California Governor Gavin Newsom has signed AB 1394, a law that would punish web services for “knowingly facilitating, aiding, or abetting commercial sexual exploitation” of children.
As motivation, the bill text cites whistleblower complaints that Facebook responded inadequately to child abuse on the platform and a 2022 Forbes article alleging that TikTok Live had become a haven for adults to prey on teenage users.
But like many other online regulations, it raises questions about unintended side effects, including encouraging sites to under-enforce rules to avoid “knowingly” encountering illegal material or over-enforce them and remove innocuous content.
Techdirt’s Mike Masnick likened the bill to “a kind of mini-California FOSTA,” referring to the widely criticized federal law that punished web platforms for content advertising sex services.
“Unfortunately, in the legislature’s desire to decrease CSAM online it passed a bill that imposes liability in a manner inconsistent with the First Amendment,” said NetChoice vice president and general counsel Carl Szabo.
And NetChoice, which issued successful challenges to Texas and Florida social media moderation bans, convinced a judge to block the California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act as unconstitutional last month.
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