from the moral-panic-needs-a-morality-play dept
It is a combo piece with the primary half written by legislation pupil Elizabeth Grossman about her tackle the current FTC ethical panic concerning the web, and the second half being some extra commentary and notes from her professor, Jess Miers.
The FTC is fanning the flames of an ethical panic. On June 4, 2025, the Fee held a workshop referred to as The Consideration Financial system: How Massive Tech Companies Exploit Kids and Harm Households. I attended nearly from the second panel till the tip of the day. Panelists mentioned how the FTC may “assist” dad and mom, age verification because the “future,” and “what may be carried out outdoors of Washington DC.” However the workshop’s true objective was to cut back the Web to solely content material accepted by the Christian Proper, whatever the Structure—or the residents of the USA.
Declare #1: The FTC Ought to Stop Minors From Utilizing App Shops and Help Age Verification Legal guidelines
FTC panelists argued that as a result of minors lack the authorized capability to contract, app shops should get hold of parental consent earlier than permitting them to create accounts or entry providers. That, in flip, requires age verification to find out who’s eligible. This contractual framing isn’t new—but it surely makes an attempt to sidestep a well-established constitutional concern: that necessary age verification can burden entry to lawful speech. In Brown v. Leisure Retailers Affiliation, the Supreme Court docket reaffirmed minors’ rights to entry protected content material, whereas Reno v. ACLU struck down ID necessities that chilled grownup entry to speech. Immediately, state-level makes an attempt to mandate age verification throughout the Web have repeatedly failed on First Modification grounds.
However by recasting the problem as a matter of contract formation relatively than speech, proponents search to sidestep these constitutional questions. This is identical argument on the coronary heart of Paxton v. Free Speech Coalition, a case the FTC seems to be watching intently. FTC employees repeatedly described a ruling in favor of Texas as a “good ruling,” whereas suggesting a choice siding with the Free Speech Coalition would run “towards” the company’s pursuits. The case challenges Texas’ H.B. 1181, which mandates age verification for grownup content material websites.
The FTC now insists that age verification isn’t about limiting entry to content material, however about guaranteeing platforms solely contract with authorized adults. However this rationale collapses below scrutiny. Minors can enter into contracts—the authorized query is whether or not and after they can disaffirm them. The broader fallacy about minors’ contractual incapacity apart, courts have repeatedly rejected related logic. Most not too long ago, NetChoice v. Yost reaffirmed that age verification mandates can nonetheless violate the First Modification, regardless of how creatively they’re framed. In different phrases, there isn’t a contract legislation exception to the First Modification.
Declare #2: Chatbots Are Harmful To Minors
The panel’s considerations over minors utilizing chatbots to entry grownup content material felt like a reboot of the violent online game panic. Jake Denton, Chief Know-how Officer of the FTC, delivered an unsubstantiated tirade about an Elsa-themed chatbot allegedly partaking in sexual conversations with youngsters, however supplied no proof to assist the declare. In follow, inappropriate outputs from chatbots like these on Character.AI typically happen solely when customers—minors or adults—deliberately steer the dialog in that route. Even then, the platform enforces clear utilization insurance policies and deploys guardrails to maintain bots inside fictional contexts and stop unintended interactions.
Sure, teenagers will check boundaries, as they at all times have, however that doesn’t eradicate their constitutional rights. Because the Supreme Court docket held in Brown v. Leisure Retailers Affiliation, minors have a protected proper to entry authorized expressive content material. Then, it was video video games. Immediately, it’s chatbots.
FTC Commissioner Melissa Holyoak adopted a extra cautious tone, suggesting additional research earlier than regulation. However even then, the company failed to supply significant proof that chatbots pose widespread or novel hurt to justify sweeping intervention.
Declare #3: Pornography is Not Protected Speech
A number of panelists referred to as for pornography to be stripped of First Modification safety and for on-line pornography suppliers to be denied Part 230 immunity. Joseph Kohm, of Household Coverage Alliance, specifically, delivered a barrage of inflammatory claims, together with: “Nobody can inform me with any seriousness that the Founders had pornography in thoughts […] these instances had been wrongly determined. We are able to chip away […] it’s dangerous.” He added that “right-minded individuals have been searching for pushback towards the affect of expertise and pornography,” and went as far as to accuse unnamed “elites” of wanting youngsters to entry pornography, with out providing a shred of proof.
In fact, pornography predates the Structure, and the Founders drafted the First Modification to forbid the federal government from regulating speech, not simply the speech it finds ethical or comfy. Courts have persistently held that pornography, together with on-line grownup content material, is protected expression below the First Modification. Whether or not panelists discover that inconvenient or not, it isn’t the FTC’s function to re-litigate settled constitutional precedent, a lot much less redraw the boundaries of our most elementary rights.
Through the ultimate panel, Dr. Mehan mentioned that pornography “is nothing to do with the fantastic proper of speech and we’ve to get the slowest of us, i.e. judges to see it as effectively.” He succeeds in disrespecting a career he’s not part of and misunderstanding the legislation in a single foul swoop. He additionally mentioned “boys are lustful” due to pornography and “ladies are useless” due to social media. Blatant misogyny apart, it’s absurd guilty social media for “lust” and “self-importance”–in spite of everything, Shakespeare was writing about them lengthy earlier than XXX movies and Instagram—and even when it weren’t, teenage lust shouldn’t be an issue for the federal government to unravel.
Panelist Terry Schilling from the American Ideas Undertaking—recognized for his vehemently anti-LGBT positions—referred to as for stripping Part 230 protections from pornography websites that fail to implement age verification. As mentioned, the proposal not solely contradicts longstanding First Modification precedent but additionally reveals a elementary misunderstanding of what Part 230 does and whom it protects.
Declare #4: The Web Is Dangerous For Minors
FTC Commissioner Mark Meador in contrast Massive Tech to Massive Tobacco and mentioned that letting youngsters on the Web is like dropping youngsters off within the purple gentle district. “This isn’t what congress envisioned,” he mentioned, “when enacting Part 230.” Commissioner Melissa Holyoak equally blamed social media for the rise in despair and anxiousness diagnoses in minors. But, as quite a few research on social media and psychological well being have persistently demonstrated, this rise stems from a posh combine of things—not social media.
Bizarrely, Dr. Mehan famous “Powerpoints,” he mentioned, “are ruining the humanities.” And he in contrast on-line or textual content communication to residence invasion: if his daughter was speaking on the cellphone to a boy at 11 o’clock at evening, he mentioned, that boy could be invading his residence.
This alarmist narrative ignores each the numerous advantages of Web entry for minors and the actual harms of chopping them off. For younger individuals, particularly LGBTQ youth in unsupportive environments or these with area of interest pursuits, on-line areas may be important sources of neighborhood, affirmation, and security. Simply as importantly, not all dad and mom share the identical values or considerations as the federal government (or Dr. Mehan). It’s the function of oldsters, not the federal government, to determine when and the way their youngsters interact with the Web.
In the identical vein, the Court docket in NetChoice v. Uthmeyer rejected the concept that minors are simply “mere people-in-waiting,” affirming their full participation in democracy as “citizens-in-training.” The ruling makes clear that social media entry is a constitutional proper, and makes an attempt to strip minors of First Modification protections are nothing greater than censorship disguised as “security.”
Conclusion
The rhetoric at this occasion mirrored the early pages of Undertaking 2025, pushing for the outright criminalization of pornography and a elementary rewrite of Part 230. Audio system wrapped their agenda within the acquainted slogan of “defending the children,” citing massive right-wing speaking factors like transgender youth in sports activities and harping on good previous household values—all whereas advocating for sweeping authorities management over the Web.
This motion shouldn’t be about security. It’s about energy. It seeks to dictate who can communicate, what info is accessible, and whose identities are deemed acceptable on-line. The push for broad authorities oversight and censorship undercuts constitutional protections not only for adults, however for minors looking for autonomy in digital areas. These insurance policies may strip LGBTQ youth in restrictive households of the one communities the place they really feel protected, understood, and free to exist as themselves.
This marketing campaign is insidious. If profitable, it received’t simply reshape the Web. It would undermine free speech, strip digital anonymity and drive each American to adjust to a singular, state-approved model of “household values.”
The First Modification exists to stop precisely this type of authoritarian overreach. The FTC ought to keep in mind that.
Elizabeth Grossman is a first-year legislation pupil on the College of Akron Faculty of Legislation within the Mental Property program and with a objective of working in tech coverage.
Prof. Jess Miers’ Feedback
Elizabeth’s abstract makes it painfully clear: this wasn’t a severe workshop run by credible consultants in expertise legislation or coverage. The title alone, “How Massive Tech Companies Exploit Kids and Harm Households,” telegraphed the FTC’s predetermined stance and signaled a disinterest in real tutorial inquiry. Extra tellingly, the invocation of “households” serves as a canine whistle, gesturing towards the slim, heteronormative beliefs usually championed by the spiritual Proper: white, patriarchal, Christian, and straight. The FTC might not say the quiet half out loud, but it surely doesn’t must.
Worse nonetheless, a lot of the invited audio system weren’t consultants within the matters they had been pontificating on. At finest, they’re activists. At worst, they’re ideologues—individuals with deeply partisan agendas who haven’t any enterprise advising a federal company, not to mention shaping nationwide tech coverage.
Just some extra observations from me.
Chair Ferguson opened by claiming the Web was a “basically completely different place” 25 years in the past, reminiscing about AOL On the spot Messenger, Myspace Tom, and utilizing a household pc his dad and mom may monitor. The implication: the Web was safer again then, and oldsters had extra management. As somebody who additionally grew up in that period, I can’t relate.
I, too, had a household pc in the lounge and tech-savvy dad and mom. It didn’t cease me from stumbling into grownup AOL chatrooms, graphic porn, or violent movies, typically unintentionally. I bear in mind the pings of AIM simply as vividly because the cyberbullying on Myspace and nameless cruelty on Formspring. Parental controls had been flimsy, simple to bypass, and barely efficient. My dad and mom tried, however the instruments of the time merely weren’t as much as the duty. The battle over my Web use was fixed, and my expertise was hardly distinctive.
Nonetheless, even then, the Web supplied actual worth, particularly for a queer child who moved typically and struggled to make “IRL” pals. Nevertheless it additionally compelled me to develop up quick in methods at this time’s youth are higher shielded from. Dad and mom now have far more practical instruments to handle what their youngsters see and who they work together with. And on-line providers have a sturdy toolbox for dealing with dangerous content material, not simply because advertisers demand it, however because of Part 230, a uniquely forward-thinking legislation that encourages cleanup efforts. It constructed security into the system earlier than “belief and security” grew to become a buzzword. Opposite to Mark Meador’s baseless claims, that consequence was exactly its authors’ intent.
A extra severe dialog would deal with what we’ve realized and the way the FTC can construct on that progress to assist a safer Web for everybody, relatively than undermining it.
That apart, what baffles me most about these “defend the children” conversations, which just about at all times grow to be about limiting adults’ entry to disfavored content material, is how the supposed answer is extra surveillance of kids. The very providers the FTC likes to criticize are being advised to gather extra delicate details about minors—biometrics, ID verification, detailed behavioral monitoring—to maintain them “protected.” However as Eric Goldman and lots of different students who had been notably absent from the workshop have extensively documented, there isn’t a present methodology of age verification that doesn’t come on the expense of privateness, safety, and anonymity for each youth and adults.
A dialogue that ignores these documented harms, that fails to have interaction with the precise skilled consensus round digital security and privateness, shouldn’t be a severe dialogue about defending youngsters.
Which is why I discover it particularly troubling that teams positioning themselves as privateness champions are treating this workshop as credible. Specifically, IAPP’s suggestion that the FTC laid the groundwork for “bettering” youth security on-line is deeply disappointing. Even setting apart the quite a few privateness points related to age verification, does the IAPP actually imagine {that a} digital ecosystem formed by the ideological targets of those panelists can be an enchancment for youths, particularly these most in want of assist? For queer youth, for youths in illiberal households, for these looking for details about reproductive well being or gender-affirming care?
This workshop made the FTC’s agenda unmistakable. They’re not pursuing a safer Web for youths. As Elizabeth mentioned, the FTC is pushing a Christian nationalist imaginative and prescient of the online, constructed on censorship and surveillance, with youngsters because the excuse and the collateral.
Simply because the playbook instructions.
Jess Miers is an Assistant Professor of Legislation on the College of Akron Faculty of Legislation
Filed Underneath: 1st modification, grownup content material, age verification, andrew ferguson, chatbots, filters, free speech, ftc, web, ethical panic, pornography, defend the youngsters
