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SACRAMENTO, California — California will make it illegal for social media platforms to knowingly provide addictive feeds to children without parental consent beginning in 2027 under a new law Governor Gavin Newsom signed Friday. 

California follows New York state, which passed a law earlier this year allowing parents to block their kids from getting social media posts suggested by a platform’s algorithm. Utah has passed laws in recent years aimed at limiting children’s access to social media, but those have faced challenges in court. 

The California law will take effect in a state home to some of the largest technology companies in the world. Similar proposals have failed to pass in recent years, but Newsom signed a first-in-the-nation law in 2022 barring online platforms from using users’ personal information in ways that could harm children. 

It is part of a growing push in states across the country to try to address the impact of social media on the well-being of children. 

“Every parent knows the harm social media addiction can inflict on their children — isolation from human contact, stress and anxiety, and endless hours wasted late into the night,” Newsom, a Democrat, said in a statement. “With this bill, California is helping protect children and teenagers from purposely designed features that feed these destructive habits.” 

The law bans platforms from sending notifications without permission from parents to minors between midnight and 6 a.m., and between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m. on weekdays from September through May, when children are typically in school. The legislation also makes platforms set children’s accounts to private by default. 

Opponents of the legislation say it could inadvertently prevent adults from accessing content if they cannot verify their age. Some argue it would threaten online privacy by making platforms collect more information on users. 

The law defines an “addictive feed” as a website or app “in which multiple pieces of media generated or shared by users are, either concurrently or sequentially, recommended, selected, or prioritized for display to a user based, in whole or in part, on information provided by the user, or otherwise associated with the user or the user’s device,” with some exceptions. 

The subject garnered renewed attention in June when U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called on Congress to require warning labels on social media platforms and their impacts on young people. Attorneys general in 42 states endorsed the plan in a letter sent to Congress last week. 

State Senator Nancy Skinner, a Democrat representing Berkeley who wrote the California law, said that “social media companies have designed their platforms to addict users, especially our kids.” 

“With the passage of SB 976, the California Legislature has sent a clear message: When social media companies won’t act, it’s our responsibility to protect our kids,” she said in a statement.
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Washington — Based on the posts of an X account that bears the name of Dutch cartoonist Bart van Leeuwen, a profile picture of his face and short professional bio, one would think the Amsterdam-based artist is a staunch supporter of China and fierce critic of the United States.

In one post, the account blasts what it calls Washington’s “fallacies against the Chinese economy,” accompanied by a cartoon from the Global Times — a Beijing-controlled media outlet — showing Uncle Sam aiming but failing to hit a target emblazoned with the words “China’s economy.”

In another, the account reposts a Chinese propaganda video about the country’s rubber-stamp legislature, writing “today’s China is closely connected with the world, blending with each other, and achieving mutual success.”

But Van Leeuwen didn’t make the posts. In fact, this account doesn’t even belong to him.

It belongs to a China-connected network on X of “spamouflage” accounts, which pretend to be the work of real people but are in reality controlled by robots sending out messages designed to shape public opinion.

China has repeatedly rejected reports that it seeks to influence U.S. presidential elections, describing such claims as “fabricated.”

VOA Mandarin and DoubleThink Lab (DTL), a Taiwanese social media analytics firm, uncovered the fake Van Leeuwen account during a joint investigation into a network of spamouflage accounts working on behalf of the Chinese government.

The network, consisting of at least nine accounts, propagated Beijing’s talking points on issues including human rights abuses in China’s western Xinjiang province, territorial disputes with countries in the South China Sea and U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods.

Fake account contradicts real artist

Van Leeuwen confirmed in an interview with VOA Mandarin that he had nothing to do with and was not aware of the fake account.

“It’s ironic that my identity, being a political cartoonist, is being used for political propaganda,” he told VOA in a written statement.

The real Van Leeuwen is an award-winning cartoonist whose works have been published on news outlets around the world, such as the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the Korea Times, Sing Tao Daily in Hong Kong and Gulf Today in the United Arab Emirates.

He specializes in editorial cartoons, whose main subjects include global politics, elections in the U.S. and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Several of his past illustrations made fun of Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s economic policies and the opaqueness of Beijing’s inner political struggles.

After being contacted by VOA Mandarin, a spokesman from X said the fake account has been suspended.

Other than finding irony in being impersonated by a Chinese propaganda bot, Van Leeuwen said the incident also worries him.

“This example once again highlights the need for far-reaching measures regarding the restriction of social media,” Van Leeuwen wrote in his statement, “especially with irresponsible people like Elon Musk at the helm.”

After purchasing what was then called Twitter in 2022, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO vowed to reduce the prevalence of bots on the platform, but many users complain it has become even worse.

Musk, the world’s richest person, is a so-called “free speech absolutist,” opposing almost all censorship of people voicing their views. Critics say his policy allows racist and false information to flourish on X.

Former President Donald Trump has praised Musk’s business acumen and said he plans to have the man who may become the world’s first trillionaire head a commission on government efficiency if he is reelected in November.

Network of spamouflage accounts

Before its suspension, the X account that impersonated Van Leeuwen had close to 1,000 followers, more than Van Leeuwen’s real X account. It was registered in 2013, but its first post came only last year. The account’s early posts were mostly encouraging and inspiring words in Chinese. It also posted many dance videos.

Gradually, the account started to mix in more and more political narratives, criticizing the U.S. and defending China. It often reposted content from another spamouflage account called “Grey World.”

“Grey World” used a photo of an attractive Asian woman as its profile picture. Most of its posts were supportive of Beijing’s talking points. It regularly posted videos and cartoons from Chinese state media. It also posted several of Van Leeuwen’s cartoons about American politics.

VOA Mandarin and DTL’s investigation identified “Grey World” as the main spamouflage account in a network of nine such accounts. Other accounts in the network, including the fake Van Leeuwen account, amplified “Grey World” by reposting its content.

But posts from “Grey World” had limited reach on X, despite having tens of thousands of followers. For example, between August 18 and September 1, its most popular post, a diatribe against Washington’s Indo-Pacific strategy, was viewed a little over 10,000 times but only had 35 reposts and 65 likes.

After the suspension of the fake Van Leeuwen account, X also shut down the “Grey World” account.

The spamouflage network is not the first linked to China.

In April, British researchers released a report saying Chinese nationalist trolls were posing as American supporters of Trump on X to try to exploit domestic divisions ahead of the U.S. election.

U.S. federal prosecutors in 2023 accused China’s Ministry of Public Security of having a covert social media propaganda campaign that also aimed to influence U.S. elections.

Researchers at Facebook’s parent company Meta said it was the largest known covert propaganda operation ever identified on that platform and Instagram, reported Rolling Stone magazine.

Network analysis firm Graphika called the pro-Chinese network “Spamouflage Dragon,” part of a campaign it identified in early 2020 that was at the time posting content that praised Beijing’s policies and attacked those of then-President Trump.
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