Today, California Governor Jerry Brown signed off on Senate Bill 568 to give California minors a chance to remove embarrassing posts and photos. The new bill will go into effect January 1, 2015.
Under Senate Bill 568, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr and similar social media sites would be required under the law to remove specific posts or photos at a minor’s request. Spontaneous rants, inappropriate tweets, pictures intended to be private, and other material that could harm a minor’s reputation, effecting future college or career prospects, are all subject to removal under the new bill.
The bill also prohibits websites from marketing illegal goods and activities, like tattoos and alcohol, to minors. It further bans websites from giving minors’ identifying information to third parties for marketing purposes.
Senate Bill 568 states:
“The bill would, on and after January 1, 2015, require the operator of an Internet website, online service, online application, or mobile application to permit a minor, who is a registered user of the operator’s Internet website, online service, online application, or mobile application, to remove, or to request and obtain removal of, content or information posted on the operator’s Internet website, service, or application by the minor, unless the content or information was posted by a 3rd party, any other provision of state or federal law requires the operator or 3rd party to maintain the content or information, or the operator anonymizes the content or information. The bill would require the operator to provide notice to a minor that the minor may remove the content or information, as specified.”
The Eraser Button Bill
Senate Bill 568 has become known as the “Eraser Button” Bill. It is important to note that the new bill doesn’t guarantee complete removal or the purge of unwanted posts from the Internet. It doesn’t protect against re-posting and the eraser option is only available to the minor who originally posted or uploaded the content to his/her own account. This doesn’t stop other minors from doing screen captures or saving photos and placing them on other sites. The bill only requires companies to remove the minor’s request from their public websites, it doesn’t require companies to delete the minors unwanted information from its data servers.
Implications for Minors
Given that “third parties” are not obligated to remove content, minors still need to think before they post. The reality is that once information is posted on the Internet, all involved parties have basically lost control of where materials end up. Although you can contact Instagram, Facebook or the likes and request to have material removed from your own account, and you also have the option of flagging photos as inappropriate on other people’s sites, that doesn’t guarantee removal under this new law.
Protect your privacy by practicing good digital citizenship.
