Meta Won’t Fight Online Kid Safety Regulations Because It Sees Them As A Competitive Moat

Forget everything you think you know about Mark Zuckerberg and his army of lobbyists blocking any attempt to regulate social media. The truth is more nuanced (but perhaps less complicated). Meta is actually happy with internet regulations: they keep down competitive threats.

I’ve been trying to make this point for a while: while politicians and the media falsely believe that Meta is standing in the way of internet regulations, nothing is further from the truth. Meta knows full well that it has the legal firepower to comply with basically any internet regulations, and as the company has had to deal with growing competition, it loves the idea of using regulations as a moat to keep competitors at bay.

Remember, Meta’s (then Facebook’s) vocal support of FOSTA caused that bill to become law. That was after we were told for months that it was “big tech” that was blocking this horrible law, that has since been shown to have cost many lives (just as many of us critics predicted). Back then, those of us who protested FOSTA were told we were “big tech shills,” only to then have it be made clear that “big tech” was perfectly happy with the law.

There’s a pretty straight through line from FOSTA to the kid safety bills we see today. FOSTA was seen as a way to “attack big tech” over sex trafficking. Politicians have tried to run the same playbook on a number of topics, including terrorism, illegal drugs, and now “child safety.” Child safety is the one that stuck, but it’s the same cynical game: by painting “big tech” as the enemy, politicians can dismiss principled criticism and score easy political points.

So, whenever we hear claims about how Meta and Google are standing in the way of “child safety” laws, or that Meta and Google need to “come to the table” on various regulatory proposals, we have to laugh. Meta and Google have no problem with most of these laws. They know that it’s the government building a moat for them that helps limit the ability of upstart competitors to compete in the marketplace.

For the last couple of years, as various “protect the children online” laws have been passed, one of the most frustrating bits has been lots of people falsely insisting that any criticism of these laws is “big tech talking points.” That was the line trotted out by New York politicians in response to any criticism of their “SAFE for Kids Act.” And we’ve heard similar criticism from politicians (and, frankly, media folks) in other states from Florida to California to Texas to Utah to Ohio and more.

Behind the scenes, I’ve been hearing all this time that companies like Meta, Google, and even Apple are actually fine with all these laws and don’t even want them challenged. NetChoice, the trade organization that has been at the forefront of challenging many of these laws, has a unique setup in that their members don’t control the organization’s actions and don’t control which lawsuits it takes or doesn’t take.

So while everyone has assumed that NetChoice lawsuits are really proxies for “big tech” member companies like Meta and Google, I keep hearing whispered rumors that the companies are actually upset about the lawsuits and would be quite happy with just letting these laws go into practice. They know they can handle the compliance costs and (more to the point) that upstart competitors can’t.

Still, I’ve never had anything more than rumors and whispers, which was not enough to report on it all… until now. The Washington Post got its hands on a letter from lawyers representing Meta to a Maryland legislator saying that it would not stand in the way of any “protect the children” laws:

The social media giant would not back an attempt to block the measure in court, a lawyer for the firm Rifkin Weiner Livingston wrote in a previously unreported email to Maryland Del. Jared Solomon (D-Montgomery), according to a screenshot obtained by the Tech Brief.

Solomon was worried that NetChoice and others would sue over Maryland’s newly passed “Maryland Kids Code” law. That law has most of the problems of California’s Age Appropriate Design Code, which has already been (correctly) declared unconstitutional. Apparently, believing the false hype that Meta controls NetChoice, Solomon sent a letter threatening the companies not to sue to block the law. And Meta responded saying “sure, no problem, we’re not going to get in the way.”

Amid concern that NetChoice would also challenge the similar Maryland law, Solomon and other state lawmakers urged the group’s member companies in letters last month to “comply” and “not attempt to undermine this bipartisan, lifesaving effort by suing to block its enactment.”

“Meta is not aware of a legal challenge to [the] Maryland Kids Code and does not plan to support one,” Meta’s outside law firm wrote in response to the letter.

Solomon said that while he is “pleased they will not support a lawsuit,” he hopes Meta “will urge their partners at NetChoice, which they help fund, to do the same and help us implement these common sense protections for kids instead of trying to needlessly drag this through the courts.”

So, there’s a lot to comment on here, but let’s start with this: in an age where we’re supposedly concerned with government “jawboning” to suppress speech, it’s pretty ridiculous for a legislator to demand companies “not attempt to undermine this bipartisan, lifesaving effort by suing to block its enactment.”

First off, it’s not “lifesaving.” It’s actively harmful. We’ve gone over this dozens of times, but legislation of this nature is based on a moral panic that misunderstands the actual concerns and challenges facing kids these days. It substitutes the moral panic-induced ignorance of lawmakers as expertise, while ignoring what actual experts say.

Second, telling companies not to challenge laws that are unconstitutional is fucking crazy. If the law is unconstitutional (and it is), then let that play out in the courts, rather than effectively threatening companies not to challenge it.

But, most importantly, this revelation should make it clear that, despite the narrative making the rounds that Meta, Google, and Apple are somehow pulling the strings on all these lawsuits, that’s not the case at all.

Sometimes it really is true that the people challenging these laws actually recognize that these laws are unconstitutional attacks on the rights of users of these platforms and are challenging the laws accordingly.

Of course, I assume that this basic fact made clear here will be forgotten the next time it’s convenient for supporters of these laws to insist that any criticism is just “big tech talking points.” The fact is that “big tech” is pretty happy with most of these laws.

The laws are often written in a way that the “big tech” companies already comply with them, so there’s little additional cost. But they make it so that it’s prohibitively expensive for anyone else to comply. And that means these laws help Meta and Google and hamstring any upstarts and competitors.