Online protections advance despite First Amendment concerns

By Fred Knapp , Senior Reporter/Producer Nebraska Public Media

9 de Abril de 2025 a las 17:00 ·

Sen. Carolyn Bosn in debate Wednesday (Photo by Fred Knapp, Nebraska Public Media News) — Sen. Carolyn Bosn in debate Wednesday. (Fred Knapp/Nebraska Public Media News)

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A bill aimed at protecting Nebraskans under age 18 from harmful practices by online services is advancing in the Legislature, despite concerns that it may violate First Amendment free speech rights.

At the request of Gov. Jim Pillen, Sen. Carolyn Bosn introduced what’s dubbed the Age-Appropriate Online Design Code Act. The proposal seeks to regulate how services like Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram interact with young customers. It would restrict design features, like infinite scrolling, rewards for spending time on the site, and products that can be advertised to young people. In Wednesday’s debate, Bosn explained the goal.

“What we're trying to protect minors from are companies who are solely based on the income they receive from selling your data," she said. "Think about this: Facebook, Tiktok. They're not selling a product. You get nothing tangibly out of spending time on these platforms. They are profiting off of your being on there by selling your data."

Bosn has cited a litany of mental health and educational problems she linked to overuse of social media. The bill specifically prohibits features it says subvert or impair user autonomy, decision-making, or choice. It limits the hours companies can send notifications or push alerts to young people, and prohibits advertising tobacco, alcohol or gambling to them. And it requires companies to offer a series of tools, like limiting who can communicate with the user, or controlling in-game purchases.

Sen. George Dungan objected to the requirement in the bill that companies would have to make those restrictions their default settings. He called that an overly broad regulation of speech.

“We, the state, cannot tell Facebook, for example, how to curate the content on your feed, the thing that you see when you log into Facebook, because it is akin to us exercising or telling, for example, a newspaper how to exercise their editorial discretion,” he said.

Dungan said courts have halted similar laws passed in Arkansas and California.

“Every step of the way, bills similar to this have been stopped, whether they're identical or not," he said. "The courts have expressed a great concern over government exercising what is effectively censorship at a state level, over what these individual entities can or cannot express on their social media apps or their websites, or what other services there are."

Bosn said she has already modified her bill to address those concerns.

“I think this is a narrowly-tailored version of the bill that does not have any concerns for violation of the First Amendment because of those things that have been stripped out of the bill… I don't know how to say this. I can tell you that the language that's in the California version isn't in my bill, but I can't make you understand it. I can tell you it's not in there,” she told her fellow senators.

Dungan proposed an amendment to delete the requirement to make the most restrictive settings the default settings. But senators defeated that on a vote of 26-10.

They did accept an amendment from Sen. John Cavanaugh to ensure that any fines collected for violations of the law – up to $50,000 per violation – go for the support of schools.

Cavanaugh said he was just trying to clarify that the law would adhere to a requirement in the Nebraska Constitution which he called a model for other states.

“Other states have this real problem where they fund their local governments through fines assessed on traffic infractions and other offenses. And so a huge example of this in recent years was the city of Ferguson, Missouri, where they had something like 60% of the city budget was funded on these infractions and fees and things like that, which then incentivizes criminalization or penalization of people to fund the budget,” he said.

Bosn didn’t oppose the amendment, which senators adopted on a vote of 39-0. They then gave the bill second-round approval on a voice vote. It will still need one more vote of approval before being sent to the governor for his signature.