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ARIZONA STATE SENATE
Fifty-Sixth Legislature, Second Regular Session
social media platforms; standards; notification
Purpose
Establishes standards for a social media platform that deplatforms candidates or censors users, penalties on platforms and platform employees and related publishing requirements.
Background
A candidate is an individual who receives contributions or makes expenditures, or who gives consent to another person to receive contributions or make expenditures on behalf of that individual, in connection with the candidate's nomination, election or retention for any public office (A.R.S. § 16-901).
The federal Communications Decency Act of 1996 prohibits the provider or user of an interactive computer service from being held liable on account of any action: 1) voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, excessively violent, harassing or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected; or 2) taken to enable or make available to information content providers or others the technical means to restrict access to this material (47 U.S.C. § 230).
There is no anticipated fiscal impact to the state General Fund associated with this legislation.
Provisions
Deplatforming and Censorship Standards
1. Allows a social media platform to deplatform a candidate who is known by the platform to be a candidate:
a) beginning on the date of the candidate's qualification and ending on the date of election or the date the candidate ceases to be a candidate; and
b) as allowed under the federal Communications Decency Act of 1996.
2. Requires a social media platform to publish the standards that the platform uses to determine how it will censor or deplatform the platform's users, including detailed definitions.
3. Defines censor as any action taken by a state employee in the employee's official capacity to:
a) delete, regulate, restrict, edit, alter, inhibit the publication or reproduction of, or suspend a right to post, remove or post an addendum to any content or material posted to a social media platform by a user;
b) inhibit user's ability to be viewable by or to interact with another user of the platform; or
c) add or take away credibility to political speech posted to a platform that could have the effect of swaying political views, including fact-checking, issuing warnings, flagging, highlighting or cautioning users to believe or disbelieve content based on political views.
4. Defines deplatform as the act or practice by a social media platform of permanently deleting or banning a user or temporarily deleting or banning a user for more than 14 days from the platform.
Penalties
5. Allows the Secretary of State (SOS), if the SOS finds that a social media platform violates the deplatforming standards for candidates, to impose a civil penalty of:
a) $250,000 per day for deplatforming a candidate for statewide office; and
b) $25,000 per day for deplatforming a candidate for any other office.
6. Subjects a social media platform employee who violates the deplatforming and censorship standards to removal from state service, reduction in grade, debarment from state employment for a period of up to five years, suspension, reprimand or a civil penalty of up to $1,000.
7. Specifies that the deplatforming and censorship standards do not prohibit a social media platform employee from engaging in lawful actions within the employee's official authority to:
a) exercise legitimate law enforcement functions directly related to activities to combat child pornography, human trafficking or the illegal transporting of, or transacting in, controlled substances; or
b) safeguard or prevent the unlawful dissemination of properly classified state security information.
Definitions
8. Defines a social media platform as a public or semipublic internet-based service or application that:
a) operates as a sole proprietorship, partnership, limited liability company, corporation, association or other legal entity;
b) does business in Arizona;
c) has annual gross revenues of more than $100,000,000 directly from platform operations and not from selling goods and services and at least 100,000,000 monthly individual platform participants globally;
d) primarily functions to connect users to allow users to interact socially with each other within the platform, excluding email or direct messaging services; and
e) allows users to create a public or semipublic profile to log in and use the platform, populate a public list of other users with whom an individual shares a social connection and post content that is viewable by other users.
9. Specifies that the annual gross revenue of a social media platform is adjusted in January of each odd-numbered year to reflect any increase in the consumer price index.
10. Excludes, from the definition of social media platform, cloud storage, shared document collaboration, other cloud computing services and a broadband internet access service provider or an online service, application, cloud services provider or website:
a) that consists primarily of news, sports, entertainment, e-commerce or information or content that is not user-generated but is preselected by the provider; and
b) for which any chat, comments or interactive functionality is incidental to, directly related to or dependent on the provision of preselected content.
11. Defines user as a person who resides or is domiciled in Arizona and has an account on a social media platform, regardless of whether the person posts or has posted content or material to the platform.
12. Defines candidate.
13. Makes conforming changes.
14. Becomes effective on the general effective date.
Prepared by Senate Research
February 7, 2024
KJA/mg