Meta is lobbying California lawmakers for a legal shield that would let the company dodge million-dollar fines for harming children — the same company that aggressively censors Americans' speech online.
This is the two-faced game Big Tech plays: demand immunity from accountability when kids get hurt, but play judge and jury when a working American says something the Silicon Valley orthodoxy doesn't like. Mark Zuckerberg wants all the power of a global communications monopoly with none of the responsibility.
According to POLITICO, Meta's lobbyists have approached California lawmakers with draft amendments to a bill that threatens fines of up to $1 million per child for platforms found liable for harming kids through negligent product design. The amendments would exempt social media companies from those increased penalties if they activate a suite of default child safety settings — disabling autoplay, restricting geolocation data sharing, silencing nighttime notifications, preventing direct messages from unknown adults, shielding minors' profiles from public view, and blocking explicit material from reaching kids.
Companies seeking safe harbor would also have to enable parental tools for restricting screen time, hiding profiles, monitoring interactions, and reporting misconduct.
If lawmakers accept Meta's amendments, the result would be reduced payouts in the hundreds of pending cases where parents and young people accuse Meta, Google, TikTok, and Snap of designing platforms that fostered addiction, depression, and suicidality. In March, a Los Angeles jury ordered Meta and Google to pay $6 million in damages in one such case.
This isn't Meta's first rodeo. POLITICO reports that nearly two years ago, Meta deployed the same lobbying tactic against a nearly identical bill from the same sponsor, State Senator Lowenthal. Lowenthal pulled that legislation after being asked to accept tech-friendly amendments that weakened its scope — language that matched Meta's requested changes, according to an email seen by POLITICO at the time. The playbook is clear: weaken the bill, kill the consequences, walk away.
And it's not just California. Just last week, Reuters reported Meta was lobbying Congress for legal immunity from child-harm claims at the federal level.
Tech industry trade groups TechNet and the Computer and Communications Industry Association, both of which count Meta among their members, oppose Lowenthal's bill, arguing it would violate platforms' First Amendment rights. The irony is thick: these same companies that invoke the First Amendment to shield themselves from child-safety penalties have spent years suppressing conservative speech, deplatforming dissenters, and throttling content that challenges the approved narrative.
A hearing on the bill is set for next Tuesday. Meta declined to comment, as did Senator Umberg.
The bipartisan failure here is the real story. Both parties talk tough on Big Tech. The lobbying dollars ensure nothing changes. Republicans and Democrats alike let companies like Meta operate as sovereign states — unaccountable when children are harmed, unchecked when Americans are silenced. The question isn't whether California will hold Meta accountable. It's whether any politician in either party has the spine to try.
