EPIC Files Amicus Brief Countering Big Tech Claim that Surveillance-Based Feeds Are Protected by the First Amendment

On Monday, EPIC filed an amicus brief defending South Carolina’s Age-Appropriate Design Code, H. 3431, against the latest attempt by the tech industry to strike down laws designed to keep kids safe online. 

South Carolina’s AADC was passed to protect minors’ sensitive data and give users the ability to opt out of personalized algorithmic feeds, which surveil users to manipulate them into staying on the platform. This addictive design practice boosts the companies’ revenues by maximizing the number of ads users see but invades users’ privacy, reduces their control over their online experience, and leads to mental and physical harms, particularly in minors. 

NetChoice—a lobbying group representing tech giants such as Meta, Google, and Amazon—sought an injunction to stop the law’s enforcement. In doing so, NetChoice took a “kitchen sink” approach—as it has in its litigation across the country—cursorily asserting a slew of legal arguments in the hope that something might stick. Many of NetChoice’s claims seem to describe a completely different law to the one South Carolina enacted. Others seek to contort important constitutional speech protections beyond recognition to try to protect companies’ conduct that falls well outside the First Amendment. 

EPIC filed an amicus brief in the case focused on just one of NetChoice’s arguments, in the hopes of illustrating just how defective NetChoice’s legal claims are. Specifically, EPIC’s brief focused on NetChoice’s claim that companies’ use of surveillance data to behaviorally profile minors is speech protected by the First Amendment, and that South Carolina’s law allowing users to opt-out is thus unconstitutional. Our amicus brief explains that behavioral profiling in recommendation systems is not expressive, and companies cannot claim First Amendment protection for their non-expressive conduct simply by combining it with something that is expressive (e.g., content moderation). 

This is just the most recent brief EPIC has filed to counter Big Tech’s efforts to strike down laws that would regulate the most dangerous and addictive design practices. Just last month, we filed a similar brief in the Northern District of California.