by Ty Tagami | Sep 19, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
In a rare bipartisan act to protect children, Georgia legislators adopted a law last year that regulated social media companies.
But the industry sued and, for now, has sidelined the prohibition on advertising to children. The law also required platforms to obtain parental consent when minors signup for service.
The age verification mandate forces everyone to share identifying information to prove their age, placing what a federal judge called “severe burdens” on adults, leading to her decision in June to issue a preliminary injunction against enforcement.
Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr has appealed the decision. His office said he is helping to defend similar laws in other states, including Texas, Florida and Ohio.
The platforms are fighting a tide of legislation as states react to congressional inaction. Stories about heedless harm in the pursuit of advertising dollars have galvanized parents and politicians.
Georgia lawmakers have not given up. They have been meeting over the summer to consider other ways to rein in social media.
“I don’t think we can wait for the federal government to do this for us,” said Sen. Sally Harrell, D-Atlanta, who has been leading a study committee looking for another approach. “So, we’re going to do it.”
The industry has made itself a target for lawmakers across the political spectrum.
The state law that was sidelined in federal court was a top priority for Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, the Republican who leads the GOP-dominated Senate and, like Carr, is running for governor in next year’s GOP primary.
Jones and his allies picked Democrat Harrell to lead the bipartisan study committee on the impact of social media on children.
She and fellow senators recently heard from parents whose children had died by suicide after social media exposure.
Industry insiders such as Ravi Iyer, a technologist and academic psychologist at the University of Southern California, who led data science, research, and product teams at Facebook, have been educating Georgia lawmakers.
At a hearing this week, he described internal company documents that suggest platform designers knew their algorithms were harmful but deployed them anyway.
The documents, referenced in a lawsuit against Meta by New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez, describe how Meta undercounted harmful content and experiences reported on its platforms, including bullying and harassment.
Iyer did the math using the leaked statistics. “That is millions and millions of kids,” he said.
Pete Furlong, a researcher with the Center for Humane Technology, said in the hearing that numerous whistleblower complaints indicate Meta has “abundant” research showing its algorithmic feeds harm kids and adults but that the company is not taking clear steps to address it.
“They could make it better,” he said. “It’s their business incentives that drive them to design these products in this way.”
After conservative activist Charlie Kirk was shot dead in Utah last week, the state’s Republican governor said social media companies were addicting Americans to outrage and hate. Gov. Spencer Cox called technology companies “conflict entrepreneurs.”
It may be a cultural turning point that opens a window for successful legislation. But Georgia’s senators are wading into a legal thicket. Social media companies are sheltered by a foundational 1996 federal law that established the legal framework for the internet. Known as Section 230, the law immunizes platforms from liability for hosting users’ content.
Instead of choosing which content to promote like a typical publisher, internet platforms use algorithms to drive feeds that are tailored to each user to increase their engagement — and their value to advertisers.
The companies monitor users’ behavior on their platforms to inform the kind of custom results that frustrate critics such as Cox.
Lawmakers in California targeted this practice.
The Age-Appropriate Design Code Act regulates how platforms allow minors to use personalized recommendation algorithms.
NetChoice, the same industry group that sidelined Georgia’s law on First Amendment grounds, also filed a federal suit in California. A district judge ruled against the law, but the state appealed and earlier this month the federal appeals court there ruled partially in the state’s favor.
“It upheld the addictive feeds regulation,” said Matt Lawrence, a law professor at Emory University who is an expert on addiction law and has been following tech industry lawsuits.
It remains unclear to what extent courts elsewhere in the country will define algorithms as protected speech though.
Other states are targeting age verification. The U.S. Supreme Court recently upheld a law that does that in Texas.
The high court’s decision in June was about minors accessing websites with sexually explicit content rather than social media platforms.
Even so, Eric Segall, a federal courts and constitutional law professor at Georgia State University, said it suggests a shift in the court’s thinking.
Under Chief Justice John Roberts, the nation’s top court has prioritized the First Amendment, Segall said.
But in recent years, parent rights have become a growing priority for conservatives, and the Texas decision may reflect that, he said. If there is a recalibration, it could create an opening for laws like Georgia’s that target social media.
“There’s a big movement out there for parents’ rights to control their children and that’s going to affect how judges view these laws,” Segall said. “As long as it’s a parent consent law, not a ban law, it’s much more likely to be upheld.”
But pendulums swing and the window for regulation could close. After all, the platforms have made themselves indispensable to people across the globe.
Last week, a government crackdown on social media in Nepal inspired deadly riots among the youth.
Any attempts to blunt the power of algorithms to make them less invasive will also dull their utility, said Noah Giansiracusa, a mathematician and author of the book “Robin Hood Math: Take Control of the Algorithms That Run Your Life.”
“We don’t want to make these powerful systems that help us worse,” he said. Like many who have watched the attempts to regulate social media unfold, he drew an analogy to the battles against the automobile industry for seatbelts, airbags and cleaner emissions.
Cars pollute and kill, he said, yet we need them.
“We want to make them better, but we don’t want to ban them,” he said. “So, that’s where we are with social media, except we don’t really know how to make them safer, and we have all these free speech issues.”
Lawrence, the Emory professor, said lawmakers will have to keep trying and see what sticks.
Harrell said she and her committee will focus on algorithm design and age verification. They are also turning to future tech.
An explosive report by Reuters in August said an internal Meta policy document permitted provocative chatbot behavior on topics including sex, race and celebrities.
Harrell’s committee will hear about artificial intelligence when it meets Oct. 8.
“Be prepared for an intense meeting,” Harrell said, “because what’s happening with AI is a little overwhelming.”
by Ty Tagami | Sep 19, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — The August workforce report for Georgia shows a gain of 1,900 jobs, with the unemployment rate unchanged from July.
Nearly five million are employed in the state, according to numbers released Thursday by the Georgia Department of Labor.
Health care and social assistance reached all-time highs, as did the leisure and hospitality sector. The biggest gainers for the month were retail trade, administrative and support services, accommodation and food services, and state government.
Decliners included construction, information, professional and technical services, real estate and rental and leasing, and federal government.
Georgia Labor Commissioner Bárbara Rivera Holmes pointed to growth during the first half of the year.
“With unemployment holding steady at 3.4% in August, nine-tenths below the national average, and Georgia adding workers seven months in a row, our workforce is strong and growing,” she said.
by Ty Tagami | Sep 19, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — A man who threatened to bomb a Macon area polling place will serve 20 months in prison.
Nicholas Wimbish, 26, of Milledgeville, must also serve a year of supervised release and pay a $2,000 fine under the sentence issued by U.S. District Judge Marc Treadwell Thursday.
The former poll worker pleaded guilty in February to a count of conveying false information and making hoaxes, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Georgia.
“Americans must be able to express their political choices at the ballot box without fear of violence or harm,” U.S. Attorney William R. “Will” Keyes said, adding that such threats “undermine the core values” of the nation.
Wimbish worked at the Jones County Elections Office in Gray. He mailed a typed letter to the office with a handwritten note at the bottom that said there was a “boom toy” in an early voting place, prosecutors said.
Wimbish admitted to authorities that he knew the term was slang for a bomb. They found a copy of the letter on his computer.
Wimbish mailed the bomb threat pretending it was from a voter with whom he had a “verbal altercation,” prosecutors said.
by Ty Tagami | Sep 18, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — Lawmakers who want to overhaul the way Georgians vote heard a consistent message Thursday from election chiefs.
Hurry up! And give us money.
A law backed by Republicans in the General Assembly outlaws the Quick Response (QR) codes that the state’s voting machines use to transfer voter intent into each polling place’s database.
Poll workers will have to use a different method starting July 1, and the legislature has yet to identify it — or pay for it.
Local election chiefs and poll workers told a House study committee that convened at Savannah Technical College Thursday that they will need months to train workers.
“It cannot be rushed,” said Billy Wooten, the election supervisor in Chatham County, where the fourth hearing of the House study committee on election procedures was being held.
There is significant momentum in the state Republican party to use paper ballots.
Such a change could be expensive for a small place like Irwin County, said Ethan Compton, the election supervisor there.
“Property taxes will have to go up if we have to pre-print all of our ballots,” he said. “That is a cost that is going to be unacceptable to the people that I work for.”
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican who announced this week that he is running for governor, has consistently said that the state’s voting machines work well and that elections have been accurate.
But a statistician from the University of California at Berkeley who was invited to speak, said Georgia’s system can be hacked. Professor Philip Stark also said the system lacks a paper trail that is trustworthy enough for reliable audits.
He recommended that the state use hand-marked ballots like most voters in the country. The results would be optically scanned on election night for a prompt result, then workers would do hand counts to confirm the outcome.
Instead, Georgia voters mark their vote on a touchscreen, and the machine then transfers the result to a printout bearing the selections and a QR code. The voter then enters the paper into a secured scanner. The ballot machine also produces a digital record on a memory card that each voter returns after using it to record their vote.
The system is known as a ballot marking device.
“With a ballot marking device, you’re making the voter responsible not just for their own mistakes, but also for the cybersecurity of the system,” Stark said. “It’s on them to determine whether the system misbehaved and misprinted their votes.”
With this kind of system, voters lack proof if a machine errs, he said. “It doesn’t give them any evidence that they can go back to a poll worker and say, ‘Hey, this machine flipped my vote’.”
About two dozen members of the public each got a moment to speak, some saying they lacked confidence in the election system and others endorsing it. So much information was shared during the four-hour hearing that the last speaker said she forgot what she was going to say.
Before her, Marilyn Marks, the director of the Coalition for Good Governance, told the lawmakers something that probably everyone could agree with despite the controversy surrounding elections and voting.
“You guys have your work cut out for you,” she said.
The next hearing will be Oct. 2 at the Georgia Piedmont Technical College campus in Covington.
by Ty Tagami | Sep 18, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — A federal review of Georgia’s unique implementation of Medicaid found that two-thirds of the money went to administrative overhead rather than to medical assistance.
The report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office also found that more than half of the $80 million spent on the program since 2021 went to contractors who helped the state overhaul its eligibility and enrollment system.
Georgia’s Pathways to Coverage demonstration project needed the overhaul because of the state’s work requirement. All applicants must prove they spent 80 hours working, attending college or doing community service during the month before applying.
They must continue those activities to stay insured.
A law passed by Congress this year makes other states impose similar work requirements.
The new GAO review was requested by four Democrats in the U.S. Senate, including Georgia Sens. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff. They oppose the work requirements.
Warnock’s office released the report Thursday.
In a briefing with reporters, a Warnock staffer criticized the lower-than-advertised program enrollment. There were about 7,500 Georgians insured by Pathways in May, the review said, far below the 25,000 Georgia had projected for the first year.
“This program is here to kick people off their health insurance,” said the Warnock staffer, who asked not to be identified.
The Pathways program technically started in 2021, but it did not get off the ground until 2023.
That pause likely drove up administrative costs, said the review.
Georgia’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp, blames the administration of former President Joe Biden, a Democrat, for that pause. Kemp’s office said the Biden administration “put up roadblocks at every turn” to stop Pathways.
“Democrats like Senators Ossoff and Warnock are trying to rewrite history after four years of inaction and blame the State for costs associated with their own stonewalling,” Kemp’s office said in an emailed statement.
Georgia is applying to extend the program another five years. The state estimates it can enroll at least 18,000 in the first year of extension, increasing that to more than 30,000 by year five.
The federal government has budgeted $400 million for administrative costs to implement the same kind of work requirements in states across the country.
