from Hacker News

California Proposal to Tax Social Media Gathers Momentum

by WaitWaitWha on 4/25/25, 1:23 PM with 25 comments

• by duxup on 4/25/25, 1:25 PM

  I really hate the idea of sin taxes like this one where we now take something that the law seems to view as bad (social media) and use it to fund "Social Security and mental health support".

  So now something good like mental health funding is in part dependent on something bad ...

  It strikes me as lazy public policy and perverse incentives.

• by TheChaplain on 4/25/25, 1:36 PM

  Wikipedia definesit as; "Social media are interactive technologies that facilitate the creation, sharing and aggregation of content (such as ideas, interests, and other forms of expression) amongst virtual communities and networks."

  Certainly TikTok and Twitter are the primary targets here, but this could also hit smaller communities like Mastodon and Diaspora.

  And even if the laws would apply only to larger communities, wouldn't this inhibit growth of smaller communities? If they grow too big, they'd be forced to abandon volunteering for more organized and salaried moderation.

• by floatrock on 4/25/25, 1:37 PM

  How good is a tax law if it becomes tricky to define the thing being taxed. Is the "social media" of today really the same Facebook of a decade ago?

  This California tax momentum gives additional context for recent Zuck's arguments in the Meta antitrust hearing that Facebook isn't really "social media" anymore: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/infinite-scroll/mark-zucke...

• by karaterobot on 4/25/25, 1:37 PM

  I would like to read the text of the bill (because I'd like to see their definition of social media) but apparently the CA legislature website is down. When it is back up, it should be here:

  https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml...

• by alabastervlog on 4/25/25, 1:52 PM

  Every liberal democracy that wants to stay that way needs to just ban personalized engagement-driven "algo" feeds.

• by WaitWaitWha on 4/25/25, 8:02 PM

  What if few of the larger social media blocks all California residents based on, say IP address to not have to comply with the proposal?

  For a business, it is way easier to implement a block list than a method to collect and process taxes.

  It would create Balkanization between Californians and everyone else.

• by alphawhisky on 4/25/25, 1:31 PM

  You're telling me that every cent of that Ad money was duty free? This whole time!?

  Tax them, and make sure it doesn't get passed along.

• by hellojesus on 4/25/25, 1:49 PM

  How does this work for social media sites that don't track their users' location?

• by SSJPython on 4/25/25, 1:33 PM

  Why doesn't California actually do something productive with all its economic power? It now has the fourth largest economy in the world in terms of GDP. Why not experiment a little bit by providing public healthcare to California citizens free at the point of delivery/service? Or constructing high-speed rail to connect SoCal to the Bay Area?

• by thrill on 4/25/25, 4:40 PM

  So, now we tax free speech ... "for the children"?