Assembly Commerce and Economic Development Committee Statement to Assembly, No. 5069 (June 22, 2023)

Summary

The Assembly Commerce and Economic Development Committee, in a statement dated June 22, 2023, reports favorably and with committee amendments Assembly Bill No. 5069. The bill prohibits the owner or operator of a social media platform from using any practice, design, feature, or affordance that would cause child users to become addicted to the platform. The owner or operator would be liable for a civil penalty not to exceed $250,000 for each violation. A platform controlled by a business entity that generated less than $100 million in gross revenue during the preceding calendar year would not be subject to the requirements.

Summary drafted by a model from the document's text below and checked by script against that text before publication. It is a navigation aid, not a reading of what the document proves. Where AI is used

Full text

ASSEMBLY COMMERCE AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
                COMMITTEE

                          STATEMENT TO

                     ASSEMBLY, No. 5069
                         with committee amendments



       STATE OF NEW JERSEY
                             DATED: JUNE 22, 2023

           The Assembly Commerce and Economic Development Committee
      reports favorably and with committee amendments Assembly Bill No.
      5069.
           As amended and reported, this bill prohibits the owner or operator
      of a social media platform from using any practice, design, feature, or
      affordance that would cause child users to become addicted to the
      platform. Under the bill, the owner or operator of the social media
      platform would be liable for a civil penalty not to exceed $250,000 for
      each violation.
           However, the platform would not be deemed to violate the
      provisions of the bill if the owner or operator of the platform hires an
      independent third party to conduct an annual audit to determine
      whether any of its practices, designs, features, or affordances would
      cause, have the potential to cause, or contribute to the addiction of
      child users to the platform, and the owner or operator of the platform
      demonstrates that the platform does not use a practice, design, feature,
      or affordance that causes, or is likely to cause, the addiction of child
      users to the platform. If an audit reveals that a practice, design,
      feature, or affordance has the potential to cause or contributes to child
      user addiction, the owner or operator of the social media platform
      would also be required to correct the practice, design, feature, or
      affordance within 30 calendar days of the completion of the audit. The
      bill also requires that a social medial platform demonstrate that it does
      not use a practice, design, feature, or affordance that causes, or is
      likely to cause, the addiction of child users to the platform.
           Additionally, certain social media platforms would not be subject
      to the requirements of the bill. These social media platforms would
      include any platform that is controlled by a business entity that
      generated less than $100 million in gross revenue during the preceding
      calendar year, or any platform whose primary function is to enable
      users to play video games.
           The bill also clarifies that the owner or operator of a social media
      platform would not be subject to liability under this bill for: (1) any
      content generated, uploaded, or shared by users of the platform; (2)
                                 2

any content that is created by third-party entities and passively
displayed by the platform; (3) any information or content for which the
platform was not responsible for creating and developing; and (4) any
conduct involving child users that would otherwise be protected under
certain federal law, the First Amendment of the United States
Constitution, or Article I, paragraph 6 of the State Constitution.

COMMITTEE AMENDMENTS:
The committee amended the bill to:
    (1) remove the option for a social media platform to conduct an
internal audit to be deemed not to violate the provisions of the bill,
requiring instead that the social media platform hire an independent
third party to conduct the audit;
    (2) clarify that a social media platform is not deemed to violate the
bill’s provisions if the owner or operator of the platform demonstrates
that the platform does not use a practice, design, feature, or affordance
that causes, or is likely to cause, the addiction of child users to the
platform;
    (3) clarify that certain provisions of the bill apply to the owner or
operator of the social media platform rather than the platform itself;
and
    (4) make grammatical changes to the bill.


File and source

File

2023-06-22_ACE_A5069_S2.pdf

Size

117,852 bytes

SHA-256

d8b1ab8a1fb472e78ae7e502463c5cc8198d998d20db84e021ae885870530ec0

Our copy

2023-06-22_ACE_A5069_S2.pdf

Original

No public link identified.