Despite big tech lobbying, Maryland passes two internet privacy bills

The Maryland legislature passed two bills over the weekend limiting tech platforms’ ability to collect and use consumers’ data. Maryland Governor Wes Moore is expected to sign one of those bills, the Maryland Kids Code, on Thursday, MoCo360 reports. 

If signed into law, the other bill, the Maryland Online Privacy Act, will go into effect in October 2025. The legislation would limit platforms’ ability to collect user data and let users opt out of having their data used for targeted advertising and other purposes. 

Together, the bills would significantly limit social media and other platforms’ ability to track their users — but tech companies, including Amazon, Google, and Meta, have opposed similar legislation. NetChoice, a trade association that represents several tech giants, has argued that similar tech regulation bills violate the First Amendment. The Maryland bills are part of a larger trend of legislation at both the state and federal level. Lawmakers say the goal is to protect children, but tech companies say the bills are a threat to free speech. One such bill, the Kids Online Safety Act, has not been put to a vote in Congress despite having broad support in the Senate.

Part of the Maryland Kids Code — the Maryland Age-Appropriate Design Code Act — will go into effect much sooner, on October 1st. It bans platforms from using “system design features to increase, sustain, or extend the use of the online product,” including autoplaying media, rewarding users for spending more time on the platform, and spamming users with notifications. Another part of the legislation prohibits certain video game, social media, and other platforms from tracking users who are younger than 18. 

“It’s meant to rein in some of the worst practices with sensible regulation that allows companies to do what’s right and what is wonderful about the internet and tech innovation, while at the same time saying, ‘You can’t take advantage of our kids,’” Maryland state delegate Jared Solomon, one of the bill’s sponsors, said in a press conference Wednesday.

NetChoice opposed an earlier version of the Maryland Kids Code. “The bill’s goal is laudable and one NetChoice supports,” NetChoice’s vice president and general counsel, Carl Szabo, said in a testimony last February. “But its chosen means are unconstitutional by imposing prior restraints on online speech, erecting barriers to sharing and receiving constitutionally-protected speech, and by providing only ague notices to businesses as to what the law prohibits.”

Szabo’s testimony noted that NetChoice has an active lawsuit against California for its “nearly-identical” Age-Appropriate Design Code Act, which Governor Gavin Newsom signed last year. The legislation was slated to go into effect on July 1st, 2024, but a federal judge temporarily blocked it in September after NetChoice filed a lawsuit against it. The judge, Beth Freeman of the US District Court for California’s Northern District, said the law likely violated the First Amendment.

Maryland’s state legislature passed an amended version of the bill, not the one NetChoice initially objected to.

“We are technically the second state to pass a kids code,” Solomon told The New York Times. “But we are hoping to be the first state to withstand the inevitable court challenge that we know is coming.”