Lawyers representing Google and Meta are suing Virginia lawmakers to stop a new social media age verification law
Submitted 15 hours ago by bax2@lemmy.world to mildlyinfuriating@lemmy.world
https://www.wvtf.org/news/2025-11-21/virginia-sued-over-new-social-media-age-verification-law
FriendOfDeSoto@startrek.website 14 hours ago
Which part is infuriating here? The law that will be difficult to enforce and probably has all sorts of unintended side effects? Or that lawyers, and indeed layers funded by big internet companies, are suing?
Fundamentally, let them sue. Not everything coming out of the legislatures the world over is pristine law and this is how the system can correct for mistakes. Also, I’m sadly more on the side of the Googles and the Metas. Their freedom of speech argument is entirely self serving but that doesn’t make it wrong. Any age verification has itself a chilling effect on speech online. Forcing it creates more data sets to be leaked and hacked and in this case of minors’ information, not grownups’ who can make an educated decision if they want to go through with it to go watch porn. This is not a clear case of mild infuriation.
Yecoh@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
This is a uniquely american approach.
FriendOfDeSoto@startrek.website 10 hours ago
Trusting judges is not uniquely American. You’ll find similar processes on the continent across the channel. The hurdles of who can sue and under which circumstances may differ. The appointment of judges is often less politicized. I think the UK is the unique case here and I believe that’s because by and large there isn’t a written constitution, at the very least not in the same way as in the US or France or Poland. Supreme courts are there as a check on whether or not laws conform to constitutional values and have the power to overrule a legislature when it passes laws that don’t. It’s not an “upper hand” deal, it’s checks and balances.
The American legal system is not great. I don’t know the details of the case you mentioned. One bad decision doesn’t mean the whole system needs to be abolished. If that were so I’d like to have a word with the UK’s highest court on what constitutes a woman.
ulterno@programming.dev 13 hours ago
They’ll probably end up going the route of age and identity verification being mandatory, but kids still being allowed to use social media.
That way they get more personal videos for their AI and this time, legally non-deletable.
What we are seeing now, is just a choreographed prelude to reduce public backlash.