Another US state is trying to enact legislation that lawmakers sponsoring, and supporters among citizens, say is designed to eliminate illegal harms affecting young people on social media.
But the way Colorado’s Protections for Users of Social Media (SB 25-086) proposes to go about this task has thus far failed to convince Governor Jared Polis that freedom, innovation, and privacy would also be protected.
Polis, a Democrat, is now saying he will “review the final version” of the bill before signing it, with the local press quoting him as saying he is “not comfortable with the government forcing private social media companies to act as law enforcement.”
The bill passed the Colorado General Assembly last week with bipartisan support, while supporters reacted to the governor’s apparent reluctance to turn SB 25-086 into law by calling a news conference on Monday, to once again endorse the bill and put pressure on Polis to sign it.
SB 25-086 requires social media companies to publish their policies and establish, within 72 hours, if someone violated those policies. In case a violation had occurred, the legislation mandates that social media companies must remove users within 24 hours of a policy, or state law violation.
Another measure in SB 25-086 that forces companies with at least one million users to provide “a streamlined process to allow Colorado law enforcement agencies to contact the social media company that operates the social media platform.”
Furthermore, “under certain conditions,” these social media companies would have to comply with a search warrant within 72 hours of receiving it. And each year, they would have to produce a report that details, by providing “certain data,” how minors used their platforms.
The original summary of the bill stated that this includes “a description of all product experiments that were conducted on 1,000 or more minor users” – but this has now been removed.
Another annual report would be submitted to the Colorado government’s Department of Law, informing the authorities about the published policies and violations of the policies.
The bill’s sponsors claim that the text strikes the right balance between protecting minors but also making sure that the provisions cannot be abused to threaten privacy and free speech or discriminate.
But opponents worry that the negative impact of SB 25-086 would outweigh the positive, especially where its effectiveness, but also First Amendment protections are concerned.
