JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill Monday that will impact people's ability to access and participate in online platforms.
DeSantis says Senate Bill 7072 will hold 'Big Tech' accountable by driving transparency and safeguarding Floridians’ ability to access and participate in online platforms.
The bill will allow Floridians to sue social media companies if their access is unfairly restricted or revoked and win monetary damages.
DeSantis says this is the first bill of its kind to be signed in the country.
The bill requires social media companies to be transparent about their content moderation practices and give users proper notice of changes to those policies.
The Attorney General of Florida can then bring action against technology companies that violate this law, under Florida’s Unfair and Deceptive Trade Practices Act. If social media platforms are found to have violated antitrust law, they will be restricted from contracting with any public entity.
Additionally, DeSantis says this bill will prohibit the de-platforming of Floridian political candidates.
The Florida Election Commission will impose fines of $250,000 per day on any social media company that de-platforms any candidate for statewide office, and $25,000 per day for de-platforming candidates for non-statewide offices.
"Any Floridian can block any candidate they don’t want to hear from, and that is a right that belongs to each citizen — it's not for Big Tech companies to decide," said DeSantis' office in a media release.
“What we’ve been seeing across the U.S. is an effort to silence, intimidate, and wipe out dissenting voices by the leftist media and big corporations. Today, by signing SB 7072 into law, Florida is taking back the virtual public square as a place where information and ideas can flow freely,” said Lieutenant Governor Jeanette Nuñez.
When this bill was first discussed back in February, it had many left asking if the state has any regulatory authority over multi-national "big tech" companies and how they will regulate content or user accounts.
The answer? It's complicated.
"Essentially what [the state] is trying to do is pass a law that's going to impact a global company," said Dr. Andrew Selepa, a social media professor at the University of Florida told First Coast News. "You have to look at interstate commerce laws, at the First Amendment, a lot of legal issues."
Federal laws from the mid-1990s, like the Communications Decency Act, aren't effective when it comes to the regulation of platforms that have emerged years after the legislation was first passed.
"The Communications Decency Act, and specifically Section 230, treats [the companies] as platforms rather than publishers, and was created before social media," Selepak said.
And even though users agree to terms of service when they join a platform, Selepak said those terms are malleable and companies can change them freely.
The full text of Senate Bill 7072 is available here.