Digital Platform Governance: Proposals Index

Social Media NUDGE Act of 2022 (S.3608)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 02/09/2022
• Summary: This bill directs the National Science Foundation to research content-neutral interventions that could keep users from sharing and believing disinformation. Examples of some interventions could include asking users to read articles before sharing them.
• Status: Referred to Committee in Previous Congress
• Partisan Status: Democrat-Only Sponsors

Countering Online Harms Act (H.R.6937)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 05/19/2020
• Summary: This bill requires the FTC to conduct a study on how artificial intelligence (AI) can be used to identify and slow the spread of disinformation, manipulated media, and other types of harmful or criminal content. Based on the study, the FTC is then required to make recommendations on AI policies and legislation that could be adopted to address these harms.
• Status: Referred to Committee in Previous Congress
• Partisan Status: Republican-Only Sponsors

Protecting Against Public Safety Disinformation Act (H.R.7282)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 06/18/2020
• Summary: This bill directs the DHS’ Office of Intelligence and Analysis to assess the impact of disinformation by foreign actors on the U.S.’ ability to respond to terrorism and other security threats. The bill also requires the DHS’ Under Secretary for Science and Technology to research disinformation operations and develop recommendations to counter and slow the spread of such disinformation.
• Status: Referred to Committee in Previous Congress
• Partisan Status: Democrat-Only Sponsors

Modernize FARA to Cover Dissemination of Information on Social Media, as proposed by Ellen Goodman, and expanded upon by Erin Simpson and Adam Conner (link)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 02/26/2020
• Summary: Experts have called on Congress to update the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The update would require news organizations run by foreign entities to disclose their ownership and role in advancing state interests on digital platforms -- a requirement they currently face when advancing interests in other aspects of American culture. If implemented, this transparency could increase user awareness, making users less susceptible to disinformation and thus decreasing the spread of false content. Such an update could potentially be implemented through legislation or through new Justice Department guidance that clarifies the meaning of key terms and the Department’s interpretation of FARA. One proposal for the modernization of FARA was written by Joshua Fattal, now an attorney-advisor in the Office of the General Counsel at DHS. A link to this proposal is provided.  
• Status: Third Party Legislative Proposal

Label, Fact-check, and Delete False Content, as implemented by many Platforms, including Facebook (link)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 12/15/2016
• Summary: Platforms have experimented with placing labels and warnings on potentially false content. These steps have shown early promise at reducing the spread of mis- and disinformation. As an example, Facebook is one of many Platforms that have enacted this style of solution. A link to one of their company statements announcing this proposal is provided.
• Status: Partial Implementation

Labeling the Accounts of State-controlled News Organizations, as implemented by many Platforms, including Facebook (link)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 06/05/2020
• Summary: Experts have encouraged Platforms to label accounts associated with state-controlled news organizations. If implemented at scale, experts argue that users will better understand where content is originating, and might be less susceptible to disinformation from foreign outlets, thus slowing its spread. For example, such a policy could slow the spread of disinformation from Russian media about Moscow's invasion of Ukraine. Facebook is one of many Platforms that have enacted this style of solution. A link to one of their company statements announcing this proposal is provided. 
• Status: Partial Implementation

Prompting Users to Consider Accuracy, as proposed by MIT and Google researchers (link)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 05/18/2021
• Summary: In a recent research paper, MIT and Google researchers suggest that shifting users’ attention to the accuracy of content could increase the quality of news that they subsequently share online. This could be done through simple prompts, such as a popup that asks users to consider the accuracy of the information presented in an article once it has been opened.
• Status: Partial Implementation

Read Before Share, as implemented by many Platforms, including Twitter (link)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 09/24/2020
• Summary: Many Platforms now prompt users to read articles before sharing them with their followers. Twitter tested such a proposal in the form of a simple popup prompt. According to the tests, the popup successfully led to users opening articles 40 percent more often. Twitter even saw the overall proportion of people opening articles before sharing them increase by 33 percent. Twitter has since implemented this prompt more broadly, as have other Platforms, including Facebook and Instagram. A link to an official Twitter statement regarding it's initial test results is provided. 
• Status: Partial Implementation

Sharing and Forwarding Limits, as proposed by Frances Haugen (link)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 10/18/2021
• Summary: Experts have suggested that companies like Facebook and Twitter modify their “share” or “retweet” functions, so content can only be shared a limited number of times before being slowed down through intentional friction. As an example, after a post has been shared twice, a third user could be required to copy and paste the link into a new post before being allowed to re-share it. This proposal was tested within Facebook in 2019 and was highlighted by whistleblower Frances Haugen in 2021, but was not implemented more broadly due to internal concerns about reducing user engagement. A campaign called #OneClickSafer has since been launched by the Center for Humane Technology, which advocates for sharing limits as a way to reduce the harms of frictionless sharing. A link to an interview with Frances Haugen, when she brought this proposal public is provided. 
• Status: Partial Implementation

Platform Promotion of Reputable Sources via Crowdsourced Judgments of News Source Quality, as proposed by Gordon Pennycook and David G. Rand (link)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 01/28/2019
• Summary: During instances where disinformation is spreading widely (such as in emergencies or elections), Platforms can promote reputable information sources, including local police accounts and emergency responder accounts, and restrict the visibility of trending posts that promote disinformation. They could also lift up content from higher quality sources. Gordon Pennycook and David G. Rand propose that Platforms can determine which sources are "high quality" by crowdsourcing user judgements. 
• Status: Partial Implementation

Platform Promotion of Reputable Sources via Proxy Measures for Reliability, as proposed by Bhadani et al. (link)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 02/03/2022
• Summary: During instances where disinformation is spreading widely (such as in emergencies or elections), Platforms can promote reputable information sources including local police accounts, and emergency responder accounts, and restrict the visibility of trending posts that promote disinformation. They could also lift up content from higher quality sources. Bhadani et al. propose that Platforms could use proxy measures to determine a website's news reliability, such as the political diversity of the site's audience. 
• Status: Untested Proposal

Platform Promotion of Reputable Sources via Third-Party Organizations, such as NewsGuard (link)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 03/05/2021
• Summary: During instances where disinformation is spreading widely (such as in emergencies or elections), Platforms can promote reputable information sources, including local police accounts and emergency responder accounts, and restrict the visibility of trending posts that promote disinformation. They could also lift up content from higher quality sources. Platforms can determine the credibility of certain sources by cooperating with third party organizations, which have built extensive databases of website credibility ratings. One example of such a third party organization is NewsGuard, which launched in March of 2018. A link to their first press release, announcing their company, is shared. 
• Status: Partial Implementation

Platform Promotion of Reputable Sources via Internal Scoring or Decision Mechanisms, as implemented by Facebook through their news ecosystem quality score (link)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 01/07/2021
• Summary: During instances where disinformation is spreading widely (such as in emergencies or elections), Platforms can promote reputable information sources including local police accounts and emergency responder accounts, and restrict the visibility of trending posts that promote disinformation. They could also lift up content from higher quality sources. In the past, Platforms have scored sources internally and used those scores in their curation decisions during times of extreme duress. An example of this includes Facebook's use of its "news ecosystem quality score" in news feed decisions following the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. Facebook's use of this scoring system was reported by the New York Times, and a link to that article (first released November 24, 2020, but updated on January 7, 2021) is shared. 
• Status: Partial Implementation

Platform Nudges to Consider Content From Across the Political Spectrum, as outlined by Thornhill, et al, using BalancedView (link)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 12/15/2016
• Summary: Platforms could nudge users to share or believe less disinformation. One way Platforms can do this is by introducing users that engage with a news story to other articles from across the political spectrum. This could nudge users to consider a conflicting perspective, and to more deeply engage with the debate. Thornhill, et al. show that a tool called BalancedView, which presents users with a selection of articles from across the political spectrum, may change the behavior of users to more fully engage with news stories. This could reduce the likelihood that users are deceived by, and further spread, disinformation. A link to the research by Thornhill, et al. is provided.
• Status: Partial Implementation

Fake News Detection Algorithms, as recommended by Darrell West (link)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 12/18/2017
• Summary: Platforms can develop algorithms that detect and flag misinformation. The spread of flagged content can then be slowed. One scholar to make the case for using fake news detection algorithms was Darrell West, Vice President and Director of Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution, in a 2017 report on combating disinformation. The report noted that in two separate studies, researchers determined that using meta-data in combination with text analysis allowed them to identify posts, stories, and sites engaging in misinformation. One study found an accuracy rate of over 99% when the model was tested on data consisting of 15,500 Facebook posts and over 909,000 users. A link to the report by Darrell West is provided. 
• Status: Partial Implementation

Circuit Breakers, as proposed by Ellen Goodman, and expanded upon by Erin Simpson and Adam Conner (link)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 02/26/2020
• Summary: Driven by the example of the New York Stock Exchange, which limits the trading of a stock after it drops by more than 7%, some researchers have proposed implementing slight limits to the spread of viral content until it can be fact checked. These "circuit breakers" would introduce friction for users looking to interact with content that is going viral. Some proposed means for introducing this friction include placing pop-up warnings on the content in question and under-weighting its algorithmic spread. A link to a paper by Erin Simpson and Adam Conner, which expands on the idea of "circuit breakers" originally outlined by Ellen Goodman, is provided. 
• Status: Partial Implementation

Forwarding Limits, as implemented by WhatsApp (link)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 07/19/2018
• Summary: WhatsApp has placed limits on the number of times a message can be forwarded to large groups. Since 2020, WhatsApp messages with five or more previous forwards could be resent to just one new conversation. WhatsApp claims this change led to a 70% global reduction in the number of frequently forwarded messages. A link to a WhatsApp communication outlining its policy on forwarding limits is provided.
• Status: Partial Implementation

Self-Governing Groups, as proposed by Jaron Lanier (link)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 05/26/2022
• Summary: Jaron Lanier has proposed that social media should be restructured. If implemented, his proposed restructuring would have users join small "groups" (no larger than 100-200 members), which would be self-governing in terms of content moderation. The smaller size of the groups would keep the discussion intimate and, according to Lanier, help reduce the spreading of false content to the wider public. A link to a paper by Lanier, where he outlines this proposal, is provided. 
• Status: Untested Proposal

Content Moderation AI, as described by Tarleton Gillespie (Custodians of the Internet: Platforms, Content Moderation, and the Hidden Decisions That Shape Social Media by Tarleton Gillespie)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 08/24/2021
• Summary: Given the scale of content shared on social media, most platforms have implemented algorithms to identify and flag potential mis- and disinformation. Platforms can develop such algorithms in-house or outsource the work to companies in this space. Some offerings provided by companies in the space include products that identify problematic images, audio, language, or more. Others offer non-AI solutions, providing human-based content moderation. Tarleton Gillespie describes various methods that Platforms use to moderate content in his book "Custodians of the Internet: Platforms, Content Moderation, and the Hidden Decisions That Shape Social Media."
• Status: Full Implementation

Crowdsourced Fact-Checking, as studied by Allen, et al. (link)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 09/01/2021
• Summary: Professional fact-checking efforts are difficult to scale, and some Platforms have tested crowdsourced fact-checking options, such as Twitter’s Birdwatch program. Some research has indicated positive results from this approach. One study by Jennifer Allen, Antonio Arechar, Gordon Pennycook, and David Rand found that judgment of small crowds of politically balanced laypeople, on average, correlated with the judgments of professional fact-checkers, showing promise behind the idea of crowdsourcing. A link to this study is provided. 
• Status: Partial Implementation

Protecting Democracy From Disinformation Act (H.R.7012)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 05/26/2020
• Summary: This bill amends the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971. Specifically, the bill prohibits third parties from using behavioral data to target political advertisements. It also requires Platforms to maintain records of political advertisements. This is, in part, an intervention designed to reduce the ability of bad actors to grow their base through targeted messaging. 
• Status: Referred to Committee in Previous Congress
• Partisan Status: Democrat-Only Sponsors

Filter Bubble Transparency Act (S.2024)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 06/10/2021
• Summary: This bill requires Platforms to notify users if they employ an algorithm to curate content based on individual data. It also requires Platforms to provide users with an “input-transparent” curation option, or a curation option that only uses information that users provide directly to the platform (e.g., through likes, follows, searches, etc.). This could limit bad actors from being able to abuse a Platform to amplify disinformation and harmful content.
• Status: Referred to Committee in Previous Congress
• Partisan Status: Bipartisan Group of Sponsors

Consumer Online Privacy Rights Act (S.3195)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 11/04/2021
• Summary: This bill would: (1) prohibit certain deceptive, harmful, and intrusive data practices; (2) provide users the right to access, delete, and correct their collected data; (3) give users the right to data portability; and (4) grant users the right to prevent their collected data from being shared with third parties. If enacted, the bill would also require the FTC to create an internal bureau to enforce these new laws.
• Status: Referred to Committee in Previous Congress
• Partisan Status: Democrat-Only Sponsors

Online Privacy Act of 2021 (H.R.6027)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 11/18/2021
• Summary: This bill would establish various rights for users, including: (1) the ability to choose how long their collected data is stored, and (2) the right to be informed of data collection by third parties. A Digital Privacy Agency would also be created to enforce these rights, and states and individuals would be given the ability to bring civil lawsuits to hold Platforms accountable. In a 2021 update to the bill, several provisions and additional privacy protections were added, including creating an Office of Civil Rights in the proposed Digital Privacy Agency, and authorizing state privacy regulators to enforce the legislation alongside state attorneys general.
• Status: Referred to Committee in Previous Congress
• Partisan Status: Democrat-Only Sponsors

Data and Algorithm Transparency Agreement (DATA) Act (S.1477)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 04/29/2021
• Summary: This bill prohibits Platforms from collecting, sharing, or selling sensitive data about users without their express consent. The bill also establishes a private right of action that allows individuals to sue Platforms for violating this rule. Platforms rely on information they collect on users to target advertisements and match individuals with content they are likely to engage with. Restricting their ability to collect that data limits the effectiveness of ranking and recommendation algorithms, and could make it harder for targeted disinformation narratives to find their audiences.
• Status: Referred to Committee in Previous Congress
• Partisan Status: Republican-Only Sponsors

SAFE DATA Act (S.2499)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 07/28/2021
• Summary: The bill would provide Americans with more choice and control over their data, and directs businesses to be more transparent and accountable about their data practices. The bill would also enhance the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) authority and provide additional resources to enforce the Act. The bill contains substantive language to address consumer control, business privacy assessments, and the role of the FTC.
• Status: Referred to Committee in Previous Congress
• Partisan Status: Republican-Only Sponsors

American Data Privacy and Protection Act (H.R.8152)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 06/21/2022
• Summary: This bill would: (1) establish a strong national framework to protect consumer data privacy and security; (2) grant broad protections for Americans against the discriminatory use of their data; (3) require Platforms to minimize their collection of user data to what is reasonably necessary and proportionate for specific products and services; (4) require Platforms to comply with loyalty duties with respect to specific practices, while ensuring consumers don’t have to pay for privacy; (5) require Platforms to allow consumers to turn off targeted advertisements; (6) provide enhanced data protections for children and minors, including what they might agree to with or without parental approval; (7) establish regulatory parity across the internet ecosystem; and (8) promote innovation and preserve the opportunity for start-ups and small businesses to grow and compete.
• Status: Referred to Committee in Previous Congress
• Partisan Status: Bipartisan Group of Sponsors

Data Broker List Act of 2021 (S.2290)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 06/24/2021
• Summary: This bill establishes new requirements for data brokers, who make a business out of acquiring personal data and then selling said data to other companies. Data brokers are prohibited from (1) acquiring such information by fraud, (2) using such information for a specified prohibited purpose such as fraud or identity theft, or (3) selling such information to a third party that the broker should reasonably know intends to use the information for a specified prohibited purpose. All data brokers must also register with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on an annual basis.
• Status: Referred to Committee in Previous Congress
• Partisan Status: Bipartisan Group of Sponsors

Data Collection Restrictions by Service Providers, as implemented by many providers, including Apple (link)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 01/27/2021
• Summary: Companies that facilitate access to social media Platforms, such as Apple’s iOS, Google’s Android, and other web browser companies, can prevent the collection of their users’ data. Mozilla’s Firefox has limited data collection on their browser, and Apple has required users to opt-in for data-tracking and data sharing with brokers. These moves have hampered Platforms’ abilities to collect data from their users. Other search engines like DuckDuckGo facilitate searches while blocking trackers, ensuring that user data is more private and less accessible to companies employing trackers and cookies. A link to an Apple statement announcing their policy, implemented through its iOS 14.5 update, is provided.
• Status: Full Implementation

Data Minimization, as incorporated in EU data protection standards (link)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 01/25/2012
• Summary: Industry best practices could be developed around how to limit the collection of user data to the scope of specific products and services. Data minimization is core to principle data protection and consumer privacy, and has been enshrined in the laws of many countries, perhaps most notably in the European Union and more recently in California's Consumer Privacy Act. It is also a key component of privacy bills currently under discussion in Congress.
• Status: Partial Implementation

Data Transfer Project, as implemented by Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Twitter (link)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 07/20/2018
• Summary: This industry-led system would allow users to move their data between services, limiting the concentration of data held by any single provider. This process is often referred to as "data interoperability." A framework for the Project was laid out in a 2018 whitepaper, and its members include Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Twitter. A paper providing an overview of the Project is linked.
• Status: Partial Implementation

American Innovation and Choice Online Act (S.2992)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 10/18/2021
• Summary: This bill prohibits large online digital companies from engaging in certain acts through their Platforms. Specifically, they cannot: (1) give preference to their own products, (2) unfairly limit the availability of competing products from another business, or (3) discriminate in the application or enforcement of their terms of service.
• Status: Passed Committee in Previous Congress
• Partisan Status: Bipartisan Group of Sponsors

Open App Markets Act (S.2710)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 08/11/2021
• Summary: The bill prohibits a online Platforms from: (1) requiring developers to use an in-app payment system owned or controlled by the company as a condition of distribution or accessibility; (2) requiring that pricing or conditions of sale be equal to or more favorable on its app store than another app store; or (3) taking punitive action against a developer for using or offering different pricing terms or conditions of sale through another in-app payment system or on another app store.
• Status: Passed Committee in Previous Congress
• Partisan Status: Bipartisan Group of Sponsors

ACCESS Act of 2022 (S.4309)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 05/25/2022
• Summary: This bill would require platforms with over 100 million users to create application programming interfaces (APIs) “that make user data portable and services interoperable.” Users and competitor platforms would be given a method to access and transfer data, with reasonable security requirements. Providing users with a way to take their data to other Platforms could erode the monopolistic positions that Big Tech companies hold in the global social media market. This could force major market participants to compete and innovate. This could potentially result in new business models and changes to the advertisement-based curation of content. 
• Status: Referred to Committee in Previous Congress
• Partisan Status: Bipartisan Group of Sponsors

Antitrust Enforcement Against Big Tech Companies, as proposed by Lina Khan (link)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 01/2017
• Summary: Experts have supported proposals to break up large technology companies, arguing that doing so would increase competition in the short run, and increasing consumer choice. In 2017, then-Yale law student and current Chair of the FTC, Lina Khan, wrote a Yale Law Review article articulating such a policy.
• Status: Partial Implementation

Reverting to a Chronological Newsfeed, as argued for by Frances Haugen (link)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 10/05/2021
• Summary: Some Platforms have offered their users a chronological newsfeed option, which curates content by time rather than metrics for engagement. If a user utilizes such an option, the most recent posts will be seen first. Prior to the introduction of algorithmic content curation, this was the only way to view information on most social networks, and many have argued for a return to the chronological feed. One of the most high profile advocates of this move is Facebook whistleblower Francis Haugen, who included it in her testimony before the US Senate.
• Status: Partial Implementation

Channel Switching, or Consumer Choice for Content Curation, as suggested in testimony by Stephen Wolfram (link)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 06/25/2019
• Summary: Data scientists have proposed that platforms could create multiple curation options, and provide users with the opportunity to choose which algorithm they would like to sort their feed. Allowing users to opt out of the default recommendation system and into one organized chronologically, by diversity, or optimized for some other characteristic (such as partisan leanings) would erode the centrality of engagement-based ranking to platform business models, and increase awareness and transparency for users. One prominent advocate of this proposal is Stephen Wolfram, founder of Wolfram Research, who outlined the idea in his 2019 testimony before the US Senate.
• Status: Untested Proposal

Data Portability & Interoperability, as enshrined in the EU's GDPR (link)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 04/14/2016
• Summary: Providing users with a way to take their data to other Platforms would erode the monopolistic positions that Big Tech companies hold in the global social media market. This could force major market participants to compete and innovate. This could potentially result in new business models and changes to the advertisement-based curation of content. Some examples of ongoing tests related to data portability include the Green Button Initiative, the Open Banking Implementation Entity (OBIE), and the Financial Data Exchange (FDX). Perhaps the most sweeping instance of its application is the right to data portability enshrined in the EU's GDPR. 
• Status: Partial Implementation

Permit Middleware Companies to Operate on Platforms, as proposed by researchers at Stanford's Cyber Policy Center (link)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 01/2020
• Summary: Researchers in the Stanford Cyber Policy Center's Working Group on Platform Scale have proposed middleware — “software that rides on top of an existing platform and can modify the presentation of underlying data” — as a structural intervention to mediate the relationship between users and platforms. Middleware programs could apply filters or rerank content provided by platforms, creating competition in the market for content curation and giving users the power to choose how they experience a social network. This working group included Francis Fukuyama, Barak Richman, Ashish Goel, Roberta R. Katz, A. Douglas Melamed, and Marietje Schaake. A link to a report by this working group is provided.  
• Status: Partial Implementation

DEEP FAKES Accountability Act of 2019 (H.R.3230)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 06/12/2019
• Summary: This bill aims to combat disinformation by setting regulatory requirements around the creation of deep-fakes. Specifically, it requires producers of deep-fakes to comply with digital watermark and disclosure requirements. It establishes new criminal offenses related to: (1) the production of deep-fakes which do not comply with related watermark or disclosure requirements, and (2) the alteration of deep-fakes to remove or meaningfully obscure such required disclosures. It also establishes civil penalties for breaking these requirements, and permits individuals to bring civil actions for damages.
• Status: Referred to Committee in Previous Congress
• Partisan Status: Democrat-Only Sponsors

Deepfake Task Force Act (S.2559)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 07/29/2021
• Summary: This bill requires the Department of Homeland Security to coordinate with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to establish a Deepfake Task Force, in order to study and better understand threats from digital content forgeries. The Task Force would also be called on to establish a plan for how to reduce the proliferation of such forgeries. 
• Status: Passed Committee in Previous Congress
• Partisan Status: Bipartisan Group of Sponsors

Deep Fake Detection Prize Competition Act of 2019 (H.R.5532)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 10/18/2021
• Summary: This bill directs the National Science Foundation to carry out prize competitions to incentivize research into technology that advances the detection of deep-fake audio, images, and video. While this bill has not been passed, Congress ultimately authorized $5m for I-ARPA to hold a similar competition.
• Status: Referred to Committee in Previous Congress
• Partisan Status: Democrat-Only Sponsors

Bot Disclosure and Accountability Act of 2019 (S.2125)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 07/16/2019
• Summary: This bill would require social media Platforms to enact policies that force the creators of bot accounts to disclose these accounts. The bill then requires Platforms to label accounts that have been identified as bots, and implement processes for identifying and removing undisclosed bot accounts. The bill also bans the use of bots in political campaigns. 
• Status: Referred to Committee in Previous Congress
• Partisan Status: Democrat-Only Sponsors

Social Media Accountability and Account Verification Act (H.R.4653)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 07/22/2021
• Summary: This bill requires social media companies to remove deceptive and fraudulent accounts from their Platforms. It also requires these companies to establish a process for users to report suspicious accounts. When such reports occur, companies must act expeditiously to remove or disable the account, or notify the user who filed the report that the account in question was deemed to not be deceptive.
• Status: Referred to Committee in Previous Congress
• Partisan Status: Republican-Only Sponsors

Increase Awareness of Tools for Verifying Content Legitimacy, such as those identified by the RAND Corporation (link)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 02/19/2019
• Summary: Various third party tools exist that can help users judge the legitimacy of content, such as images or videos, in an effort to identify deepfakes. However, these third party tools are not widely used, and public awareness that they exist could be increased through the help of platforms. The RAND Corporation keeps a database of online tools available for countering the spread of disinformation, including tools with verification and credibility scoring functions.
• Status: Partial Implementation

Real Name Policies, as implemented by Facebook (link)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 2004
• Summary: Some platforms have adopted policies that require users to adopt the names they use in real life when creating an online profile. The intention of this proposal is to remove anonymity online. These policies are often criticized for making it harder for members of minority and marginalized groups to retain their privacy. The most notable implementation of this proposed solution is Facebook's authentic name policy, which has been in effect since its founding in 2004.
• Status: Partial Implementation

Know Your Customer Requirements for Platforms, as proposed by Jonathan Haidt (link)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 04/11/2022
• Summary: Jonathan Haidt argues that platforms should be required to verify some information about their users before sharing their content, similar to how banks are required to "know their customers." He said: "Banks and other industries have 'know your customer' rules so that they can’t do business with anonymous clients laundering money from criminal enterprises. Large social-media platforms should be required to do the same. That does not mean users would have to post under their real names; they could still use a pseudonym. It just means that before a platform spreads your words to millions of people, it has an obligation to verify (perhaps through a third party or nonprofit) that you are a real human being, in a particular country, and are old enough to be using the platform."
• Status: Partial Implementation

User Challenges & Honeypots, as employed by cybersecurity firms like Crowdstrike (link)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 1999
• Summary: Many sites ask users to verify that they are not a bot via a technical challenge, like a ReCAPTCHA image challenge. However, these present user friction and have been shown to be only mildly effective at identifying bots. A "honeypot" is a generic term for a trap to catch bots. The term was first used by Lance Spetzer, when he published his article "To Build a Honeypot" in 1999. A link to a brief primer on honeypots by cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike is provided.
• Status: Partial Implementation

Private Access Tokens, as developed in collaboration by Apple, Google, Cloudflare, and Fastly (link)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 03/7/2022
• Summary: Described as a way to end CAPTCHAs, private access tokens are a new technology that can help platforms verify that a user is human. Private Access Tokens also provide websites with minimal additional information about their users -- this would allow websites to quickly know who their real users are without providing a large privacy breach. This technology is being developed in collaboration between Fastly, Cloudflare, Apple, and Google. An IETF working group is also working to develop and standardize the technology. A link to a Fastly communications post, outlining information about Private Access Tokens is provided.
• Status: Partial Implementation

Greater Contextual Information About Accounts, as identified by First Draft (link)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 11/28/2019
• Summary: To help users identify potential bot accounts, Platforms could make account information more transparent for users. For example, Platforms could make the age of an account, and whether that account had previously used different names, public, which could help users assess an account's authenticity. First Draft has produced a guide on behaviors and characteristics that help indicate whether an account is a bot or not. A link to this guide is provided.
• Status: Partial Implementation

Platform Accountability and Consumer Transparency Act of 2021 (S.797)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 03/17/2021
• Summary: This bill would require Platforms to provide researchers with access to data on their services. To access the data, researchers would outline their research proposal and data requests in an application filed with the National Science Foundation. The NSF would approve select studies, and Platforms would then be required to share the requested data with the chosen researchers. The bill would also prohibit social media platforms from blocking independent researchers from indexing or scraping public data from their sites. The law would be enforced by a new office in the FTC.
• Status: Referred to Committee in Previous Congress
• Partisan Status: Bipartisan Group of Sponsors

Algorithmic Justice and Online Platform Transparency Act of 2021 (S.1896)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 05/27/2021
• Summary: This bill would require platforms to: (1) publish public reports on their content moderation practices, (2) maintain detailed records describing their algorithmic processes for review by the FTC, and (3) provide the public with plain language descriptions of how their algorithms operate.
• Status: Referred to Committee in Previous Congress
• Partisan Status: Democrat-Only Sponsors

Social Media Disclosure and Transparency of Advertisements (DATA) Act of 2021 (H.R.3451)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 05/20/2021
• Summary: This bill would require Platforms to maintain a library of all advertisements published on their sites. The library must include information on: (1) the methods that were used to target the attention of users, (2) the advertisement's targeted audience, (3) the number of views it generated, (4) the advertisement's conversion rate, and (5) the advertisement's cost. Platforms are required to make these libraries available to academic researchers. The bill also directs the FTC to convene a multi-stakeholder working group to help define storage and access requirements for these libraries.
• Status: Referred to Committee in Previous Congress
• Partisan Status: Democrat-Only Sponsors

Algorithmic Accountability Act of 2022 (H.R.6580)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 02/03/2022
• Summary: This bill would require Platforms to perform impact assessments for any "automated decision systems" that are used on their sites, such as content review algorithms. Platforms would be required to engage with relevant internal and external stakeholders when carrying out these assessments. They would also be required to take action to mitigate any negative impacts that their systems might have on consumers. The FTC would be placed in charge of enforcement.
• Status: Referred to Committee in Previous Congress
• Partisan Status: Democrat-Only Sponsors

Amend the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), as proposed by researchers at the Knight First Amendment Institute and incorporated into the Platform Accountability and Transparency Act (link)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 01/19/2022
• Summary: It is not clear if scraping public data from social media platforms is legal, and the process may expose researchers to risk under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act by violating Platforms’ terms of service. As a result, the Knight First Amendment Institute, the Berkman Klein Center, and researchers with the Netgain Partnership have called for amendments to the CFAA in order to provide a specific safe harbor for the independent scraping or indexing of social media platforms by academic researchers. This amendment was incorporated into the Platform Accountability and Transparency Act.
• Status: Third Party Legislative Proposal

Increased Researcher Access, as argued for by researchers in the Harvard Misinformation Review (link)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 12/09/2020
• Summary: Platforms can voluntarily increase the quantity of data they make available to researchers through services such as Twitter’s research API or Facebook’s FORT Analytics API. It is generally thought that these tools do not provide enough data for researchers, and scholars and advocates have been pushing for more access. In 2020, a group of 43 researchers published an essay in the Harvard Misinformation Review laying out their case for why data access is important, what information they want, and what they could do with it. A link to this Harvard Misinformation Review article is provided.
• Status: Partial Implementation

More Thorough Reporting, as discussed by Keller and Leerssen (link)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 01/09/2020
• Summary: Platforms currently provide some reports on their content moderation practices. These reports often provide information on content flags and takedowns. However, they have drawn criticism for omitting key information, such as the overall amount of harmful content that has been discovered on Platforms. Additionally, critics argue that Platforms fail provide access to any content once it has been removed. This information could be valuable to researchers hoping to better understand the digital ecosystem. Researchers have urged Platforms to expand their voluntary reporting to include some of this information. Two critics of current Platform reporting practices are Daphne Keller and Paddy Leerssen. The two co-authored a paper surveying the field of platform research and pointing out the shortcomings of transparency reports. A link to this paper is provided.
• Status: Partial Implementation

Data Donation for Researchers, as discussed by Hansen Shapiro, et al. (link)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 02/19/2019
• Summary: Platforms can provide users with the ability to opt-in to data-sharing arrangements in which users give consent to having their browsing data collected and provided to researchers. An example of this is Mozilla Rally. Data donation is one of the models included in a report published by the Netgain Partnership on "New Approaches to Platform Data Research" by Elizabeth Hansen Shapiro, Michael Sugarman, Fernando Bermejo, and Ethan Zuckerman. A link to this report is provided. 
• Status: Partial Implementation

Digital Citizenship and Media Literacy Act (H.R.8216)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 06/23/2022
• Summary: This bill creates a Department of Commerce program for awarding grants to state and local educational agencies, public libraries, and nonprofit organizations in order to promote media literacy and digital citizenship. The bill authorizes $20M in grants for each of fiscal years 2023, 2025, 2027, and 2029.
• Status: Referred to Committee in Previous Congress
• Partisan Status: Democrat-Only Sponsors

Educating Against Misinformation and Disinformation Act (H.R. 6971)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 03/08/2022
• Summary: This bill establishes a commission to: (1) research how misinformation spreads, and (2) create a national strategy for how the government can better promote information and media literacy. The Department of Education would ultimately assess the effectiveness of the commission's study and deem whether to implement it.
• Status: Referred to Committee in Previous Congress
• Partisan Status: Democrat-Only Sponsors

Veterans’ Cyber Risk Awareness Act (H.R.2326)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 04/01/2021
• Summary: This bill directs the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to conduct a communications and outreach campaign to educate veterans about cyber risks. These risks can include disinformation, identity theft, scams, and online fraud.
• Status: Passed Committee in Previous Congress
• Partisan Status: Bipartisan Group of Sponsors

To Establish the Digital Literacy and Equity Commission (H.R.6373)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 01/12/2022
• Summary: This bill establishes a commission to study digital literacy and equity, including the state of digital literacy and information literacy in the United States.
• Status:  Referred to Committee in Previous Congress
• Partisan Status:  Democrat-Only Sponsors

Trust in Public Service Act (H.R. 3609)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 05/28/2021
• Summary: This bill aims to improve public trust in the Federal Government by establishing "customer experience" as a central measure of performance for agencies and the Federal Government. The bill also seeks to improve the digital accessibility of federal agencies and their work by improving user accessibility and user experience.
• Status: Referred to Committee in Previous Congress
• Partisan Status: Bipartisan Group of Sponsors

Transparency in Government Act of 2021 (H.R. 2055)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 03/18/2021
• Summary: This bill establishes and modifies several reporting, disclosure, and other requirements across the government. The goal of these modifications is to expand public access to information and increase public trust in government.
• Status: Referred to Committee in Previous Congress
• Partisan Status: Democrat-Only Sponsors

Protecting Our Democracy Act (H.R. 5314)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 09/21/2021
• Summary: This bill looks to (1) prevent abuses of presidential power, (2) restore checks and balances and accountability and transparency in government, and (3) defend elections against foreign interference. The bill hopes to restore accountability and transparency in government as a method to increase public trust in institutions.
• Status: Passed House in Previous Congress
• Partisan Status:  Democrat-Only Sponsors

Investment in News by Platforms, as implemented in Google's News Initiative and Meta's Journalism Project (link)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 04/28/2015
• Summary: Researchers argue that Platforms could provide assistance to news organizations, helping them develop more sustainable business models, which could in turn increase digital literacy and trust in institutions. Google already operates a "News Initiative," which offers resources and training for publishers to help them reach new audiences and generate revenue. The News Initiative is a more expansive follow-on to the Google Digital News Initiative, which was started in 2015 in collaboration with 8 major European publishers to support journalism in Europe. Facebook launched a similar effort in 2017, called the Facebook Journalism Project. A link to a Google site related to its News Initiative is provided.
• Status:  Partial Implementation

News Organization Reforms to Increase Transparency, as outlined by The Trust Project (link)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 11/16/2017
• Summary: It has been proposed that news organizations could increase public trust by being more transparent with the public. A prominent advocate for newsroom transparency is the Trust Project, which created a list of 8 indicators that signal a newsroom produces reliable and ethical journalism. By enacting reforms that correspond with these indicators, media organizations could potentially begin to increase public trust in their content. A link to the Trust Project's list of indicators is provided. 
• Status: Partial Implementation

Increase Political Diversity at News Organizations, as recommend by UT's Center for Media Engagement (link)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 08/16/2021
• Summary: News organizations have been urged to employ journalists with a range of political ideologies. Researchers believe that having a greater diversity of political opinions and backgrounds on journalistic teams increases public trust that a diversity of perspectives will be represented in a news organization's content. This is also believed to increase trust that media organizations will report accurately on social and political issues that concern people of diverse backgrounds. In a study on how the media can better connect with conservative and right-leaning audiences, the University of Texas's Center for Media Engagement found that newsrooms should consider increasing the political diversity of their team. A link to the University of Texas study is provided.
• Status: Partial Implementation

Investments in Community Engagement and the Revival of Local Journalism, as funded by the Knight Foundation (link)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 02/2019
• Summary: Researchers argue that resurrecting local media outlets across the United States will increase a sense of investment, transparency, and trust in the community. One major private funder of local journalism is the Knight Foundation. A link to a Knight Foundation statement showing this style of investment at play in real life is provided. 
• Status: Partial Implementation

Creating a System of Data Co-governance, as studied by researchers at Monash University (link)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 02/02/2022
• Summary: One proposal for building trust in government is to improve community engagement and transparency in data governance. This style of proposal could entail requesting the public for feedback on, and contribution to, data that is used for public purposes, or even opening the design process for data governance and accountability mechanisms to pulic comment. In one study of this approach, academics at Monash University in Australia developed a participatory design process for co-creating data governance processes. A link to their study is provided. 
• Status: Untested Proposal

Participatory Budgeting, as studied by the World Bank (link)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 08/1989
• Summary: This proposal seeks to build public confidence and restore trust in government spending and institutions by giving communities control over a portion of the public budget. Since its first implementation in Brazil in 1989, it has been implemented in many countries across the world and recognized as good practice by the World Bank (a link to this report is provided), as well as the UN and OECD. This proposal is primarily suggested for local communities, as cities and counties will have differing needs for public dollars. Over time, the proposal could be scaled to the state and federal levels.
• Status: Partial Implementation

Nudges, as popularized by Thaler and Sunstein (Nudge by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 04/08/2008
• Summary: Social media nudges can be used to combat some of the psychological vulnerabilities that make users more susceptible to misinformation. Nudge theory, or libertarian paternalism, was popularized by Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler in their 2008 book, Nudge, and forms the basis for more recent suggestions to combat the spread of disinformation. Nudges could include prompting users to read articles before sharing them on social media, heuristic nudges around sharing behavior, or nudges that prompt critical thinking.
• Status:  Partial Implementation

Friction Prompts, as argued by Jigsaw product manager Justin Kosslyn (link)

• Date Proposed or Announced:  11/16/2018
• Summary: Researchers argue that increasing friction to various Platform activities, such as the sharing of content, can decrease user psychological susceptibilities to misinformation. One prominent technologist to advocate for more friction on the internet is Justin Kosslyn, product manager for Google's Jigsaw. A link to an article by Kosslyn is provided. 
• Status:  Partial Implementation

Social Media Inoculation Tactics, as studied by Lewandowsky & van der Linden (link)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 0 2/22/2021
• Summary: Users can be made less susceptible to misinformation by presenting them with arguments or facts that counter a campaign's narratives. These types of interventions are grouped broadly under the category of "innoculation theory" or "prebunking." Researchers have proposed that social media companies could help present users with counter-messaging by tweaking their algorithms to push news and headlines from reliable sources that counter or discredit specific misinformation campaigns. Among many other researchers, Stephan Lewandowsky and Sander van der Linden found innoculation to be a promising tool for combating disinformation. A link to research by Lewandowsky and van der Linden is provided.
• Status:  Partial Implementation

Justice Against Malicious Algorithms Act of 2021 (H.R.5596)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 10/18/2021
• Summary: This bill amends Section 230. It removes liability protection for Platforms that make personalized recommendations using an algorithm based on user-specific information.
• Status:  Referred to Committee in Previous Congress
• Partisan Status:  Democrat-Only Sponsors

Health Misinformation Act of 2021 (S.2448)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 07/22/2021
• Summary: This bill reforms Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Specifically, the bill would create civil liability for Platforms that allow their algorithms to promote health misinformation.
• Status: Referred to Committee in Previous Congress
• Partisan Status: Democrat-Only Sponsors

Protecting Americans from Dangerous Algorithms Act (S.3029)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 10/20/2021
• Summary: This bill amends Section 230, removing liability protection for claims relating to violations of individuals’ civil rights, neglect to prevent violations of civil rights, or acts of international terrorism. The bill provides exceptions for Platforms who use algorithms based on obvious or easily understandable criteria, such as curating content chronologically.
• Status:  Referred to Committee in Previous Congress
• Partisan Status: Democrat-Only Sponsors

Expanding 'Learned Profession' Notions of Fiduciary Duty to Tech Professions, as suggested by Jack Balkin (link)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 10/16/2018
• Summary: Researchers have called on the private sector to establish ethical codes for data scientists and software engineers. Among the first to propose a version of this idea was Jack Balkin, a professor at Yale Law School, who wrote that technology platforms should be considered "information fiduciaries" toward their users, with similar duties of care, loyalty, and confidentiality that doctors and lawyers owe to their clients. Such a proposal could require the creation of a professional licensure for enforcement purposes or be self-imposed by industry actors. A link to Balkin's research is provided. 
• Status:  Untested Proposal

Sanctioning Bad Platform Actors by Cloud Computing Providers, as performed by Amazon Web Services (link)

• Date Proposed or Announced: 0 1/10/2021

• Summary: Platforms rely on cloud services to provide computing infrastructure and data storage. Companies that deliver these services, like Amazon Web Services (which controls nearly half of the global cloud infrastructure), could leverage their power to change the behavior of platforms that do not follow the provider’s terms of service. The power of these companies was seen on display in January 2021, when Amazon dropped Parler over its role in the January 6th insurrection – forcing Parler offline for several days. A link to a New York Times article describing this action is provided.

• Status: Partial Implementation