By: Ilana Siyance

Google and Meta are leading a push to put an end to New York legislation aimed at protecting children online. As reported by the NY Post, the tech giants are poised to spend over $1 million in the controversial lobbying battle.

A group of Big Tech firms, advocacy groups and companies from other sectors have already spent a collective $823,235 lobbying Albany lawmakers through mid-March to fight against the two bills – the Stop Addictive Feeds Exploitation (SAFE) for Kids Act, and the New York Child Data Protection Act, per recent public disclosures.

“This is an astonishing amount of money to be spent to kill two reasonable bills,” said one longtime Albany insider who requested anonymity. The proposed SAFE Act would work to crack down on addictive recommendation algorithms used by social media apps by requiring them to provide default chronological feeds for users 18 or younger unless they receive parental consent. It would also allow parents to impose time limits on social media use and in-app notifications. The Child Data Protection Act would work to block apps from collecting or selling personal data or location for users under 18 unless they consent. Kids under 13 would require parental consent.

The lobby spending to fight the bills is expected to beat $1 million by the next round of disclosures come out next month, sources say. “This could be considered ‘historic’ in the sense that the bills are relatively low impact for the state compared with other issues that get a lot of lobbyist attention,” said Danny Weiss, a Capitol Hill veteran and chief advocacy officer at Common Sense Media, which supports the bills. Of course, lobbying is expensive in NY, and other bills also saw huge efforts in lobbying.

Those bills, however, included the lucrative cannabis industry, where millions of dollars were spent to lobby over a period of several years in a bid to legalize marijuana in the state of NY. In the real estate world, a group of landlords and their advocates reportedly spent $1.4 million in 2022 to lobby against passage of new protections for tenants. The big tech firms are spending these exorbitant funds to lobby the children’s protection acts. “They are spending a lot of money to oppose these bills, as if they pose an existential threat to New York,” Weiss said of the blitz from Big Tech.

Both of the online child protection bills were already endorsed last fall by Democratic NY Gov. Kathy Hochul and State Attorney General Letitia James. During a press conference in January, Hochul had described social media as “a silent killer of our children’s generation.” The bills are being supported by over 25 groups, including Mothers Against Media Addiction and the NYS United Teachers Union.

Per the Post, the Tech firms argue that the legislation would stifle freedom of speech, online privacy for teens, limit internet access for migrants and other underserved communities, and essentially disable algorithms that help to crack down on hate speech.

The two acts are slated to move through committee in the state assembly as early as this week, and then be followed by a floor vote. The state senate is also expected to vote on the bills in the near future.

State Sen. Andrew Gounardes, who co-sponsors the bills, said opponents have funded an aggressive “whisper campaign” in Albany to delay or defeat the legislation.