S 4609 New York Senate · 2025 Regular Session

Establishes the "stop online predators act"

Summary

Establishes the "stop online predators act"; requires operators of covered platforms to conduct age verification to determine whether a user is a covered minor; requires operators of covered platforms to utilize certain default privacy settings for covered minors; requires operators of covered platforms to require parental approval of certain activity related to a covered minor's covered platform account.

Issues: ✓ Technology

Bill status in committee 1 of 4 stages cleared

Introduction

Feb 2025

Committee Review

Floor Vote

Governor

Introduced Feb 10, 2025 Last action Apr 1, 2026

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What changed between versions

S4609 → S4609A · 4 edits

MODERATE

This bill was amended to rename the legislation from the 'New York children's online safety act' to the 'stop online predators act' and to renumber the affected article from 45-A to 45-B. The changes significantly expand the scope of the law by adding new definitions for terms like 'adult' and 'false positive,' and by updating the requirements for age verification to include specific protections against errors and technical bypasses.

Scope change

The bill's scope was altered by renumbering the new article from 45-A to 45-A (with the previous article renumbered to 45-B) and expanding the list of defined terms to include concepts like 'method circumvention' and 'syncing'.

SCOPE

The bill title and short title were changed from 'New York children's online safety act' to 'stop online predators act', and the article number was shifted from 45-A to 45-B.

DEFINITION

New definitions were added for 'Adult', 'False negative', 'False positive', 'Method circumvention', 'Minor', 'Media', 'Operator', 'Parent', 'Syncing', and 'User' to clarify the law's terminology.

REQUIREMENT

The age verification requirements were updated to mandate that methods must reduce instances of false negatives and false positives and must detect attempts to bypass age verification systems.

New rules were added regarding parental notification when a minor attempts to change default privacy settings, requiring explicit approval before changes can take effect.

Floor votes

How they voted

No floor votes recorded yet.

Full legislative history

Actions timeline

Total actions

Key actions

Committee

Amendments

Apr 1, 2026

Committee

REPORTED AND COMMITTED TO FINANCE

upper

Jan 9, 2026

Upper · Passed

PRINT NUMBER 4609A

upper

Jan 9, 2026

Upper · Passed

AMEND (T) AND RECOMMIT TO INTERNET AND TECHNOLOGY

upper

Jan 7, 2026

Committee

REFERRED TO INTERNET AND TECHNOLOGY

upper

Feb 10, 2025

Committee

REFERRED TO INTERNET AND TECHNOLOGY

upper

1 primary · 10 co-sponsors