. Google tried to get around it with the "YouTube kids" app, which only showed family friendly content and didn't collect metadata. To pretend YouTube didn't at least try is pretty disingenuous

LOL this is abject nonsense imo. Any parent who blames marketing for their kid being a fat, whiney money burner is not an effective parent.

So what? The goverment regulates a lot more than just things kids are into. That's not a result unless you have proof, because I can link Millennial are spending less than boomers and earn less too. That makes it seem like they are better with money than then boomers.

I put in the "apparently" to show the last sentence was meant to be sarcastic, but that is hard to construe in writing. Sorry. Although, I wouldn't call it complete nonsense either. Childhood obesity rates increased dramatically after junk food was allowed to be marketed directly at children with no over site. Correlation does not necessarily mean causation, but it is something to think about.

I stand by the first part of my comment. Media tends to be regulated in some capacity early on while people are getting their head around it's impact. We still haven't really figured all that out with social media, and I think some form of regulation in regards to kids may be warranted. I can't really say if this particular bill is the right approach though.

Yup.

Yes.

Yup.

Ah.

Who hasn't? :P

But that is really on the parents though. Or culture...

It's a shame we don't have an act that punishes the parents for not doing their job in the first place.

Swear to god, it's moments like this that I think you should need a license to procreate. Yes I know that's Big Brother fascism but god damn just because you can have a kid doesn't mean you should. Get some training for it first. And just because your parents were shit doesn't mean you should have kids so you "can show them you will be a better parent" (hint: you will be just as bad as your parents were to you).