Click to expand Image The Brazilian Senate in Brasilia, February 1, 2021. © 2021 Sergio Lima/AFP via Getty Images Today, Brazil’s Senate passed a long-awaited bill to protect children’s rights online. The bill now heads for President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s signature into law.If enacted, this legislation would impose sweeping digital safety and privacy safeguards for children. It would compel tech companies to design products with young users’ best interests in mind and provide children with the highest levels of privacy by default.Two of the bill’s strongest provisions respond to concerns directly raised in recent Human Rights Watch investigations. One provision prohibits online services from using children’s personal data in ways that “cause, facilitate, or contribute to the violation of their privacy or any other rights guaranteed to them by law … and the[ir] best interests.” In June 2024, we documented how children’s personal photos had been used to build powerful artificial intelligence tools later exploited to create abusive deepfakes of other children.Another safeguard in the bill bans profiling children – tracking children’s online behavior to predict their characteristics, behaviors, and interests – to target them with behavioral advertising. This reflects recommendations in April 2023 and May 2022 Human Rights Watch investigations, which documented that children in Brazil and around the world had been secretly surveilled in their online classrooms and across the internet through invasive profiling and behavioral advertising techniques.Passage of this bill reflects strong political will to protect children online. Before being approved by the Senate today, the bill had unanimously passed the Senate in December 2024 and cleared the Chamber of Deputies last week with support from all but one political party, Novo.This broad support enabled the bill’s passage despite fierce opposition from tech companies, which successfully weakened some of the legislation’s original proposals. These include banning “loot boxes” in video games – features that encourage children to spend money for randomized rewards – and requiring companies to exercise a duty of care towards children. It is also unclear how one provision – mandating that children’s social media accounts be linked to their guardians’ accounts – might be implemented in a way that preserves children’s privacy and their right to seek information.President Lula should sign the bill without delay and provide Brazilian children the protections they need to learn, explore, and play safely online.