A bipartisan group of senators introduced a bill on Wednesday aimed toward increasing transparency for Twitter, Facebook and other social media firms as lawmakers debate whether to ban TikTok.
The Platform Accountability and Transparency Act is meant to make the businesses’ internal data more accessible to the general public by requiring the submission of essential data to independent researchers. The bill is sponsored by Sens. Chris Coons, D-Del., chair of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law; Rob Portman, R-Ohio, rating member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee; Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn.; and Bill Cassidy, R-La.
Under the proposal, social media firms could be compelled to supply internal, privacy-protected data to researchers who’ve been approved by the National Science Foundation, an independent agency. The bill protects researchers from legal liabilities related to automatic data collection if certain privacy safeguards are followed.
Some content, comparable to comprehensive ad libraries, content moderation statistics, viral content data and a platform’s rating and suggestion algorithms could be made available to researchers or the general public on an ongoing basis, in accordance with the bill.
The Federal Trade Commission would implement the brand new policy, and firms that fail to comply risk a possible lack of immunity under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which generally protects them against libel for content posted by members.
In a press release, Coons said the bill will address a “dangerous lack of transparency about how these platforms impact our youngsters, families, society, or national security” and help to reply questions on threats to national security and possibly harmful content.
Earlier this month, lawmakers floated a bill to ban the favored social media platform TikTok within the U.S. after years of speculation in regards to the Chinese government’s influence on ByteDance, the China-based company that owns TikTok.
On Tuesday, federal law enforcement issued a public safety alert on the rise of “sexortion,” the web extortion of minors for sexually explicit imagery.
“I even have plenty of concerns about Big Tech — from facilitating sex trafficking to burying content in regards to the origins of Covid-19 — and I need to make sure that any response by Congress is effective in addressing those concerns,” Portman said in a press release.
Coons also pointed to Twitter, which was recently taken over by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, as a “cautionary tale” of how a social media company’s transparency policy can change with little notice and few safeguards.
“Twitter was the one platform that was relatively transparent and had made some investments and efforts around guardrails and accountability and a few transparency around its metrics,” Coons said, in accordance with The Washington Post. “All of that has been blown up by the change in ownership.”
