[Congressional Bills 118th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H.R. 9126 Introduced in House (IH)]

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118th CONGRESS
  2d Session
                                H. R. 9126

To require digital social companies to adopt terms of service that meet 
                     certain minimum requirements.


_______________________________________________________________________


                    IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                             July 24, 2024

  Ms. Porter introduced the following bill; which was referred to the 
                    Committee on Energy and Commerce

_______________________________________________________________________

                                 A BILL


 
To require digital social companies to adopt terms of service that meet 
                     certain minimum requirements.

    Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the 
United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

    This Act may be cited as the ``Digital Social Platform Transparency 
Act''.

SEC. 2. TERMS OF SERVICE REQUIREMENT.

    (a) Terms of Service.--Not later than 180 days after the date of 
enactment of this Act, digital social companies shall post terms of 
service for each digital social platform owned or operated by the 
company in a manner reasonably designed to inform all users of the 
digital social platform of the existence and contents of the terms of 
service. The terms of service posted pursuant to this section shall 
include each of the following:
            (1) Contact information for the purpose of allowing users 
        to ask the digital social company questions about the terms of 
        service.
            (2) A description of the process that users must follow to 
        flag content, groups, or other users that they believe violate 
        the terms of service, and the digital social company's 
        commitments on response and resolution time.
            (3) A list of potential actions the digital social company 
        may take against an item of content or a user, including 
        demonetization, deprioritization, muting, or banning.
    (b) Translations.--The terms of service posted pursuant to this 
section shall be made available in all languages in which the digital 
social platform offers product features, including menus and prompts.

SEC. 3. REPORTING REQUIREMENT.

    (a) Terms of Service Report.--Not later than 360 days after the 
date of enactment of this Act, and on a semiannual basis thereafter, 
each digital social company shall electronically submit to the Attorney 
General a terms of service report.
    (b) Contents of Terms of Service Report.--The terms of service 
report shall include, for each digital social platform owned or 
operated by the company, each of the following:
            (1) The version of the terms of service of the digital 
        social platform in effect on the date of the report.
            (2) If applicable, a complete and detailed description of 
        any changes to the terms of service since the previous report.
            (3) A statement of whether the version of the terms of 
        service in effect on the date of the report defines each of the 
        following categories of content (or any substantially similar 
        categories), and, if so, the definitions of those categories, 
        including any subcategories:
                    (A) Hate speech or racism.
                    (B) Extremism or radicalization.
                    (C) Disinformation or misinformation.
                    (D) Harassment.
                    (E) Foreign political interference.
            (4) A detailed description of content moderation practices 
        used by the digital social company for that platform, including 
        each of the following:
                    (A) Any existing policies intended to address the 
                categories of content described in paragraph (3).
                    (B) How automated content moderation systems 
                enforce terms of service of the digital social platform 
                and when these systems involve human review.
                    (C) How the digital social company responds to user 
                reports of violations of the terms of service.
                    (D) What standards, policies, or decision-making 
                systems the digital social company employs when 
                deciding to action individual pieces of content, users, 
                or groups.
            (5) Information on content that was flagged to the digital 
        social company as belonging to any of the categories described 
        in paragraph (3), including each of the following:
                    (A) The total number of flagged items of content.
                    (B) The total number of actioned items of content.
                    (C) The total number of actioned items of content 
                that were removed, demonetized, deprioritized, muted, 
                or banned by the digital social company, disaggregated 
                by each type of action.
                    (D) The number of times actioned items of content 
                were viewed by users.
                    (E) The number of times actioned items of content 
                were shared, and the number of users that viewed the 
                content before it was actioned.
                    (F) The number of times users appealed digital 
                social company actions taken on that platform.
                    (G) The number of reversals of digital social 
                company actions on appeal disaggregated by each type of 
                action.
            (6) All information required by paragraphs (4) and (5) 
        shall be disaggregated into the following categories:
                    (A) The category of content, including any relevant 
                categories described in paragraph (3).
                    (B) The type of content, including posts, comments, 
                messages, in-game structures or objects, or profiles of 
                users, or groups of users.
                    (C) The type of media of the content, including 
                text, images, videos, and audio.
                    (D) How the content was flagged, including flagged 
                by company employees or contractors, flagged by 
                artificial intelligence software, flagged by community 
                moderators, flagged by civil society partners, and 
                flagged by users.
                    (E) How the content was actioned, including 
                actioned by company employees or contractors, actioned 
                by artificial intelligence software, or actioned by 
                community moderators.
    (c) Activity Report.--A digital social company shall report--
            (1) activity within the third and fourth quarters of the 
        preceding calendar year, to the Attorney General no later than 
        April 1 of each year; and
            (2) activity within the first and second quarters of the 
        current calendar year, to the Attorney General no later than 
        October 1 of each year.
    (d) Repository.--The Attorney General shall make all terms of 
service reports submitted pursuant to this section available to the 
public in a searchable repository on its official internet website.

SEC. 4. PENALTIES FOR LACK OF SUBMISSION.

    (a) Administrative Assessment.--A digital social company that 
violates the provisions of this Act shall be liable for an 
administrative assessment not to exceed $15,000 per violation per day.
    (b) Violations.--A digital social company shall be considered in 
violation of the provisions of this Act for each day the digital social 
company does any of the following:
            (1) Fails to post terms of service in accordance with 
        section 2.
            (2) Fails to timely submit to the Attorney General a report 
        required pursuant to section 3.
            (3) Materially omits or misrepresents required information 
        in a report submitted pursuant to section 3.
    (c) Relief.--The Attorney General has the exclusive authority to 
bring an action in any court of competent jurisdiction, upon their own 
complaint or upon the complaint of any board, officer, person, 
corporation, or association, to enjoin a violation of this Act by a 
digital social company.
    (d) Deposits Into Fund.--
            (1) Establishment.--There is established in the Treasury a 
        separate account to be known as the Digital Social Platform 
        Terms of Service Fund (hereinafter referred to as the 
        ``Fund'').
            (2) Deposits.--There shall be deposited in the Fund one-
        half of the administrative assessment funds collected pursuant 
        to this section, which funds may be used to maintain the 
        reporting website and support the enforcement of this Act.

SEC. 5. DUTIES AND OBLIGATIONS; REMEDIES AND PENALTIES.

    (a) Duties and Obligations.--The duties and obligations authorized 
under this Act are cumulative to any other duties or obligations 
imposed under local, State, or Federal law and shall not be construed 
to relieve any party from any duties or obligations imposed under law.
    (b) Remedies and Penalties.--Remedies or penalties authorized under 
this Act are cumulative to any other remedies or penalties available 
under local law, State law, this Act or any other Federal law.

SEC. 6. RULES OF CONSTRUCTION.

    (a) Limitation on Application.--This Act may not be construed to 
apply to an internet-based service or application for which 
interactions between users are limited to direct messages, commercial 
transactions, consumer reviews of products, sellers, services, events, 
or places, or any combination thereof.
    (b) End-to-End Encryption.--This Act may not be construed to 
require or encourage any internet-based service or application to 
change the effectiveness of end-to-end encryption of that service or 
application.

SEC. 7. DEFERENCE TO AGENCY INTERPRETATIONS.

    Notwithstanding section 706 of title 5, United States Code, the 
Attorney General may make such interpretations and determinations as 
are reasonable and necessary to carry out this Act, with respect to 
which courts shall defer.

SEC. 8. DEFINITIONS.

    In this Act:
            (1) Actioned.--The term ``actioned'' means that a digital 
        social company, due to a suspected or confirmed violation of 
        the terms of service, has taken some form of action, including 
        removal, demonetization, deprioritization, muting, suspending, 
        or banning, against a relevant user or relevant item of 
        content.
            (2) Content.--The term ``content'' means statements, posts, 
        comments, messages, videos, audio, images, in-game structures 
        or other user-created objects, or profiles of users or groups 
        of users, or structures that are created, posted, shared, or 
        otherwise interacted with by users on an internet-based service 
        or application. The term ``content'' does not include media put 
        on a service or application exclusively for the purpose of 
        cloud storage, transmitting files, or file collaboration.
            (3) Digital social company.--The term ``digital social 
        company'' means a person or entity that owns or operates one or 
        more digital social platforms, including social media platforms 
        and online games.
            (4) Digital social platform.--
                    (A) In general.--The term ``digital social 
                platform'' means a public or semipublic internet-based 
                service or application that has users in the United 
                States and that meets the following criteria:
                            (i) A substantial function of the service 
                        or application is to introduce users in order 
                        to allow users to interact socially with each 
                        other within the service or application.
                            (ii) The service or application allows 
                        users to do each of the following:
                                    (I) Construct a public or 
                                semipublic profile for purposes of 
                                signing into and using the service or 
                                application.
                                    (II) Populate a list of other users 
                                with whom an individual shares a social 
                                connection within the system.
                                    (III) Create or post content 
                                viewable by other groups or communities 
                                of users, including on message boards, 
                                in chat rooms, or through a landing 
                                page or main feed.
                            (iii) A service or application that 
                        generates more than $100,000,000 in gross 
                        revenue during the preceding calendar year.
                    (B) Exclusion.--The term ``digital social 
                platform'' does not include a service or application 
                that provides email or direct messages, commercial 
                transactions, consumer reviews of products, sellers, 
                services, events, or places, or any combination thereof 
                on the basis of that function alone.
            (5) End-to-end encryption.--The term ``end-to-end 
        encryption'' means communications encryption in which data is 
        encrypted when being passed through a network, but routing 
        information remains visible.
            (6) Public or semipublic internet-based service or 
        application.--The term ``public or semipublic internet-based 
        service or application'' excludes a service or application used 
        to facilitate communication within a business or enterprise 
        among employees or affiliates of the business or enterprise, 
        provided that access to the service or application is 
        restricted to employees or affiliates of the business or 
        enterprise using the service or application.
            (7) Terms of service.--The term ``terms of service'' means 
        a policy or set of policies adopted by a digital social company 
        that specifies, at least, the user behavior and activities that 
        are permitted on the internet-based service owned or operated 
        by the digital social company, and the user behavior and 
        activities that may subject the user or an item of content to 
        being actioned.
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