The Law and Business of Social Media
March 19, 2019 - Advertising, Digital Content, Cyberbullying, Privacy, Big Data, COPPA, Free Speech

YouTube disallows ads on anti-vax content; privacy bills aim to extend children’s protections from Internet harm, secure users’ control over data

New York is now one of the 43 states where “revenge porn,” the posting of explicit photographs or videos to the Internet without the subject’s consent, is punishable by law. See how far the states have come – find out how many had criminalized revenge porn as of 2014, when Socially Aware first covered the issue.

YouTube announced that it will not allow channels that promote anti-vaccination videos to run advertisements because such videos violate the platform’s policy, which, among other things, disallows the monetization of “dangerous content.” Many of the companies whose ads appeared alongside anti-vaccination content say they were not aware it was happening. Find out how that could be possible.

Senator John Kennedy (R-LA) has introduced a bill that would give Internet users considerably more control over their personal data by mandating that social media companies inform registrants—in simple, easy-to-understand terms—that they are entering into an agreement licensing their personal data to the company. Coined the Own Your Own Data Act, the legislation would also require social media platforms to make it easy for their registrants to cancel the licensing agreement and obtain the collected data and any analysis of it.

Another privacy bill, this one proposed by Senators Ed Markey (D-MA) and Josh Hawley (R-MO), would amend the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) to completely prohibit the running of targeted advertisements on websites targeted to children. Find out how else the bill would amend COPPA, and how long companies would have to comply with the amendment if it became law.

The debate over whether politicians have a right to block people on social media rages on.

The United States isn’t the only country whose president favors social media as a vehicle for sharing his views.

A #TwitterLaw symposium is being held at the University of Idaho College of Law next month. Road trip, anyone?

Even the British Royal Family has to contend with social media trolls.