Kentucky HB 227 (Social Media Age Estimation)
Kentucky, United StatesHigh threatKentucky's HB 227 would have made large social media platforms estimate every user's age from the data they already hold, and treat users as under 16 until proven otherwise.
Latest update
Returned to Senate Judiciary after a second reading; no Senate vote followed
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Take action on this issueWhat it does
HB 227 covered social media platforms with $1 billion or more in ad revenue. After an account holder spent 25 hours on the platform within six months, it had to estimate their age from data it already held, revise the estimate after 50 hours and update it every 100 hours after that. Users counted as children under 16 unless the platform was 80 percent confident they were older, a bar that later rose to 90 percent; child accounts needed verifiable parental consent and got restricted default settings, and users could dispute the result through commercially reasonable age verification. Accounts held for seven years or more were exempt, and the attorney general enforced it with a 30-day cure period and fines up to $7,500 per continued violation.
What’s at stake
The bill orders platforms to mine what they already know about users' behavior to guess their age. Adults the estimate wrongly marks as under 16 would have had to go through age verification to get a full account back.
Our take
Kentucky's version skips ID uploads at signup and passed the House 96-0. The trade is ongoing behavioral profiling of anyone who spends 25 hours on a platform, with an ID check waiting for whoever the estimate gets wrong. Expect other states to copy it, because it delivers age checks without the word "verification" in the headline.
Timeline
Returned to Senate Judiciary after a second reading; no Senate vote followedLatest
Sent to the Senate Judiciary Committee
Passed the House 96-0
House Small Business and Information Technology Committee reported a substitute favorably
Introduced
Sponsor
Rep. Matt Lockett
Votes
- House — Passed (Senate never voted) (96 to 0) · March 9, 2026
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