Pushing vs. pulling information
California is proposing an interesting approach towards
antisocial media platforms.
It is exciting that SB 976 turns towards restricting recommendation algorithms. But these
options should not be limited to minors — every user
should have this choice.
(Please do not refer to teenagers as "children"; that feeds the US tendency to treat them
like children and
retard their development.)
However, I suggest taking a step beyond just choosing to use or not use the platform's
addiction system. Recommendation algorithms should be completely separated from platforms!
If you want to use a nontrivial recommendation algorithm, you should be able to choose it
yourself and use it anonymously. You could send it the URLs you want it to base its choices
on. These might be some of the pages you had visited, and perhaps pages you had not visited.
Then it should send you its recommendations. You could pass all, or just some, or
none of those recommendations to the platform to look at them.
AB 1949 is admirable because it gives a small boost to privacy for users of all ages, not
only for children. It isn't enough, though — users should also be guaranteed the
right and possibility to access through the Tor network and to use aliases. And
collection of a user's data by the state should require a warrant against the user.