Platform Accountability and Transparency Act

This bill would have the National Science Foundation, working with the Federal Trade Commission, set up a program to approve research projects that study large social media platforms with at least 50 million monthly U.S. users. Platforms would have to give approved university and nonprofit researchers access to certain data under privacy and cybersecurity rules set by the FTC, and would be protected from lawsuits for sharing that data. The bill would also protect journalists and researchers from lawsuits by platforms for collecting public information and ad data through automated tools or research accounts, even if that breaks the platform's terms of service. It would direct the FTC to write rules requiring platforms to publicly disclose information about widely viewed content, advertising, recommendation algorithms, and content moderation.

Full text and official record on Congress.gov

Sponsors

• Christopher A. Coons Democrat sponsor
• 2 cosponsors