Fla. Rule Asks if Social Sites Should 'Reasonably Have Been Aroused to Question' User Ages

Rules for implementation of Florida’s social media age-verification law state that a "commercial entity willfully disregards a person’s age if it, based on the facts or circumstance readily available to the respondent, should reasonably have been aroused to question whether the person was a child and thereafter failed to perform reasonable age verification.” The Florida attorney general’s office on Monday sent us rules that it adopted for implementing the state law (HB-3) taking effect Jan. 1. Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed the law in March after lawmakers approved a revised proposal that includes parental consent after he vetoed a proposal banning kids younger than 16 from having social media accounts (see 2403080063). “Willful disregard of a person’s age constitutes a knowing or intentional violation” of Florida’s social media age-restriction law, the AG rules say. “The department will not find willful disregard of a person’s age has occurred if a commercial entity establishes it has utilized a reasonable age verification method with respect to all who access the social media platform and that reasonable age verification method determined that the person was not a child unless the social media platform later obtained actual knowledge that the person was a minor and failed to act.” The rules define a “commercially reasonable method of age verification” as “a method of verifying age that is regularly used by the government or businesses for the purpose of age and identity verification." Meanwhile, “reasonable parental verification” is defined as “any method that is reasonably calculated at determining that a person is a parent of a child that also verifies the age and identity of that parent by commercially reasonable means.” That might include asking the child for a parent’s name, address, phone number and email address, contacting that person and “confirming that the parent is the child’s parent by obtaining documents or information sufficient to evidence that relationship,” and “utilizing any commercially reasonable method regularly used by the government or business to verify that parent’s identity and age.” Under another rule, social media platforms must permanently delete all personal information related to an account within 14 business days of the account's termination.