Mastodawn

Blake C. Stacey 9h ago

If you are in Massachusetts please call your House representative to oppose this. The Senate ban on cell phone use in schools (not happy about that myself) has grown a monstrous ban on social media use for kids under 14, "among the most restrictive in the entire country" according to its own Democratic advocates, featuring age verification for adults and a requirement platforms "give parents access to data submitted by minors" (in other words, out every queer kid).

https://www.wcvb.com/article/mass-house-social-media-ban-children-under-14/70941188

Mass. lawmakers to vote on 'restrictive' social media ban for kids

"This ban would be among the most restrictive in the entire country," senior legislative leaders said about the proposal.

WCVB

Vote is sometime this week, possibly as early as today, and it's pushed by the Democratic speaker of the house in a Democratic state so feedback from constituents is key at this moment.

I recommend giving your zip code when you call. You can figure out to call by looking up your district here

https://malegislature.gov/Redistricting/FindYourNewDistrict

and rep here

https://malegislature.gov/Legislators/Members/House

Three plus or minus five 9h ago

@mcc
I emailed. I know that's not as good as calling, but don't want to do it from work and/or overcome phone anxiety.

@mcc Called my rep. Explained how HR 5349 would have harmed my boys during specific events to not have personal phone access during the school day. Encouraged my rep to vote nay.

And my Rep's office called me back confirming my rep would NOT vote for HR 5349. That's one expected Nay.

FurryBeta 9h ago

@mcc I contacted my rep about how bad this is

Games That I Missed 9h ago

@mcc I called my representative's office. Thanks for talking about this, it had entirely slipped past me until now.

grrl_aex 9h ago

Politicians are in dire need of an education re; the actual purpose of the age-verification/save the kiddies push big tech is running atm.

Particularly that this push has no benefit whatsoever for who they say it will "protect" (kids)--vs. a whole lot of (monetary) benefits for those largely unseen actors who are behind this age-verification promotion travesty.

Fluffy Kitty Cat 7h ago

@kitkat_blue @mcc they k.is. they support it anyways because they are evil. They hate queer kids just as much as Republicans do

@kitkat_blue @mcc Some of the politicians are plausibly aware but don't care because it serves their authoritarian desires, which is another issue.

Jen X. Zerofux 8h ago

@mcc thank you! My rep's number is out of service so I sent an email. I slid in a little note about getting city and state government off of proprietary social media as well.

@mcc @UnicornJax THANK YOU

(617) 722-2000

x1 for Senate
x2 for House

Fel Temp Reparatio 7h ago

@mcc Contacted my reps. A surprisingly painless process despite my nerves.

A_Minion 7h ago

Seems that the next process should be directing all the online activity of those 14 & under through an AI filter to make sure they are not going to hurt themselves or others. Then to make it fair all of those 15 & over will need the same filters to catch all who may think untoward or suspicious thoughts. /S /S

Blake C. Stacey 5h ago

@mcc If the bill does pass, there will be another opportunity to push for changes, since a House-Senate Conference Committee will have to agree to a version (the two houses have written different bills). I've been talking with my local rep a *lot* about this yesterday and today....

Andrew Geng 3h ago

@mcc Called my rep and left a voicemail. Thank you for posting this. I think it's this one, if anyone wants to track its progress?

https://malegislature.gov/Bills/194/S2581/BillHistory

Beware it's a little misleading: downloading the PDF appears to give you the July 2025 version but today's "Read second" history entry seems to say they presented the H5349 version, which is the only place the age verification text appears.

@pteromys I believe you are linking the Senate version and the age verification is in the House version. Hence S and H in the name.

Andrew Geng 3h ago

@mcc That would make sense. The closest thing I can find to a House version is https://malegislature.gov/Bills/194/H5349 where the age verification text gets introduced, but I don't think I've quite nailed it—all the House activity today and the like 30 additional proposed amendments seem to be getting posted only on the Senate version. Maybe merging all the changes is a manual process and there won't be a merged version posted for a while.

Luke MacNeil 3h ago

@mcc and why is this bad?