A new law might be a tough pill for big tech to swallow
Issue #53
When you use some tech platforms today, there’s a tradeoff involved: we use Google because it’s a convenient way to search for things, but we know that whatever we search for will follow us around the internet for a while. We use Facebook because it’s an easy way to stay in touch with old classmates, but we know they’re doing unseemly things with our data. It’s just “the way things are,” and we navigate the digital world every day despite the contestant intrusions into our privacy. As consumers, we haven’t had a whole lot of protections—but a new bipartisan bill before Congress might tip the scales away from Big Tech.
The bill is called the American Data Privacy and Protection Act, and it has a lot of privacy advocates… pretty pleased, actually. According to Gilad Edelman at Wired, “It just might have enough bipartisan support to become law—meaning that, after decades of inaction, the United States could soon have a real federal privacy statute.” The bill is big news for a few reasons. The first is that it outlines something called “data minimization.” That would mean that companies could only collect and use your data for one of 17 specific reasons. It means that they can’t collect information they don’t reasonably need. We should note that one of the 17 reasons is targeted advertising, but there are a few new restrictions on the practice—including that companies can’t serve any targeted ads to minors, and they must allow customers to opt out of it entirely.
In addition, companies wouldn’t be able to serve you ads based on “sensitive information,” which includes stuff like health data, private communications and location data. And, companies wouldn’t be able to track you across the internet. This would spell the end of the Facebook tracking pixel, which helps Meta track your movements across the internet even when you don’t have a Facebook profile.
If this bill becomes law (and it’s actually enforceable) it will be a pretty fundamental shift. And a fundamental shift in privacy would have far-reaching consequences for lots of tech companies because they quite literally bank on being able to harvest and monetize our data. Any changes to privacy regulations would disrupt their business models. We saw a preview of this when Apple changed privacy settings for iOS, which allowed users to “ask apps not to track.” With a reported 94% of users in the US opting out of tracking, companies like Facebook and Snapchat saw direct impacts on their bottom lines.
While a lot of Big Tech (and small tech) companies might dread a bill like the American Data Privacy and Protection Act, I’d welcome it. In fact, we’ve been designing our apps to respect our users’ privacy since the outset. We’re mindful only to collect what data we absolutely need to make our apps function. We never sell or use that data to show targeted ads. And we don’t use algorithms to pre-select what you see in our apps. When we launched Paths in Kinzoo Messenger, we made the very deliberate decision to let our users opt-in to the content they wanted to follow. At the end of the day, we believe in transparency and choice. We believe that we should challenge ourselves to create tech products that kids and families truly see value in. Because if tech companies can achieve that, then they don’t need to invade anyone’s privacy for the sake of profit.
A deeper dive
Here are a few helpful resources in case you want to really dig into today's topic:
For more information on the proposed legislation, you can check out this rundown in Wired. As the author points out, there are still a lot of steps that need to happen before this bill can become law—so it’ll be interesting to see what comes of it.
When it comes to regulating Big Tech, it’s been a slow and halting process. I wouldn’t advise anyone to hold their breath for legislation. But, changes like the one Apple made to its privacy settings can make a difference, however incremental. Just ask Facebook.
TL;DR
Too long; didn't read. It shouldn't be a full-time job to keep up on industry news, so here is a mercifully quick summary of some other notable developments:
Do you ever wonder what the internet looks like for your neighbor? Your boss? Your best friend? Because of the magic of algorithms, we all have slightly different social feeds, search results—and even the mix of news articles we see online might be different. If algorithms makes you a little anxious, you’re not alone. In fact, the New Yorker has a name for what you might be feeling: Algorithmic anxiety. It’s the feeling that the “entire ecosystem of content that we interact with online has been engineered to influence us in ways that we can’t quite parse, and that have only a distant relationship to our own authentic preferences.”
A lot of websites and apps claim that the data they collect from you gets “anonymized.” Sounds good, right? This might give us a sense of security when we use these services, but as it turns out, some of these claims are misleading. The FTC is planning on cracking down on this dodgy behavior—and it’s put them on notice as well.
And lastly
Here are a few more pieces of original writing from me and my team—just in case you're keen for more:
Are your kids into gaming? Are you? Gaming online together can actually have a lot of positive effects for families. My team has three tips to help you and your children get the most out of your digital family games night. Check them out here.
Lots of families are relying on digital communication more and more—and that can lead some parents to worry about what might be lost from face-to-face communication. Rest assured, staying in touch via screens can be beneficial for families, and here are some tips from my team to help kids understand and develop empathy, even if they’re not interacting in person.
Okay, that's it from me until next time. If you enjoyed this newsletter, and know of another parent who would as well, please feel free to forward it along.