‘It Must End’: Ed Markey Decries Social Media Companies’ Ability to Target Kids Online With Data

4 months ago

During a press briefing on Tuesday, Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) spoke in support of the Kids Online Safety Act.

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Transcript

00:00Thank you, Senator Schumer.

00:02Thank you for your leadership on this issue, Senator Schumer.

00:07He cares a lot about this issue, and we're seeing that in this bill passing on the floor

00:14of the Senate today.

00:18In 1998, I was successful in passing the Children Online Privacy Protection Act.

00:29That was for kids 12 and under.

00:30I was the author in 1998.

00:33Pediatricians had come to me saying, as we move to broadband, we're going to need more

00:38protections for children.

00:40But the tech companies were already blocking anything over the age of 12.

00:45Senator Schumer and I voted for that bill on the House floor in 1998.

00:55So all of that was eminently predictable, and we've come to today where these additional

01:04protections are going to be put on the books.

01:09When a teenage girl who's 14 today goes online to get information about bulimia or anorexia,

01:17she can now be targeted with ads because that information is out there.

01:22The Child Online and Teenage Protection Act of 2024 will ban any targeted ads towards

01:33that teenage girl using the information that has been gathered.

01:37It will be prohibited because it will only worsen the condition of that girl.

01:43It will give her more information, which she does not want, and the family would try to

01:50protect the girl from getting.

01:52Number two, the Child Online and Teenage Protection Act will give an erase button over to the

01:59parents and to the teenagers and children to say, erase any information you've gathered

02:06about that child.

02:08Just erase it.

02:09Delete it.

02:10Delete that post.

02:11I do not want it to come back and harm my child when they're older.

02:16Erase it right now.

02:17And third, there has to be permission which is elicited from the teenager to gather the

02:24information in the first place.

02:27It just has to be something that's done with permission.

02:31So no targeted ads, an eraser button, and permission has to be elicited in order to

02:40gather the information in the first place.

02:43When I was a boy and a salesman came to our front door and I'm nine years old, my mother

02:50would just say that through the letter opener, just tell the salesman, Eddie, your mother

02:55is not home.

02:56And I would tell the salesman that through the letter opener and then I'd say to my mother,

03:00but you are home.

03:01And she would say, that salesman's not getting into our living room.

03:05Your father is not home.

03:06Well, those salesmen online have gotten around that front door and are into the lives of

03:10teenagers and children in our country.

03:13And what the COPPA 2.0 does is it just says no.

03:19No to gathering the information, no to targeting the kids, and no to gathering the information

03:24in the first place.

03:25Because that data is the oxygen for these social media companies to be able to target

03:29these kids and it must end.

03:32So that's where we are today, a Privacy Bill of Rights for teenagers and children in our

03:37country.

03:40And like COSA, Senator Cassidy and I did this completely on a bipartisan basis from

03:48the get-go.

03:49So I just want to thank Senator Cassidy for all of his great work on this issue as well.

‘It Must End’: Ed Markey Decries Social Media Companies’ Ability to Target Kids Online With Data

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