BILL NUMBER: S895B
SPONSOR: HOYLMAN-SIGAL
 
TITLE OF BILL:
An act to amend the general business law, in relation to requiring
disclosure of certain social media terms of service
 
PURPOSE:
Requires social media companies, as defined, to post their terms of
service and to submit reports to the Attorney General on their terms of
service and content moderation policies and outcomes.
 
SUMMARY OF PROVISIONS:
Section one of the bill amends the general business law by adding a new
article 42.
Section 1100 of the new article 42 sets forth definitions.
Section 1101 of the new article 42 requires a social media company to
post terms of service for each social media platform owned or operated
by the company in a manner reasonably designed to inform all users of
the social media platform of the existence and contents of the terms of
service, and shall include a description of the process through which
users may flag content. The terms of service to be available in the
twelve most common non-English languages spoken in the state, as
defined, in which the social media platform offers product features,
including, but not limited to, menus and prompts.
Section 1102 of the new article 42 requires the social media company to
submit a terms of service report to the attorney general that includes a
statement on whether the terms of services define, and how they define
hate speech or racism, extremism or radicalization, disinformation or
misinformation, harassment, and foreign political interference, as well
as how they enforce those policies, and steps taken and data on flagged
and actioned items of content. The attorney general shall make all terms
of service reports available to the public in a searchable repository on
its official internet website.
Section 1103 of the new article 42 creates violations and remedies:
Subject companies in violation to penalties of up to $15,000 per
violation per day to be sought by the attorney general
Section 1104 of the new article 42 states that the law applies to compa-
nies that generate less than one hundred million dollars in gross reven-
ue annually.
Section 2 is the effective date. This act shall take effect on the one
hundred eightieth day after it shall have become law.
 
JUSTIFICATION:
Social media platforms have not taken appropriate steps to manage the
spread of hate speech, racism and misinformation: most do not even
provided clear policies around enforcement, let alone clear reports on
their enforcement process. A survey conducted by the Anti-Defamation
League found that 58% of marginalized people reported hate-based harass-
ment online in the last 12 months. LGBTQ+ respondents were more likely
than any other group surveyed to experience harassment. And despite
public attention to the issue, online harassment has stayed at similar
levels since 2020. Current transparency reports self-issued by social
media companies are hard to find, full of inconsistent and misleading
data and metrics making it hard to understand and compare platform poli-
cies, and lack the context to understand what the numbers provided mean.
Platforms rarely provide detailed insight into their content moderation
practices or the effectiveness of different approaches. This bill would
require the clear disclosure of current policies on hate speech and
racism, disinformation, extremism and threats of violence, harassment,
and foreign political interference, provide key metrics and data on the
numbers of content, groups and users flagged for viol ation, method of
flagging, number of actions taken and types of enforcement actions.
 
LEGISLATIVE HISTORY:
S.9594 of 2021-2022 (Hoylman): Died in Rules
 
FISCAL IMPLICATIONS:
None.
 
EFFECTIVE DATE:
This act shall take effect on the one hundred eightieth day after it
shall have become law.