California, the Golden State, might soon see parents being given the legal authority to control their child’s Facebook page if a new bill under consideration is passed, of course. Facebook won’t be the only site affected by this bill as other social networking sites will also fall under a similar law. This new bill will allow parents to remove personal information on childrens’ accounts at their request, and it has been bandied about because the number of kids using Facebook and other similar sites tend to lie about their legal age, where at last count according to Consumer Reports, up to 7.5 million kids were fibbing – perhaps this is why adults also tend to lie to themselves and others about growing old?
The proposed Social Networking Privacy Act will give parents the legal right to take down their child’s page altogether, and companies can get fined up to $10,000 if they fail to comply within 48 hours – guess whoever is in the position of handling such enquiries will better be at their most efficient at work, as paying off such a hefty fine from your own pocket hurts.
This might also translate to users requiring to set privacy settings the moment they join, instead of doing so at a later date. To some, it might not make sense since users would then be required to make detailed decisions about a service before they’d even used it for the first time. Facebook, Google, Twitter and Match.com have already submitted a formal letter of opposition to the plans, so it remains to be seen how everything else will pan out in the end.
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