Key point: The amendment significantly expands the existing law’s applicability, redefines “covered design feature,” creates two new prohibitions, and adds a new deletion right.
On April 17, 2026, Nebraska Governor Jim Pillen signed LB 838 into law. The omnibus bill addresses several different topics but, as is relevant here, it amends Nebraska’s Age-Appropriate Online Design Code Act, Neb. Rev. Stats. § 87-1301, et seq, which only went into effect on January 1, 2026. We provided an overview of the existing law here. The amendment goes into effect three months after the legislature’s April 17 adjournment date, on July 17, 2026.
The article below provides a summary of the changes.
Broadened Applicability
Perhaps the most significant amendment is to the law’s applicability standard. The existing law has a narrow applicability standard, applying only to companies that provide an online service and satisfy the following five criteria: (i) conduct business in Nebraska; (ii) alone, or jointly with their affiliates, subsidiaries, or parent companies, determine the purposes and means of the processing of consumers’ personal data; (iii) have annual gross revenue in excess of $25 million; (iv) annually buy, receive, sell, or share the personal data of 50,000 or more consumers, households, or devices; and (v) derive at least 50% of their annual revenue from the sale or sharing of consumers’ personal data. Requiring companies to satisfy all of those criteria — in particular, requiring them to derive 50% of annual revenue from selling or sharing personal data — significantly limited the law’s applicability.
The amendment expands the applicability threshold considerably. The law will now apply to companies that: (i) conduct business in Nebraska; (ii) generate a majority of annual revenue from online services; (iii) alone, or jointly with their affiliates, subsidiaries, or parent companies, determine the purposes and means of the processing of consumers’ personal data; and (iv) either have annual gross revenue in excess of $25 million or annually process the personal data of 50,000 or more consumers, households, or devices.
The law still retains numerous exemptions, which companies should be mindful of when determining applicability.
Change to Covered Design Feature Definition
The amendment also revises and expands the law’s definition of “covered design feature.” The existing law defines that phrase to mean “any feature or component of a covered online service that will encourage or increase the frequency, time spent, or activity of a user on the covered online service and includes: (a) Infinite scroll; (b) Rewards or incentives for frequency of visits or time spent on the covered online service; (c) Notifications or push alerts; (d) In-game purchases; or (e) Appearance-altering filters.”
The revised definition now includes the following 11 activities:
(a) Infinite scroll, or a design feature where content automatically and continuously loads at the bottom of a screen, other than what the user explicitly prompted, requested, or searched for;
(b) Auto playing video or audio, or a design feature in which a video or audio automatically begins playing when a user navigates to or scrolls through a set of videos without any explicit action on the part of a user indicating the user’s desire to watch that specific video or listen to that audio;
(c) Quantification of engagement, including, but not limited to, providing a visible count of how many likes, comments, clicks, views, or reactions a user‑generated item has received;
(d) Gamification, or a design feature that emulates gameplay, including, but not limited to, a streak, badge, or reward that motivates or causes more frequent or more extensive use of an online service through incentives or frequency of use;
(e) The use of clustering, timing, or volume of notifications or push alerts, irrespective of content;
(f) A design feature in which virtual currencies are used or where digital items are purchased;
(g) Image‑altering filters or a design feature that facilitates a false perception of an image;
(h) Requiring or repeatedly prompting for account creation in order to access publicly available user‑generated content;
(i) Using ephemerality to prompt the urgent use of an online service;
(j) Creating barriers to deleting an account or to removing connections to other users of the service; or
(k) A feature that increases usage through the illusion of talking with a human being that seeks to elicit feelings of intimacy from the user.
New Prohibitions
The amendment also creates two new prohibitions.
First, covered online services cannot provide covered minors with a single setting that makes all of the default privacy settings less protective at once.
Second, covered online services cannot request or prompt a covered minor to make their privacy setting less protective, unless the change is strictly necessary for the covered minor to access a service or feature they expressly and unambiguously requested.
New Deletion Requirement
Covered online services will now be required to provide a prominent, accessible, and responsive tool to allow a covered minor to request their account be unpublished or deleted. Covered online services must honor requests within 15 days.
Effective Date
The amendment goes into effect three months after the legislature’s April 17 adjournment date, which is July 17, 2026.