Breaking the Internet Won't Save the Kids
Plus notes on trade, tenors, drunkards, and Americans.
Some policy makers seem to assume that they ought to be able to justify any imprudent, sweeping, and nonsensically constructed piece of online regulation simply by asserting that it will protect children.
Last year, California enacted such an imprudent, sweeping, and nonsensically constructed law, the Age-Appropriate Design Code Act (AADCA). It threatened free speech and online privacy, and it would have reduced the usefulness of large swaths of the internet greatly for users of all ages.
A federal judge unsurprisingly has enjoined the law. This author reported on the decision at InsideSources:
“Self-censorship is (the AADCA’s) self-professed aim,” alleges NetChoice, a trade group representing tech companies, which brought the case.
The astoundingly broad AADCA regulates businesses (as defined by California statute) that host websites that are “likely to be accessed by children.” Legal minors are, of course, likely to access almost every type of website. The law provides websites two paths to avoid liability: extend to all users the law’s protections for children — which California self-admittedly designed to limit children’s access to certain content — or verify every user’s age.
Both options would likely chill speech. Applying speech-limiting children’s safety provisions to adults would “impermissibly ‘reduce the adult population…to reading only what is fit for children,’” Freeman reasoned. Alternatively, many websites implementing universal age verification would likely exclude children altogether to avoid further compliance costs. The judge writes that “the provision here would serve to chill a ‘substantially excessive’ amount of protected speech to the extent that content providers wish to reach children but choose not.”
Although she acknowledged the state’s interest in protecting children from online harm, Freeman correctly assessed that much of the AADCA likely cannot meet a moderately demanding level of scrutiny. California failed repeatedly to show that the law’s provisions would meaningfully protect children from online harms; in some instances, Freeman found that the law would, in fact, harm children and other users.
For example, the AADCA’s promotion of age verification impinges on all users’ privacy — directly contravening the law’s stated aims. To identify underage users reliably, websites must collect from all users either age-confirming documentation — e.g., a government-issued identification card — or biometric data such as a facial scan. (Some websites may outsource this to third parties.) “The…age estimation provision appears not only unlikely to materially alleviate the harm of insufficient data and privacy protections for children but actually likely to exacerbate the problem by inducing covered businesses to require consumers, including children, to divulge additional personal information,” Freeman wrote.
Some Wisdom
Old, economically illiterate protectionist nonsense deserves to be met with old, evergreen free-market refutations. This week, at the American Institute for Economic Research, this author discussed Adam Smith’s defense of free trade.
In his 1776 classic, The Wealth of Nations, Scottish economist Adam Smith observed that “All…find it for their interest to employ their whole industry in a way in which they have some advantage over their neighbours, and to purchase…whatever else they have occasion for.”
Like any tax, tariffs artificially raise consumer prices, thus “protecting” domestic manufacturers from foreign competitors offering the same goods cheaper. Smith recognizes the obvious: “If the produce of domestic can be brought there as cheap as that of foreign industry, the regulation is evidently useless,” he argues. “If it cannot, it must generally be hurtful.” Here, Smith continues, personal finance can explain international trade, writing, “It is the maxim of every prudent master of a family never to attempt to make at home what it will cost him more to make than to buy.”
Economics concerns the allocation of scarce resources that have alternative uses. Government misdirection of resources leeches economic productivity despite policy makers’ rosy promises. Tariffs force domestic consumers to pay more for goods, harming especially those firms that lie downstream in protected industries’ supply chains. “The industry of the country…is thus turned away from a more, to a less advantageous employment, and the exchangeable value of its annual produce, instead of being increased, according to the intention of the lawgiver, must necessarily be diminished by every such regulation,” Smith writes.
…
Adam Smith decried protectionism in a nation, 18th-century England, whose mercantilist economic system placed excessive restraints on the individual’s ability to flourish and to create economic value. The Scotsman concluded that no ruler should attempt to plan an economy. “The statesman, who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals, would…assume an authority which could safely be trusted, not only to no single person, but to no council or senate whatever,” he wrote.
In short, as economist Friedrich Hayek argued famously almost two centuries after, no government can possibly possess the knowledge necessary to direct commerce and capital allocation effectively.
Some Beauty
Tenor Giuseppe Giacomini deserves prestige alongside Corelli, Del Monaco, and the other exquisite hefty tenors in operatic tradition. Sadly, he is unfamiliar to too many — even among opera fans. His Puccini is exquisite, as is his Ponchielli and his Bizet. (What’s more, the man sung a fabulous Rodolfo just months from his 70th birthday.)
Some Humor
German Chancelor Otto von Bismark reputedly stated, “God has a special providence for fools, drunkards, and the United States of America.”
Sundry Links, &c.
Baseball is awesome — no link, just an encouragement to watch the playoffs.
At least they’re getting recognition for it.