SALT LAKE CITY — Utah became the first state in the union to implement a law requiring every new mobile device sold in the state to have content filtration software enabled to prevent any potential exposure of minors under 18 years to age-restricted content, like pornography. YNOT reported extensively on this law during the legislative process in 2021. Coded as House Bill 72, the porn filtering bill was introduced by state Rep. Susan Pulsipher, R-South Jordan, and signed into law by Utah Gov. Spencer Cox. The law calls for all smartphones and tablets to be sold with active adult content filters at the point of sale, placing what critics have called an unconstitutional burden on device manufacturers, such as Samsung and Apple, and technology retailers, like Best Buy or Walmart.
NBC News reported that the anti-porn National Center on Sexual Exploitation, with the help of another anti-porn group called Protect Young Eyes, crafted the original blueprint to the Utah bill that is now law. Ben Goggin, deputy editor for technology at NBC News Digital, indicated through interviews that the “original intention of the model bill was to compel device manufacturers to automatically turn on adult filters for web browsers and not other applications.” He adds that many devices already had these filters installed but not turned on by default.
The model bill was first created in 2019, Goggin reports. Now, eight states have introduced similar measures to that of the Utah bill. State lawmakers in Florida, South Carolina, Maryland, Tennessee, Iowa, Idaho, Texas, and Montana have introduced bills requiring technology filters to be enabled on all mobile devices and tablets sold within these states, regardless of the user’s age. A review of these proposals shows that Montana and Idaho’s measures are the only proposed mandates that have made noteworthy progress toward ratification. The Montana bill is House Bill 349.
Anti-porn activists want to get bills like these passed so there is a precedent to require device manufacturers and any applicable retailers to sell devices with filtering enabled at the point of purchase. The Utah bill is structured to sit dormant until five other states pass similar laws. The measure was designed as a tool to prevent large technology companies from simply blocking Utah through digital isolation strategies to avoid liability.
All eight state proposals would force phone and tablet manufacturers to filter and censor nude and sexually explicit content that the Constitution and the First Amendment are presumed to protect. The bills are structured punitively. If such a law were in place, the only way to disable content filters would be through manufacturer-issued passcodes for adults and parents to input on their own mobile devices. Giving such a passcode to a minor would be prohibited and could place certain individuals that do so in legal hot water through potential civil and criminal penalties. Collectively, these bills mandate that content filters be enabled to supposedly prevent minors from downloading age-restricted content over mobile data through apps that are controlled by a device manufacturer or cell service provider (e.g., a web browser), and to prevent the downloading of such material through any wired and wireless internet connections.
Political progressives and conservatives have criticized these proposals for different reasons. The criticisms vary from giving the government more power to intervene in the home to First Amendment violations. One conservative opinion that resonates came from a Trump-supporting former journalist by the name of Wayne Hoffman. Hoffman, the president of the ‘arch-conservative’ Idaho Freedom Foundation, points out several concerns regarding the proposal introduced in the Idaho state legislature, Senate Bill 1057.
“The call to protect kids is correct,” Hoffman, a notorious critic of public schools and a MAGA Republican himself, pointed out. “It’s up to parents to parent. Install a porn filter on your device if you want. That is your choice.” The Idaho bill “uses coercion to protect kids instead of strengthening the bond between parents and children,” Mr. Hoffman added in a commentary on the foundation’s website. “It gets in the way of that relationship and puts our children’s privacy at risk. That makes it one of the more dangerous proposals facing lawmakers this legislative session.”
Samir Jain, the vice president of policy at the Center for Democracy and Technology, gave NBC’s Goggin a more nuanced point of view on why porn filtering bills are potentially dangerous.
Focusing on the common theme of minting passcodes to remove or enable filters at the point of sale of a device, Jain said that such language could pose concerns through the format of an age verification regime similar to the highly-controversial Louisiana age verification law. Jain explained that device manufacturers could face a regulatory regime that forces them to collect age data from their customers through a government-issued identification or a credit card.
“There are no restrictions as such on how providers can then use this data for other purposes. So even the sort of age verification aspect of this, I think, both creates burdens and gives rise to privacy concerns,” Jain said. He added his concerns over censorship and the incongruity of what is “acceptable viewing material” for children of different age groups. He told Goggin that “what’s appropriate or useful for a teenager versus a 6-year-old are quite different.”
Montana’s proposal features such language as described by Jain. Hoffman and Jain have unique viewpoints, though. Considering Jain’s remarks on age verification further, a porn filtering mandate could be construed as a de facto mandate for age verification to view pornographic content. This is ironic given that proponents of these bills sell it as an “incremental” measure rather than adopting age verification proposals that are potentially “onerous.” Even if there is a mandate to filter content on devices at the point of purchase, there’s notable opposition.
Considering the efforts to further regulate pornography at the state level, it wouldn’t be surprising if some of these bills became law. Their constitutionality is another matter — and one for the courts.
iPad image by Josh Sorenson from Pexels
