With renewed energy in the wake of a legislative aide’s arrest on charges that he groomed and sexually abused children, the Alaska House on Friday unanimously passed a sprawling bill that formally treats computer-generated child sexual abuse material as a crime.
But the bill does a whole lot more than that in the name of childrens’ safety.
House Bill 47 also left the House with a new section requiring sweeping age-verification checks for any Alaskan logging onto a social media platform and creating new rules for how minors can use social media, including a default curfew of 10:30 p.m. Advertising, algorithms and personalized content would be banned for minors’ social media accounts, and parents would have unfettered access to posts and messages.
“We’ve all seen recently that there are sex predators targeting children through social media. Right now, one was just arrested, and we have to take action,” said Anchorage Rep. Zack Fields, the Anchorage Democrat who proposed the amendment during last week’s debate, in reference to the arrest of 36-year-old Republican staffer Craig Scott Valdez. “The fundamental question with this amendment is, do parental rights supersede the rights of predators, and do parental rights supersede the right of multinational corporations?”
Under the amendment, which was adopted on a 28-12 vote, social media platforms operating in the state would be required to “verify the age of each user of the platform in the state.” Minors would be barred from accessing social media platforms without first getting written permission from their guardian, who would have complete access to the account. Exactly how ages are verified isn’t laid out in the bill, which defines a social media platform as any website or app that allows users to create, share or view user-generated content.
The law also sets a default curfew of 10:30 p.m. to 6:30 a.m. for all minors, but a parent may opt to change the hours.
Age verification laws have gained traction nationally, often justified as necessary to protect children from addictive social media platforms or predators. Half of all states require some form of age verification for social media and adult websites. The laws, however, raise myriad privacy and Free Speech concerns, particularly regarding the sharing of private information with third-party age-verification companies.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital civil rights group, warns that age-verification checks also raise equity issues because they prevent people without photo IDs — often lower-income or minority communities — from accessing parts of the internet. They also warn that they could be used to limit access to LGBTQ+ resources and other essential information that might get wrapped up in restrictions.
While the measure was adopted as a floor amendment by a wide margin, it faced unusual bipartisan opposition from liberal Democrats and far-right Republicans.
Anchorage Democratic Rep. Genevieve Mina agreed that social media poses risks to young people, but said the measure raised too many privacy and First Amendment concerns.
“I absolutely agree that social media can be harmful for youth, especially given the vast environment, where there are a lot of different strangers and people on the internet. I also know I’m probably one of the only people in the body who very much grew up online,” she said during the debate on the bill. “I just don’t believe that age verification through government regulation is the right way.”
Several Republicans joined her in opposing the bill.
That included Anchorage Republican Rep. David Nelson, who, at 28, is one of the Legislature’s younger members. He said legislators shouldn’t discount just how sophisticated kids can be at bypassing the rules, noting he had several friends who had mastered forging their parents’ signatures. He also pointed out that nearly every state that has implemented age-verification laws has seen a sharp uptick in software that lets users mask their location and bypass age checks.
But he also warned that there’s a reason some young people might not feel comfortable — or safe — having their entire digital footprint available to their parents as is proposed under the bill.
“I did have one friend who was communicating with a shelter to get away from their abusive parents on Facebook Messenger, and I would not want to think what would happen if that person’s parents were to find those messages,” he said, “What the results could have been for that. So I think that’s dangerous.”
A few other conservatives also took issue with the change, arguing that it’s not the government’s place to get involved. Others warned that taking such total control over their childrens’ social media isn’t doing anyone any favors, arguing that kids need to be allowed to make mistakes and learn from them.
“We are not doing our kids any favors by being helicopter parents,” said Glenallen Republican Rep. Rebecca Schwanke. “We all used to run around in the middle of the summer after school when we were kids. It was a good thing. Sometimes you’ve got to give your kids a little freedom, so when they hit 18, they’re good, responsible young adults, and they have experienced some difficult things in life.”
Some supporters of the measure agreed that the rules may be overly onerous for social media companies to comply with and would walk away from doing business in Alaska altogether, but joked that that may not be such a bad thing.
“When I look at all of that together, I’m like, Oh my gosh, these companies are just not going to do business here, which, again, what a wonderful side effect,” said Anchorage Democratic Rep. Andrew Gray, who said that he believed the amendment’s rough edges could and would be smoothed out in the Senate. “I think there are a lot of things that need to be worked on and fleshed out.”
After the amendment was approved on Wednesday, the underlying bill, which criminalizes computer-generated child sexual abuse material as if it involved a child, passed the House unanimously. A few of the other changes that it picked up on the House floor included better legal recourse for people defamed or otherwise harmed by deepfakes.
The bill now heads to the Senate for consideration.
The vote on age verification
Yeas: Allard, Costello, Coulombe, Dibert, Edgmon, Elam, Fields, Foster, Frier, Galvin, Gray, Himschoot, Holland, Jimmie, Johnson, Josephson, Kopp, Mears, Moore, G.Nelson, Prax, Ruffridge, Schrage, Stapp, Story, Stutes, Tomaszewski, Underwood
Nays: Bynum, Carrick, Eischeid, Hall, Hannan, McCabe, Mina, D.Nelson, Saddler, Schwanke, St. Clair, Vance
Matt Acuña Buxton is a long-time political reporter who has written for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and The Midnight Sun political blog. He also authors the daily politics newsletter, The Alaska Memo, and can frequently be found live-tweeting public meetings on Bluesky.
