Internet Bill of Rights Meets Florida Legislature

What’s happening? The Florida Governor and legislative leaders are proposing a Transparency in Tech bill that would:

• Publish standards used to ban posts, de-platform and shadow ban users.
• Provide equal access for established news organizations and qualified political candidates to reach users free from manipulation by algorithms.
• Stop arbitrarily censoring and/or de-platforming users.
• Give users the power to opt out of algorithms.
• Stop frequent changes to terms of use, clearly communicate and obtain prior consent to changes.

Why is this important? Supporters of data privacy say it is lipstick on a boar and that an Internet Bill of Rights is needed. It would:

The Right to Data and Content Ownership. All data generated by an individual is property of the individual and can be sold or exchanged at the discretion of the individual or the individual’s assigned agent.

The Right to Speedy Appeal of Account Removal. An account associated with an individual or business must have the ability to appeal suspensions to the platform and permanent bans in court.

Freedom of Speech Defined Under Constitutional or FCC Standards. Questions about limits go to FCC or courts and not private Facebook tribunals.

The Right to Content Integrity. No unauthorized changes or disclaimers placed around content unless permitted by law.

The Right to Sue For Damages Over Wrongful Demonetization. Business accounts wrongfully suspended or terminated can sue for damages in court.

Bounded Platform Penalties. A platform can only ban a user for actions taken on that platform. For example, Uber cannot ban a rider who says something bad on Facebook and Etsy can’t remove an account for something posted on Twitter.

How will this be important? Everyone is talking about this. Apple has a call for data privacy to be a right.

Florida Politics | Joe Clements: We need an internet ‘bill of rights’