California has long positioned itself at the forefront of efforts to regulate the digital world’s effects on children, but a new comparison raises the question of how the state’s approach measures up against strategies being tried elsewhere in the world — specifically, Brazil.
CalMatters partnered with Agência Pública, Brazil’s first nonprofit investigative newsroom, to examine how child online safety laws have developed in California relative to both federal efforts in Washington and a sweeping new law in Brazil known as the ECA Digital. Reporters Maria Martha Bruno of Pública and Colin Lecher of CalMatters collaborated on the analysis, which found that Brazil’s law, passed this year despite heavy resistance from tech companies, offers some features California lawmakers might want to consider.
Among them: giving parents more detailed, or “granular,” control over specific features within social media platforms, rather than blanket restrictions. That could mean separately limiting things like autoplay video or direct messaging capabilities, rather than an all-or-nothing approach.
But according to experts who spoke with CalMatters, the more instructive lesson from Brazil’s experience may be about what to avoid — namely, the outsized influence tech companies can have on the legislative process.
“Our system is uniquely vulnerable to the power of that money,” said Ed Howard of the University of San Diego.
That warning carries weight as California lawmakers and Gov. Gavin Newsom weigh new legislation this year aimed at regulating children’s interactions with chatbots and curbing the addictive design of social media feeds — proposals likely to draw intense lobbying from the tech industry.
Read the full comparison at calmatters.org.
CalMatters is hosting a free public event Aug. 5 in Riverside focused on how California can prepare its workforce for the future. CalMatters reporter Adam Echelman will moderate a panel of education, health and workforce leaders. Registration is available through Eventbrite.
CalMatters and inewsource are also partnering for an Aug. 13 event in San Ysidro addressing the ongoing Tijuana River contamination crisis, which continues to affect communities on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border.
In other news, California college instructors are rethinking how to teach students about labor icon César Chávez following a New York Times investigation earlier this year that detailed allegations Chávez sexually abused and assaulted women connected to the United Farm Workers. In the aftermath, several California colleges swiftly removed his name and likeness from campus buildings, statues and memorials.
Alina Mendez, a professor of Chicano and Latin American studies at Fresno State, said she’s adjusting her lesson plans to spotlight lesser-known local labor leaders instead of centering Chávez alone. Still, she and her students agreed his story should remain part of the curriculum — with accountability built in.
“There’s this collective grief … of ‘If César Chávez is no longer our hero, then who do we look up to?'” Mendez said. “That’s why I’ve been insisting that we look at our local communities. Let’s look around us and see other people who very much sacrificed a lot of time, a lot of resources, a lot of sweat, to make those successes possible.”
Meanwhile, newly surfaced evidence shows federal immigration agents used racially charged slurs — including the derogatory term “tonk” — while identifying targets during immigration sweeps across Los Angeles last year. The term, long used pejoratively by Border Patrol agents, is reportedly derived from the sound made when a flashlight strikes a person’s head.
The American Civil Liberties Union cited the language this week in an ongoing lawsuit challenging the legality of the raids, arguing agents engaged in racial profiling against Latino residents through what the suit describes as “suspicionless and discriminatory” stops. The filing, which includes body camera footage and agent statements, could complicate the administration’s defense before the U.S. Supreme Court, where officials have argued agents relied on specific intelligence rather than race when making stops.
In a separate development, the California Supreme Court issued a ruling upholding existing limits on how much public employees can add to their pension calculations through cashed-out vacation time.
And in commentary, Joy Chen, executive director of Every Fire Survivor’s Network, argues that Gov. Newsom is quietly negotiating a bailout for utility companies rather than prioritizing wildfire victims — even as Southern California Edison’s profits more than tripled in 2025.
Original source: CalMatters
