New York’s state legislature has passed a bill that would prohibit social media companies from showing so-called “addictive feeds” to children under 18, unless they obtain parental consent.
The Stop Addictive Feeds Exploitation (SAFE) for Kids Act defines an addictive feed as one where the content is recommended or prioritized based on information about the user or the user’s device — basically, these are the algorithmic news feeds used by most social apps.
“Non-addictive feeds,” a category that includes “feeds listed in chronological order,” would still be allowed.
“New York is leading the nation to protect our kids from addictive social media feeds and shield their personal data from predatory companies,” Governor Hochul said.
It would also prohibit platforms from sending notifications related to these feeds between the ages of midnight and 6am without parental consent.
By default, children will be able to read, but not write, comments under both of these content settings modes.
(This option is generally the first step into the main YouTube experience, after using the dedicated YouTube Kids app as a younger child.)
Parents can view and change their child’s settings from the parent settings on YouTube or via Google’s Family Link parental controls app, YouTube notes.
More recently, however, the Kids Online Safety Act has gained steam, demanding more robust parental controls from platform makers.
After launching parental controls in 2021, YouTube rolled out a handful of product updates to make YouTube safer for teens in November 2023.
Hello, and welcome to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
This is our Friday episode, in which we dig through the most critical stories and themes from the week.
But while the SBF news was a big deal, there was so very much more to cover on today’s news roundup episode of Equity.
We also dug into two companies building startups focused around kids.
Then, to wrap up, a look at just who unicorn founders really are, and a new $100 million fund that to back climate tech.
Kids’ clothing and gear is more expensive than ever.
Kidsy has a sustainable solution for discountsAll parents know that raising kids is expensive.
Enter Kidsy, a new Chicago-based e-commerce startup which aims to give consumers greater access to discounted baby and kids products by partnering with large brands, retailers and liquidation companies for their overstock and returns inventory.
At the same time, it says, it can help prevent overstock and liquidation items – such as kids’ clothing – from ending up in landfills, which is obviously not good for the environment.
Kids’ clothing: A massive marketTandon’s road to founding Kidsy started when she founded her own media production company after working as a journalist for Bloomberg TV and ABC News.
That’s why Sheets decided to develop the $199 Blipbox, an affordable kid-friendly synthesizer designed for ages three and up.
With its chunky control knobs, levers and an easy-to-use randomize feature, MyTracks aims to encourage music exploration and simplify beatmaking for kids.
According to the company, all Blipbox devices underwent “rigorous” testing to ensure they are BPA-free and comply with toy safety standards.
Blipbox has even been used by music teachers, including helping special-needs kids express their creativity in a non-verbal way.
“We got a lot of weird looks from parents,” Kate Sheets says, describing how people reacted to the first Blipbox synthesizer in 2018.
Controversial crypto biometrics venture Worldcoin has been almost entirely booted out of Europe after being hit with another temporary ban — this time in Portugal.
The order from the country’s data protection authority comes hard on the heels of the same type of three-month stop-processing order from Spain’s DPA earlier this month.
Portugal’s data protection authority said it issued the three-month ban on Worldcoin’s local ops Tuesday after receiving complaints Worldcoin had scanned children’s eyeballs.
By contrast, EU data protection law gives people in the region a suite of rights over their personal data, including the ability to have data about them corrected, amended or deleted.
As Tools for Humanity’s lead DPA, under the one-stop-shop (OSS) mechanism in bloc’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), it is responsible for investigating privacy and data protection complaints about the company.
Doing so while complying with the growing number of child safety laws and regulations around the world is an almost insurmountable task.
Historically, game developers may have had to verify the child’s age or request ID to prove the player is not a kid.
But with k-ID, they could instead customize the game experience to be legally appropriate for a player of that age in that particular market.
Simply knowing this answer can help the game developer customize the experience for the child, teen or adult appropriately.
k-ID’s solution entered into early access in November 2023 with a handful of game publishers across platforms in markets including the U.S., Europe, Japan, Korea, and China.
BLKFAM considers its platform the first and only Black-owned and Black-focused family streaming service.
The company’s goal is to serve Black audiences who often feel misrepresented/underrepresented in mainstream media even though it’s the demographic that watches the most TV.
According to Nielsen, Black audiences consume over 81 hours of media on a weekly basis.
BLKFAM aims to release content that “entertains, educates, and celebrates Black American family-friendly content,” the company wrote in its press release.
BLKFAM is now available on Amazon Prime Video Channels, Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV, Roku, YouTube TV, Samsung Smart TVs, Vizio, LG, and iOS and Android devices.
Earlier this week, the 19-year-old son of former YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, was found dead at UC Berkeley of an apparent drug overdose, according to his grandmother, Esther Wojcicki.
The news broke widely yesterday, though Wojcicki posted the news to Facebook several days ago, writing: “Tragedy hit my family yesterday.
Esther Wojcicki told the Palo Alto Daily of her grandson’s passing, “Kids in college, especially freshmen and sophomores, experiment with everything.
I didn’t have the opportunity to interview Wojcicki while she held one of the most prestigious CEO posts in the world.
I love kids, I love work and I think at some level I just love creating things and building.
In a world where healthcare access is disproportionately skewed by geography and income, Forta Health raised a substantial round of funding to level the playing field a bit.
Forta defends its approach, saying it differs in some substantial ways from the ABA approaches from the bad old days.
Those are now very passé,” explains Christian Smith, co-founder and CMO at Forta Health, in an interview with TechCrunch.
Forta Health wants to ensure that those parents have professional support and training to be able to give higher-quality care.
Forta Health is exploring how to enhance family caregiving with technology, especially for chronic conditions and areas where the health system falls short.
