By John D. McKinnon

Sen. Maria Cantwell (D., Wash.) -- who chairs the powerful Commerce Committee -- said the big policy takeaway from the current controversy is the need to update the 1998 Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, or Coppa. That's the federal law that sets out the rules protecting children online.

"Updating Coppa will be essential," she said in her opening statement at the Facebook Inc. hearing.

Coppa has been widely criticized as inadequate for the current social media environment. The law has a couple of problems.

One is its requirement that a platform operator have "actual knowledge" that it's collecting personal information from kids before the law's toughest restrictions kick in. The other is its somewhat arbitrary age cutoff. Only kids under 13 get its strongest protections.

Both limits have created enforcement problems for the Federal Trade Commission.

"The hardest problem for the FTC is the actual knowledge standard," said David Vladeck, the former FTC consumer protection chief, at a Senate hearing on Wednesday. He added, "I think we [also] need to rethink what the right age is."

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

September 30, 2021 12:08 ET (16:08 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2021 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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