One year after social-media companies clashed with Colorado legislators seeking to boost regulations on them, the early 2026 bills impacting the sector seem more cooperative, including one that received its first approval Wednesday with the blessing of the world’s largest video-sharing and streaming platform.
House Bill 1058, sponsored by Democratic Rep. Meghan Lukens of Steamboat Springs and Republican Rep. Scott Slaugh of Berthoud, would require minors who are a significant part of revenue-generating online content to get half of the revenues placed into trusts for them. It also would allow children who are featured in such content to demand its removal once they become adults and would prohibit creators of content that sexualizes underage children from benefitting financially.
The bill passed the House Judiciary Committee unanimously and with the support of YouTube, which has spawned an entire industry of content creators who feature their children in everything from travel blogs to click-generating unboxing videos. And as it heads to the House floor next for debate, the consensus produced by the regulatory bill indicated that the full-scale 2025 war between legislators and social-media platforms — and the platforms’ biggest ally, Gov. Jared Polis — may be ebbing this session.
“We appreciate the thoughtful approach taken in HB 1058,” testified Melissa Fausz, manager of state government affairs for YouTube. “We think this is a balanced approach that is centered on the interests of kidfluencers.”
2025 debates got heated
Chelsea Congdon, holding a microphone, speaks at an April 2025 rally on the Capitol steps urging Gov. Jared Polis to sign a bill regulating social-media platforms.
Such kind words weren’t heard last year, particularly after legislators passed Senate Bill 25-086, which sought to require social-media platforms to remove users who sold drugs, trafficked guns illegally or engaged in child pornography within 24 hours of being flagged by other users. Major social-media companies said the bill would have required them to collect information that ran afoul of Colorado’s Data Privacy Act and set them up for lawsuits if they disabled accounts of users who may be the subject of targeting without due process.
Polis vetoed the bill and, despite its initial passage in both legislative chambers by veto-proof margins, the House declined to override his action. SB 86 proponents — including district attorneys, legislators and parents of children who died due to fentanyl sales on the platforms — rallied on the Capitol steps and accused the Democratic governor of selling them out to maintain the profits of Big Tech.
Polis’ stated opposition led to the legislative deaths of two other bills, one that sought to require age verification by pornographic websites and another that would have required social-media companies to determine if users are minors and offer them protections like daily-usage time limits and the ability to disable personal recommendations. In his veto letter of SB 86, Polis argued the proposals violated Colorado privacy law, forced websites to act as judge and jury of alleged wrongs and could have inhibited online innovation, hurting both tech companies and the small businesses that rely on their platforms.
What the new social-media bill does
Colorado state Rep. Meghan Lukens, D-Steamboat Springs
So, it was notable to see that the first social-media regulatory bill out of the gate in the 2026 session, while putting up legal guardrails around the content on the same platforms, took a very different tact than the 2025 efforts, particularly in regard to liability.
HB 1058 mirrors a 1938 California law designed to protect child actors, requiring that parents or legal guardians who reach certain compensation thresholds from online content that features their kids deposit 50% of earnings into trust funds for children. It also allows adults who were featured as uniquely identifiable minors on or after the bill’s effective date to demand that the content creator delete the post — a request with which content creators must comply within 72 hours.
One of the reasons that social-media platforms like YouTube haven’t put up opposition to this bill is because the liability it creates is not put onto the platforms but solely onto content creators. Those creators can be sued by the featured children after they become adults for failure to pay them or to take down content, and the minors can sue if they were part of sexual content, like the selling of photos and videos of them in tight-fitting clothing like leotards, that is not already prohibited under law.
“Today children working in the digital economy deserve basic protections, and that is what this bill offers,” Lukens told committee members.
Other newly introduced social-media bills
Colorado state Sen. Matt Ball speaks at a Jan. 21 news conference on legislative Democrats’ new affordable-housing package.
Similarly, SB 51, introduced on Tuesday, attempts to tackle the issue of protection of children via age verification in a very different way than the 2025 effort.
Sponsored by Democratic Sen. Matt Ball of Denver, it does not target social-media sites directly but instead would require operating-system software providers to provide accessible interfaces at account setup that require account holders to indicate their age. They then must provide to those application developers that request an age signal the technical ability to call that signal and determine whether a potential app user is in an allowable age bracket.
Several times the bill stresses that the systems communicate the minimum amount of information necessary for them to comply with the law. It’s not known yet whether tech companies will feel the bill is technically or legally feasible, but it is a significantly different bill than the porn-site age-verification bill that was killed by its sponsors last year.
That’s not to say that tech-industry leaders will jump onboard with all the new proposals aimed at their sector. Many are monitoring SB 11, filed on the first day of the 2026 session, to try to understand its implications.
Time limits on warrant compliance could be problem
Colorado state Sen. Lisa Frizell speaks at an April 2025 rally to get Gov. Jared Polis to sign Senate Bill SB25-086.
The proposal from Republican Sen. Lisa Frizell of Castle Rock and Democratic Sen. Dylan Roberts of Frisco would require operators of certain websites, apps and platforms to set up streamlined processes for state law-enforcement agencies to contact them at any time. The platforms would have to acknowledge the receipt of a search warrant within eight hours, provide status updates on search-warrant compliance to a requesting law-enforcement agency and comply with the warrant within 72 hours in most cases.
This effort to speed compliance also was part of the vetoed SB25-086, and district attorneys said it was needed to garner evidence that could be used in some cases to track down victims of crimes who still may be missing or to locate perpetrators trying to flee. But social-media platforms pushed back on the mandatory 72-hour time frame last year, saying that it didn’t provide them enough time to ensure the warrant is legitimately court-ordered, leaving them without the full ability to carry out due process.
Another bill on timely compliance with law-enforcement requests is expected to be coming from other sponsors — one that narrows the compliance requirement to emergency situations like a shooting or kidnapping. Tech leaders have said they will look closely at both bills in an effort to work more closely with law enforcement but want to make sure that whichever one passes does not require them to act so quickly that they can’t ensure the civil liberties of their customers.
A less contentious session for social-media sector?
So far, there are not follow-up bills seeking to require user deactivations of platforms or to mandate age verification of users on platforms, two requirements that industry leaders have called impossible or a step too far for them.
And thus far, one bill, HB 1058, is moving forward with some industry support — TikTok has registered as backing it, as well as YouTube parent company Google — despite some questions from legislators. But even as House Judiciary Committee members asked if thresholds for requiring trust funds are too high and whether social-media companies should notify content creators of the law, it was clear the early differences on social-media regulation in the 2026 session were on smaller details rather than the big effects the bills could have on the sector.
“I appreciate this bill,” said Rep. Rebecca Keltie, a Colorado Springs Republican who is slow to embrace most regulations. “From yesterday’s entertainment to today’s online social-media kids, you brought something connecting the past to the future.”