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| Friend, For years, my colleagues and I have sounded alarms about how the government and the private sector have access to way too much of our personal data. Meta, X and YouTube have actively rolled back the systems and staff necessary to deliver on their promises to keep users safe. Last week, the Senate Judiciary Committee heard from the CEOs of Discord, Meta, Snap, TikTok and X about what they’re doing (if anything) to protect kids on their platforms.1 The same day, I was honored to participate in the White House’s first-of-its-kind gathering of experts to advise the Kids Online Health and Safety Task Force.2 This flurry of activity is a welcome sign of the growing political will to protect our digital civil rights, for the sake of our children (and users of all ages). Since 2017, Congress has held roughly 40 hearings on the need for data privacy, with many of those devoted to the need for protections for kids. Children are a unique set of users who must be protected from abuse, and yet lawmakers have moved no meaningful legislation. The most powerful step we can take now to rein in online manipulation is to advance robust federal data-privacy legislation that would limit the information that government and corporations can collect about us (or use against us). If you agree that Congress must recognize the threat that data collection poses to vulnerable users, please add your name to our petition today. Companies often train their algorithms using untold amounts of individuals’ data. We know that even the most careful internet users have had their personal information scraped by unscrupulous social-media platforms, ISPs, government agencies and more — it’s chilling to think about how much greater the risk is to children and other vulnerable groups. And algorithms typically carry offline biases into the online world since they are trained by humans using our language and patterns of behavior.3 Algorithms make assumptions that are too often built on decades of institutionalized discrimination and segregation. Free Press Action has been pushing for reforms for years, including introducing model legislation4 that explains how algorithmic discrimination and data privacy are civil-rights concerns. We’ve also worked with our partners in the Disinfo Defense League to mobilize dozens of grassroots organizations behind a just and democratic tech-policy platform.5 Sign our petition to remind Congress that it must show the same urgency that parents and advocates have shown for years. It’s time to swiftly advance policies that prioritize the digital civil rights of children and everyone else online. Thank you, Nora Benavidez Senior Counsel and Director of Digital Justice and Civil Rights Free Press Action freepress.net P.S. You can find what we uncovered about social-media companies’ reckless choices in our Big Tech Backslide report. 1. “Big Tech and the Online Child Sexual Exploitation Crisis,” U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, Jan. 31, 2024 2. “Kids Online Health and Safety Task Force Principal Listening Session,” National Telecommunications and Information Administration, Jan. 31, 2024 3. “Why Algorithms Can Be Racist and Sexist,” Vox, Feb. 18, 2020 4. “The Online Civil Rights and Privacy Act of 2019,” Free Press Action, March 9, 2019 5. “Disinfo Defense League Policy Platform,” Disinfo Defense League, December 2021  | ||||||||
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