Who am I?

Hi, I’m Max Bleyleben. Most recently I was Managing Director and Chief Privacy Officer of SuperAwesome (acquired by Epic Games), where I oversaw operations, finance, legal, IR, public policy, and our kids’ compliance education program. I like tech, law, finance, policy and culture in and around the internet for young people.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/maxbleyleben/

Note: I’m not a lawyer and nothing I write should construed as legal advice (!).

Why this Substack?

For over 10 years I’ve been lucky to have a ringside seat in the development of infrastructure technologies to protect the data privacy of children online. Since the 2013 revision of COPPA (America’s kids’ privacy law) made it illegal to drop cookies on kids, the industry has been trying to work out how to meet kids’ insatiable demand for digital content without breaking the law.

At SuperAwesome, we saw an opportunity to translate the requirements of COPPA—and later GDPR-K, LGPD, AADC and many more acronyms—into technologies and practical solutions that publishers, product managers and marketers could actually use.

I learned that regulation can create opportunity and got hooked.

Along the way I met many passionate, committed, brilliant professionals working to make the internet safer through policy, lawmaking, technology innovation and insights.

This community is for them, and for anyone interested in the technology and business opportunities created at the nexus between regulation, policy and innovation.

I will write about privacy regulation and how it is changing the way we innovate, build companies and engage with digital communities. But also about other laws that seek to address the growing downsides of build-fast-break-things - efforts to police content (DSA, UK Online Safety Act), to address social media addiction, to mitigate the impact of toxic communities, and to prevent all the internet’s ills being supercharged by AI. Hopefully I can provide some useful input for operators to think about their own policies, values and practical approaches to growing safe, fun digital communities for the next generation.

My content will be free. And I invite comments, criticisms, corrections and debate. These topics are not easy, and the need for a better understanding between operators, innovators and policymakers has never been greater. Please subscribe to get full access to my newsletter and publication archives.

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