Latest / Conversations: Special Guests with Preston Scott / Why Should Florida HB1 Be Passed and Signed By Gov. DeSantis?

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Why Should Florida HB1 Be Passed and Signed By Gov. DeSantis? · Conversations: Special Guests with Preston Scott

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  Two decades of doing morning drive radio, differently doing it his way, like
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  call Blue Eyes, except he's not one of the great decomposers. You know,
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  it's not six feet under. Hey. The Morning Show with Preston Scott
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  thirty five minutes past the hour, Big Stories in the press Box, brought
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  to you by Restore, carpent Cair and Tyle and of course we segue to
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  and interview Daniel Cochran. Joins Us wrote an opinion piece for The Daily Signal
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  says Florida Cannon should lead on social media safety for kids. He's obviously referring
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  to House Bill one. We talked about it at length throughout the legislative session
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  each and every week with our legislative guru here on the program as we recapped
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  what was going on inside the walls of the state Capitol. But Daniel,
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  what drew your entry to this story? Well, thank you and great to
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  be with you this morning. You know, it's so critical in an age
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  where very large social media companies are doing so many things that harm our children.
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  I agree. You know, some of your listeners might be familiar with
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  the Senate hearing that was recently held here in Washington, d C. Where
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  we saw a lot of transparency around the way in which these platforms are addicting
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  kids, the harms they're setting up. A lot of these platforms, for
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  instance, are becoming breeding grounds for child exploitation and abuse, and bills like
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  HB one are critical to hold them accountable and empower parents to be able to
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  turn the tide on these platforms. I know that you address some of the
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  concerns that you have with the criticisms of the bill, and I'm going to
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  give you an opportunity to share those here. The bill obviously was vetoed in
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  its original form by Governor DeSantis. They're back working on it literally as we
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  speak. So what what's your understanding of some of the pushback against the bill
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  that has no weight or bearing, and maybe some that does. Certainly so,
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  the two main critiques from my understanding of the original legislation was first that
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  it would potentially harm user anonymity, But the reality is that the bill was
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  very well crafted to prevent this. In fact, the bill required that social
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  media companies are in fact third parties that performed age verification would have to do
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  so anonymously, so they would have to ensure that, for instance, user
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  data would be completely anonymous when used, they couldn't retain any data used to
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  do it, and they had a bunch of other robust safeguards in place as
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  well. The other critique, which I want to directly address, is that
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  this would harm printal rights. The original bill would have said, if you're
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  under sixteen years old, you shouldn't be able to essentially hold a social media
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  account. We're saying, well, this disempowers parents. My response to that,
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  however, is that Florida has already made the determination that miners can't access
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  harmful activities like gambling, tobacco, or perform in adult themed venues, and
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  so the logic has been for lawmakers that when an activity is acutely harmful to
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  children, the legislature has a responsibility to step in and prevent miners from accessing
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  those or participating in those activities. What would you say to those that say,
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  Okay, I agree with you in principle that this stuff is rotten for
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  our children, but that ultimately it is a parent's responsibility to marshal and patrol
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  that, and we're kind of giving parents a pass to once again not be
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  parents. The original bill would have said, it would have allowed anyone over
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  sixteen to access social media. But the reality is that what we're seeing is
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  that the younger you are, the more acute the harms of these platforms.
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  So one of the big findings in recent years is that these companies intentionally use
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  certain features and practices to hook children on their services. Right, So the
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  idea is keep kids eyeballs glued to the screen as long as possible. Sure,
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  and in fact, there was a recent study by UNC Chapel Hill that
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  says the way that they're designing their services is rewiring are our kid's brains.
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  So the younger the kid, the more acute the harms. And so there
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  is a very rational basis to say that if you're under sixteen, these platforms
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  are so harmful that you shouldn't be on them. In the same way,
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  by the way that Florida has said, if you're under actually twenty one,
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  I believe you can't gamble. If you're under twenty one, I believe you
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  also cannot purchase tobacco products. So the same rationale holds true here whether you're
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  listening on an old radio in your car or streaming on one of those other
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  things. Yes, even that John Deere tractor. Thanks for joining us.
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  It's the Morning Show with Preston Scott on News Radio one hundred point seven Double
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  UFLA or on NewsRadio double UFLA Panama City dot Com. Daniel Cochrane with US
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  Daily Signal friends of the radio program along with the Heritage Foundation. Daniel,
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  give us a little snapshot of your background. What drew you into this?
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  What is it in your uh kind of in your makeup that caused this to
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  be on your radar? Well, look, you know, I grew up
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  in the age of social media, and I've seen just how my generation and
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  the generations behind me have been shaped fundamentally by this technology. And frankly,
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  my generation is saying enough is enough. My generation is saying these companies need
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  to be held accountable for what they're doing to our kids. And that's why
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  I'm here today, and that's why we're standing up and supporting legislation that makes
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  that makes strides in this area. Yet, there's implied in your note and
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  written pretty directly, is there's going to be a responsibility for the social media
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  companies and verifyers to not retain information. You're extending a degree of trust that
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  I'm not sure any of them have earned. So the original legislation actually addresses
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  this by requiring that social would have required that social media companies use third parties.
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  So this was one of the ways that the Florida legislature sought to address
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  your concern was by saying, look, you can't You shouldn't be in the
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  business of doing the a verification yourself. It should be a third party that's
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  doing it. And that third party, as I as I said before,
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  would be constrained by a lot of rigorous requirements that they would have to keep
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  user data anonymous, that they have to delete it once it was, you
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  know, once they've performed the age verification process. And one thing I want
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  to say for listeners is I think there's this idea that you know, this
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  would require, you know, uploading your government ID every time you access the
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  internet. The reality is that the where we are technologically, that's just not
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  true anymore. Reality is that what you could simply do is have a service
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  that verify, a third party service, not the platform, verify your age.
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  Once it gives you a special you know, a special code, a
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  special password, and that becomes sort of your pin that you can use to
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  access other services. And those services. By the way, social media platforms
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  would need to know anything about you, anything about your identity, anything more
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  than you have this code that says you're over. In this case, it
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  would have been sixteen years old. Governor DeSantis in the build up to the
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  passage of the bill before he vetoed it for a host of reasons he was
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  pointing to he just said, it's not quite there yet, and he pointed
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  to rulings in others dates where courts have said, look, this is a
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  bridging free speech, and there are concerns that there may be needs to be
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  some kind of parental opt out, bringing parents a little more into the loop
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  of all of this. Your thoughts when you heard the governor express his concerns
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  and his ultimate decision, Well, I respect his concerns, but the reality
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  is that laws like HB one would have regulated contracts, not speech. The
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  prohibition in the law was about a minor entering into a contractual relationship with a
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  social media provider. And the reality is that given those harms, the legislature
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  has the authority to make those kinds of decisions that say, look, you're
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  sixteen, your fifteen year old, your twelve year old, shouldn't be able
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  to consent to a social media company manipulating them and essentially addicting them to their
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  services. Fair enough, What do you think is going to happen? Well,
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  I think it's you know, it's too early to all. My understanding
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  is that they've taken another bill up that was previously considered HB three. They've
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  made some changes to it. Unfortunately in this round, they they've taken out
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  the requirement that platforms verify the age of their users. And of course,
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  as I said before, without that requirement, it's hard to see how you
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  could you could you know, how a social media could comply with the law,
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  even if you say they can't enter into a contractual relationship with a minor.
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  If you don't know how old your users are or that they meet certain
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  age thresholds, hard to see how you would actually abide by that requirement.
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  So that's a concern we have, but I will see on the positive side,
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  the legislation would still require age verification for adult websites, so that is
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  a step in the right direction, and we hope to see that go forward.
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  Daniel, thanks for the time this morning. I appreciate your writing and
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  thanks for joining us. Thank you. Sir Daniel Cochran with us from the
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  the Heritage Foundation Daily Signal. He had a very well articulated argument that he
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  put in the Daily Signal why Florida needs to stand as the leader in protecting
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  children. Makes a good argument. There are arguments on the other side that
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  as of right now, have won the day with the governor. We'll see
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  where it all stands. And I'm not talking about arguments of well, they
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  should have unfettered access. I'm just saying that the governor vetoed it and he
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  had his reasons. We'll see what comes back out and whether it shows up
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  again before the session ends. It's forty seven past the hour.