Many of these bills are already being challenged by Big Tech lobbyists, activists, and other groups. They will argue that enforcement is extremely onerous, and in some cases even technically impossible. For example, all this legislation depends on verifying the ages of users online, which is hugely difficult and presents new privacy risks. Do we really want to provide driver’s license information to Meta, for example?

The laws also expose the lack of federal protections for everyone’s security, privacy, and freedoms online, regardless of age, says Bailey Sanchez, policy counsel at the Future of Privacy Forum, another DC-based think tank. (Current federal laws prohibit websites from collecting data on users under the age of 13.)

“Someday that 17-year-old is going to turn 18, and unless they’re in a handful of states, there is no privacy law that applies to them,” she says. 

What I am reading this week

• It was a big week in layoffs for tech and media, with Disney, Meta, and Insider each cutting thousands of jobs. A few months ago, Derek Thompson wrote a nice explainer in the Atlantic about why these cutbacks are happening: it’s likely the result of a combination of factors related to the post-pandemic economy, a slowdown in advertising, and overhiring.    
• ChatGPT could be banned in the EU over the way it was trained on people’s personal data. My colleague Melissa Heikkilä wrote a great piece explaining why OpenAI is going to struggle to resolve the situation. As governments seek to address the onslaught of generative AI products, some officials are even calling for the identification of developers. 
• Apple’s been accused of stealing ideas from smaller companies under the guise of a future partnership, reports Aaron Tilley of the Wall Street Journal in this meaty feature. 
• Sadly, BuzzFeed News was shuttered on April 20 after over 10 years as one of the most influential outlets reporting on the internet and politics. Here’s a lovely letter that Charlie Warzel wrote in the Atlantic about the end of the BuzzFeed era of the internet. 

What I learned this week

Slacktivism—low-effort participation in politics online—gets a bad rap. But it might not be all that fruitless, according to a new study from Linnaeus University in Sweden. The research examined which factors cause someone to sign an online petition. It found that sharing information on social media, even casually, was the most important recruitment channel for new signatories. “​​Even if some people, who share political information on the Internet, don’t engage in traditional political activities (such as petition signing), simply by retweeting, they serve as the recruiters into these activities,” the authors wrote. So perhaps all your posting about climate change really is making a bit of a difference.