Former U.S. Deputy CTO Alexander Macgillivray Joins EFF Board in San Francisco as Group Challenges SB 976 in Meta v. Bonta

The San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) strengthened its artificial intelligence governance and constitutional litigation leadership this week by appointing former White House technology official Alexander Macgillivray to its Board of Directors while filing a First Amendment amicus brief in Meta v. Bonta challenging California's Senate Bill 976. Operating from the nonprofit's Eddy Street headquarters in San Francisco, the 35-year-old digital civil liberties organization represents technologists, journalists, and everyday internet users. Privacy council members, legal scholars, and school district policy boards in San Francisco, Berkeley, Oakland, Lafayette, and Danville are closely following both developments.

Macgillivray brings more than two decades of senior Silicon Valley and federal policy experience to the EFF board, having served as Deputy Assistant to the President and Principal Deputy U.S. Chief Technology Officer in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, where he co-authored the Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights. Earlier in his career, Macgillivray served as General Counsel of Twitter from 2009 to 2013 and Deputy General Counsel for Products and Intellectual Property at Google from 2003 to 2009. Macgillivray stated that he is focused on positively shaping AI development and noted that EFF uniquely combines top-tier legal, technical, and advocacy staff to defend individual rights, while EFF Board Chair Gigi Sohn praised his two decades of intelligence, grace, and out-of-the-box thinking.

In tandem with the board appointment, EFF attorneys filed a friend-of-the-court brief in Meta v. Bonta challenging California's SB 976, a state statute requiring teenage social-media users to obtain verified parental permission before viewing algorithmic recommendation feeds. EFF's constitutional brief argues that recommendation algorithms are core tools that help young people discover educational, civic, and artistic speech from peers and distribute their own commentary to wider audiences. Consequently, requiring government-mandated parental opt-in before teens can access recommended feeds imposes sweeping burdens on First Amendment rights.

Rather than censoring content distribution mechanisms or mandating invasive age-verification identity checks across 100 percent of California households, EFF's legal committee urged lawmakers to enact narrower, content-neutral data privacy protections. Specifically, the foundation recommended statutory rules that restrict commercial data harvesting, behavioral surveillance, and targeted advertising profiling for all users regardless of age. Municipal youth commissions and parent-teacher associations across Contra Costa and Alameda counties are hosting autumn panels to discuss online privacy and teen digital literacy.

Technologists, educators, and civil-liberties advocates can read the Meta v. Bonta amicus brief and board governance updates online at eff.org. Inquiries regarding digital rights fellowships or donor membership programs ($25 and up) at 815 Eddy Street in San Francisco may be directed to EFF's administrative office at (415) 436-9333 between 9:00 AM and 5:30 PM Monday through Friday.