Welcome to one of the least glamorous awards in tech policy — the Second Annual Tech 404 Awards. Every April 4, in a special nod to the Error Code 404 that tells users a link is broken or a page no longer exists, we host a celebration of the worst tech policy ideas of the year.
In considering award recipients for this year’s Tech 404 Awards, Chamber of Progress reviewed hundreds of federal, state, and local tech policy proposals. During a year that’s seen an onslaught of state legislation censoring teens, enabling digital hate speech, hamstringing AI innovation, and endangering individual privacy, this year’s award decisions were especially difficult.
After a rigorous and unscientific selection process, Chamber of Progress is proud to present the winners for this year’s Tech 404 Awards.
Here are this year’s Tech 404 Awards, recognizing the most distinguished terrible ideas in six separate categories:
The No AI FRAUD Act (H.R. 6943) wins this year’s Worst for Innovation Award. Featuring recklessly loose legislative definitions, H.R. 6943 not only threatens to chill innovation in AI technology, but in all tech products and services that feature people’s faces and voices.
This year’s Worst for Children Award goes to New York for new teen digital censorship legislation (S. 7694) that threatens to degrade the online experience of teens, exposing minors to more spam and hate speech while banning algorithms that serve age-appropriate content.
This year’s Worst for Vulnerable Communities Award goes to California’s autonomous vehicle (AVs) legislation, Senator Dave Cortese’s SB 915, for overlooking and threatening to harm not one, but many vulnerable communities.
This year’s award for Worst Constitutional Violation goes to Minnesota’s Prohibiting Social Media Manipulation Act (HF4400), which violates not only the First Amendment editorial rights of platforms, but the rights of consumers as well.
For the public health crisis it threatens to create by further criminalizing drug-related content online, California’s AB 1800 receives this year’s award for Worst for Public Safety.
No single piece of tech legislation this year has resulted so swiftly in so many lost jobs as Minneapolis’s new wage law for app-based gig drivers. With an estimated 8,000 drivers out of work starting next month, the new rideshare ordinance wins this year’s prize for Worst for Working Families.
Chamber of Progress (progresschamber.org) is a center-left tech industry association promoting technology’s progressive future. We work to ensure that all Americans benefit from technological leaps and that the tech industry operates responsibly and fairly.
Our work is supported by our corporate partners, but our partners do not sit on our board of directors and do not have a vote on or veto over our positions. We do not speak for individual partner companies and remain true to our stated principles even when our partners disagree.