Law Requiring Social Media Transparency Would Break New Ground

Abstraction: Platform Accountability and Transparency Act requiring social media data disclosure to FTC and researchers

Key points:

• The Platform Accountability and Transparency Act (bipartisan: Portman, Coons, Klobuchar) would allow the FTC to require disclosure of platform data to the public and researchers
• Platforms with 25 million+ monthly US users must disclose broadly disseminated content, major public account activity (25K+ followers), advertising targeting criteria, algorithm use, and content moderation policies
• Researchers with NSF-approved proposals gain access to platform data with privacy protections (anonymization, "white rooms")
• Facebook Papers revelations motivate the bill: leaked internal research showed Instagram worsened teen girls' mental health; platform gave elite users exemptions from content moderation
• Bill provides liability immunity to companies for compliant data releases and to researchers for approved research activities, including scraping that may violate platform ToS
• Non-compliance triggers FTC enforcement; amended Section 230 allows researchers to sue platforms for unlawfully withholding data

Connections: Brennan Center · Ftc · Meta · Platform Transparency · AI Governance · Content Moderation

Source: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/law-requiring-social-media-transparency-would-break-new-ground