Read the name and you would expect a statute telling platforms what they may not do to Minnesota users. That is not what is in force.
The Prohibiting Social Media Manipulation Act, as it operates today, prohibits almost nothing. It is a compelled-publication statute. Its operative section requires a covered platform to post facts about its own interaction limits, ranking system, notification volume, and product experiments — on its own website. And the enforcement section closes the courthouse door: no private cause of action.
The statute that regulates product design, bans addictive interface features for children, voids arbitration clauses, and hands a Minnesota child or parent a private claim with $10,000 in statutory damages is § 325M.40. It was signed May 26, 2026. It does not take effect until July 1, 2027.
For anyone advising a platform, a parent, or a school in August 2026, the gap between those two paragraphs is the analysis. We mapped chapter 325M’s three-act structure in an earlier piece on Minnesota’s three privacy regimes. This is the deep read of the third act.
What part of the Act is actually in force on August 9, 2026?
Sections 325M.30 through 325M.34 are in force, including the mental health warning label at § 325M.335. Section 325M.40 is enacted law but is not yet operative.
The Act’s own citation clause draws the boundary: “Sections 325M.30 to 325M.34 may be cited as the ‘Prohibiting Social Media Manipulation Act.’” § 325M.30. Those sections were enacted by Laws 2024, ch. 114, art. 3, §§ 63–67, each with an express effective date of July 1, 2025.
Two amendments have landed since:
- Laws 2025, 1st Spec. Sess., ch. 3, art. 19, §§ 13–14 added § 325M.335 (mental health warning label) and amended § 325M.34 to give the Attorney General authority over it. Section 325M.335 carries its date inside its own text — “Effective July 1, 2026, a social media platform must ensure that a conspicuous mental health warning label” appears each time a user accesses the platform. Subd. 1(a). That date has passed.
- Laws 2026, ch. 111 (H.F. No. 4138), presented to the governor May 20, 2026 and signed May 26, 2026, did two things. Section 1 amended § 325M.33 to add a sixth disclosure clause: “an explanation of the age estimation process used to determine the age of account holders.” Section 2 added § 325M.40. Both carry the same express effective date: July 1, 2027, and § 2 adds a reach-back — it “applies to accounts created before, on, or after that date.”
Minn. Stat. § 645.02 supplies a default only when the legislature is silent: “Each act, except one making appropriations, enacted finally at any session of the legislature takes effect on August 1 next following its final enactment, unless a different date is specified in the act.” Chapter 111 specified one in both sections. The August 1, 2026 default does not apply, and neither provision is law you can sue on or be sued under today.
The Revisor’s site shows it: the chapter 325M page carries a 2026-session banner reading “325M.40 has been added by Chapter 111, Section 2,” while a direct request for § 325M.40 in the statutes database returns nothing. That is what a not-yet-effective section looks like.
Which platforms does the Act bind?
Two conditions, both required, plus thirteen carve-outs in the definition itself.
Section 325M.32(a) makes a platform subject to §§ 325M.30 to 325M.34 if it “(1) does business in Minnesota or provides products or services that are targeted to residents of Minnesota; and (2) has more than 10,000 monthly active account holders located in Minnesota.”
Note the modifiers stacked in clause (2): monthly active, and located in Minnesota. Total registered accounts is the wrong number. Paragraph (b) lets the platform pick its own location methodology.
The threshold question, though, is usually definitional. “Social media platform” under § 325M.31(j) means an electronic medium “that allows an account holder to create, share, and view user-generated content for a substantial purpose of social interaction, sharing user-generated content, or personal networking” — then excludes thirteen categories, including search providers, internet service providers, email, telecommunications carriers, broadband service as defined in § 116J.39, subd. 1, cloud computing, “single-purpose community groups for education or public safety,” and platforms “designed primarily and specifically for creative professional users.”
Two of those exclusions carry a rider worth reading twice. Business communication services are excluded in cl. (5), “except that social media platform includes a communication service provided by a social media platform,” and cl. (10) carries the same carve-back for teleconferencing and video-conferencing. A general-purpose platform cannot slice off its messaging product and claim the exclusion.
What does § 325M.33 actually require a platform to publish?
Five categories of self-reported operating data, publicly and conspicuously, on the platform’s own website. Not to the Attorney General. Not on request. Posted.
“A social media platform must publicly and conspicuously post the following information on the social media platform’s website.” § 325M.33. “Conspicuously” means presented so as “to be readily noticed and understood by a reasonable user,” judged by size, color, contrast, location, and proximity to related information. § 325M.31(f).
The five clauses run: (1) how the platform limits excessive account interactions, including the maximum per hour, day, week, and month for each kind; (2) how it assesses content quality and users’ expressed preferences, and how those assessments are weighted in the algorithmic ranking system against other signals; (3) usage statistics at the tenth, 25th, 50th, 75th, 90th, 95th, 99th, and 99.9th percentile of all account holders for each interaction type, including time spent; (4) how it decides a notification is time sensitive, with counts at those same percentiles per day and per hour between 11:00 p.m. and 7:00 a.m.; and (5) “a description of all product experiments that have been conducted on 1,000 or more users, including … the experimental conditions and the results … for all experimental conditions on users’ viewing or engaging with content” in three enumerated categories.
Clause (5) is the one to sit with. A statute that compels publication of A/B test results — including results on content “users indicate to be high or low quality” and content that “violates platform policies” — is manufacturing discovery. It creates a public, dated, platform-authored record of what the platform knew about its own design choices.
Clause (6), the age-estimation disclosure added by Laws 2026, ch. 111, § 1, joins that list on July 1, 2027 — not before.
Is there a private right of action?
Not for § 325M.33. The statute says so in one sentence — and that sentence names only § 325M.33.
Section 325M.34 reads in full: “(a) The attorney general may investigate and bring an action against a social media platform for an alleged violation of section 325M.33 or 325M.335. (b) Nothing in sections 325M.30 to 325M.34 creates a private cause of action in favor of a person injured by a violation of section 325M.33.”
When the 2025 special session added the warning-label section, it amended paragraph (a) to add “or 325M.335.” It did not amend paragraph (b). On the face of the statute, the bar on private actions extends to § 325M.33 violations and stops there.
We would not plan around that gap, and a defendant would argue the evident design was a single public enforcer for the whole article. But the text is the text, and a claim premised on a missing or buried warning label under § 325M.335 is not foreclosed by the sentence the legislature wrote. Whether Minnesota’s private attorney general statute, § 8.31, subd. 3a, supplies a vehicle is a question the Act does not answer — contrast § 325M.20(d), where the Consumer Data Privacy Act expressly forecloses it.
What does § 325M.40 do, and who does it cover?
It regulates design, not disclosure, and it uses a different definition of “social media platform” than the rest of the chapter.
This is the trap for anyone building a compliance matrix. Section 325M.31’s definitions apply “[f]or purposes of sections 325M.30 to 325M.34.” Section 325M.40’s apply “[f]or purposes of this section.” Two closed universes, same words.
Under § 325M.40, subd. 1(e), a “covered social media platform” is one “that has 10,000 or more account holders or that has earned at least $1,000,000,000 in revenues worldwide in one or more of the preceding three years.” Disjunctive, and there is no “monthly active” qualifier. The Minnesota tie does not disappear, though — it relocates into the definitions, where subd. 1(b) defines an “account holder” as “a resident of the state” whom the platform “knows or should reasonably know” is “physically located in the state.” The revenue prong carries no Minnesota limit at all. The underlying definition in subd. 1(k) is keyed to function — a site that “utilizes addictive interface features, provides profile-based feeds, or utilizes personal information to display targeted paid commercial advertising” — with four exclusions, not thirteen. A platform can be outside the transparency article and inside this one.
“Child” means “an individual who is age 15 or younger and residing in Minnesota.” Subd. 1(d). Not “minor,” which the same subdivision separately defines as anyone under 18.
“Addictive interface features” is an enumerated list in subd. 1(c): infinite scrolling; display of a profile-based feed; push notifications calling attention to newly posted content or reactions (excluding alerts for incoming calls, texts, emails, and similar human-sent messages); autoplay video; display of personal metrics showing others’ reactions, shares, or reposts; and display of “awards, badges, tiers, or any form of recognition” based on hours spent, follower counts, posting frequency, or other usage metrics.
The core prohibitions are two sentences. “A covered social media platform may not present addictive interface features in the display or feed of any account of a child.” Subd. 5(a). “A covered social media platform may not present targeted paid commercial advertising in the display or feed of any account of a child.” Subd. 5(b).
Around them sits an age-estimation regime with hard numbers: at 25 hours of use in a six-month period the platform has 14 days to estimate age, and may treat the holder as a non-child only on an 80 percent confidence score that the holder is 16 or older; at 50 hours it has 14 days to revise and the threshold rises to 90 percent; thereafter it re-estimates every six months. Subd. 2(a)–(c). The default is not neutral — “[o]therwise, … [it] must treat the account holder as a child for purposes of this section.”
Does § 325M.40 create a private right of action — and what is it worth?
Yes — the first private claim anywhere in chapter 325M, and self-executing rather than routed through § 8.31.
Subdivision 9(a): “A child or parent shall have a private right of action for a violation of this section.” Relief includes declaratory or injunctive relief, “general and special damages, court costs and fees, reasonable attorney fees, and any other appropriate relief as a result of a negligent, reckless, or knowing violation of this section.”
Subdivision 9(b) sets the floor where the violation was reckless or knowing: a prevailing child or parent “shall be entitled to recover actual damages or $10,000 in statutory damages, whichever is greater.” Subdivision 9(c) authorizes punitive damages for “a consistent pattern of reckless or knowing conduct” — but that is a substantive authorization, not a pleading right. Minnesota still requires a post-filing motion with affidavits and a prima facie showing before punitive damages may be pleaded at all. Minn. Stat. § 549.191; see our discussion of that gatekeeping motion.
Subdivision 9(d) is the platform’s answer: no liability “if it has used reasonable efforts, taking into consideration available technology and the data in possession of the covered social media platform, to comply with the requirements of this section.” That phrase is parallel to the age-estimation standard in subd. 2(a), and it is where these cases will be tried.
Subdivision 9(e) sets a three-year period running from when the plaintiff “knew, or reasonably should have known, of the alleged violation,” then tolls it “until the holder of an account of a child reaches the age of 18.” A violation against a 12-year-old in 2027 is reachable well into the 2030s — a longer runway than most Minnesota civil limitations periods allow.
Subdivision 8 voids contracts. “Contracts formed in violation of this section are void and unenforceable. No part of this section may be waived in a contract or terms of service agreement.” Subd. 8(a). Subdivision 8(b) goes further: where a platform lets a child open or keep an account without consent sufficient to form a binding contract with a minor, “any purported contract pertaining to the account is void and unenforceable as contrary to public policy, including but not limited to any arbitration provision, limitation of liability, or limitation of remedies,” regardless of the platform’s knowledge. Whether that survives the Federal Arbitration Act is a fight worth anticipating rather than assuming.
Subdivision 10 adds a second track. “Any knowing or reckless violation of this section shall constitute a deceptive trade practice and a violation of section 325D.44. The attorney general shall have enforcement authority under section 8.31.” Note what § 325D.45 supplies there: injunctive relief without proof of monetary damage, subd. 1; costs to the prevailing party, subd. 2; and attorney fees only on willfulness or a groundless claim, subd. 2. See our Deceptive Trade Practices Act overview.
Will any of this survive a First Amendment challenge?
Unresolved — and the framework for answering it means no single ruling will dispose of the chapter. In Moody v. NetChoice, LLC, the Supreme Court vacated both circuit decisions on Florida’s and Texas’s platform statutes because neither court had performed a proper facial analysis. “This Court has therefore made facial challenges hard to win,” and in the First Amendment setting the question is whether “a substantial number of [the law’s] applications are unconstitutional, judged in relation to the statute’s plainly legitimate sweep.”
The analysis runs provision by provision. A compelled-disclosure requirement under § 325M.33, an interface prohibition under § 325M.40, subd. 5, and a contract-voiding rule under subd. 8 are three different constitutional questions.
Three things to do before July 1, 2027
Run the coverage test twice — once under § 325M.32(a), once under § 325M.40, subd. 1(e). Neither answer predicts the other.
Audit the § 325M.33 posting and the § 325M.335 warning label now. Both are already required, the percentile statistics in clause (3) are not something a legal department generates on short notice, and the Attorney General’s authority under § 325M.34(a) is live as to both.
Read subdivision 8 before the next terms-of-service revision. A waiver clause drafted in 2026 purporting to cover a Minnesota child’s account may be unenforceable as to that account the day the section takes effect.
And one citation trap: the Act was enacted as chapter 325O — Laws 2024, ch. 114, art. 3, §§ 63–67, coded as §§ 325O.01–.05 — and appears in Minnesota Statutes as §§ 325M.30–.34, the Revisor’s renumbering power being at Minn. Stat. § 3C.10, subd. 1(a). A memo written in that window may carry the old numbering.
Madgett Law, LLC advises Minnesota businesses on consumer-protection and data-privacy compliance and represents individuals and families in consumer statutory claims. If you need an assessment of whether chapter 325M reaches your platform, or you believe a Minnesota child’s account has been handled in violation of state law, send us a message or call 612-470-6529.
Sources: Minn. Stat. § 325M.30 (citation clause, scope of the “Prohibiting Social Media Manipulation Act”); § 325M.31 (definitions applicable to §§ 325M.30–.34, esp. ¶ (c) “account holder,” ¶ (d) “account interactions,” ¶ (f) “conspicuously,” ¶ (j) “social media platform” and its thirteen exclusions); § 325M.32, ¶¶ (a)–(b) (two-part coverage test; more than 10,000 monthly active account holders located in Minnesota; permitted location-determination methods); § 325M.33, cls. (1)–(5) (transparency postings, including percentile usage statistics and product-experiment descriptions); § 325M.335, subd. 1(a)–(c) and subd. 2(a) (mental health warning label; July 1, 2026 date in the section’s own text; prohibition on terms-and-conditions-only placement and on user disablement; commissioner of health guidelines due March 1, 2026); § 325M.34, ¶¶ (a)–(b) (Attorney General authority as to §§ 325M.33 and 325M.335; no private cause of action as to § 325M.33 only); § 325M.20(d) (contrasting express foreclosure of § 8.31, subd. 3a, in the Minnesota Consumer Data Privacy Act); § 325D.45, subds. 1–3 (Deceptive Trade Practices Act remedies); § 549.191 (motion required before pleading punitive damages); § 645.02 (default effective date, “unless a different date is specified in the act”); § 3C.10, subd. 1(a) (Revisor’s renumbering power) — all from the Minnesota Office of the Revisor of Statutes, 2025 Minnesota Statutes. Session laws: Laws 2024, ch. 114, art. 3, §§ 63–67 (original enactment as §§ 325O.01–.05, each effective July 1, 2025); Laws 2025, 1st Spec. Sess., ch. 3, art. 19, §§ 13–14 (adding § 325M.335 and amending § 325M.34); Laws 2026, ch. 111 (H.F. No. 4138), §§ 1–2 (amending § 325M.33 to add cl. (6) and adding § 325M.40, subds. 1–10; both sections expressly effective July 1, 2027; § 2 applies to accounts created before, on, or after that date; presented to the governor May 20, 2026 and signed May 26, 2026) — all from the Revisor’s session law database. Moody v. NetChoice, LLC, 603 U.S. ___, No. 22-277 (U.S. July 1, 2024) (facial First Amendment challenges to state platform statutes; standard quoted from the opinion of the Court), verified against the official slip opinion published by the Supreme Court of the United States.
Currency note: As of August 9, 2026, § 325M.40 and the clause (6) amendment to § 325M.33 are enacted but not in force. Both take effect July 1, 2027. The Revisor’s chapter 325M page carries a 2026-session banner to that effect, and a direct citation request for § 325M.40 in the statutes database does not resolve.
This article is general legal information about Minnesota law, not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney–client relationship. Whether any of these provisions applies to a particular platform, account, or family depends on facts this article does not address, and federal law and other states’ statutes frequently apply independently. No outcome is promised or implied.