Bill Text: AZ SB1106 | 2023 | Fifty-sixth Legislature 1st Regular | Engrossed


Bill Title: Social media platforms; standards; notification

Spectrum: Partisan Bill (Republican 3-0)

Status: (Vetoed) 2023-06-20 - Governor Vetoed [SB1106 Detail]

Download: Arizona-2023-SB1106-Engrossed.html

 

 

 

House Engrossed Senate Bill

 

social media platforms; standards; notification

 

 

 

 

State of Arizona

Senate

Fifty-sixth Legislature

First Regular Session

2023

 

 

SENATE BILL 1106

 

 

 

An Act

 

amending title 18, Arizona Revised Statutes, by adding chapter 7; relating to social media.

 

 

(TEXT OF BILL BEGINS ON NEXT PAGE)

 


Be it enacted by the Legislature of the State of Arizona:

Section 1. Title 18, Arizona Revised Statutes, is amended by adding chapter 7, to read:

CHAPTER 7

SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS

ARTICLE 1. GENERAL PROVISIONS

START_STATUTE18-701. Definitions

In this article, unless the context otherwise requires:

1. "Algorithm" means a mathematical set of rules that specifies how a group of data behaves and that will assist in ranking search results and maintaining order or that is used in sorting or ranking content or material based on relevancy or other factors instead of using published time or chronological order of the content or material.

2. "Candidate" has the same meaning prescribed in section 16-901.

3. "Censor" includes any action taken by an employee of this state in the employee's official capacity:

(a) To delete, regulate, restrict, edit, alter, inhibit the publication or republication of, or suspend a right to post, remove or post an addendum to any content or material posted by a user.

(b) To inhibit the ability of a user to be viewable by or to interact with another user of the social media platform.

(c) To add or take away credibility to political speech 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. "Deplatform" means 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 fourteen days from the social media platform.

5. "Journalistic enterprise" means an entity doing business in this state that does any of the following:

(a) Publishes more than one hundred thousand words that are available online with at least fifty thousand paid subscribers or one hundred thousand monthly active users.

(b) Publishes at least one hundred hours of audio or video that is available online with at least one hundred million viewers annually.

(c) Operates a cable channel that provides more than forty hours of content per week to more than one hundred thousand cable television subscribers.

(d) Operates under a broadcast license issued by the federal communications commission.

6. "Postprioritization":

(a) Means any action taken by a social media platform to place, feature or prioritize certain content or material ahead of, below or in a more or less prominent position than other content or material in a newsfeed, feed or view or in search results.

(b) Does not include any action taken by a social media platform to place, feature or prioritize the content and material of a third party, including other users, based on payments by that third party to the social media platform.

7. "Social media platform":

(a) Means public or semipublic internet-based service or application that meets all of the following:

(i) Operates as a sole proprietorship, partnership, limited liability company, corporation, association or other legal entity.

(ii) Does business in this state.

(iii) Has annual gross revenues of more than $100,000,000 directly from the operation of the social media platform and not from the selling of goods and services, as adjusted in January of each odd-numbered year to reflect any increase in the consumer price index and has at least one hundred million monthly individual platform participants globally.

(iv) primarily functions to connect users in order to allow users to interact socially with each other within the platform. Email or direct messaging services does not meet this criterion on the basis of that function alone.

(v) Allows users to create a public or semipublic profile for the purposes of logging in to and using the platform, populate a public list of other users with whom an individual shares a social connection within the platform, and post content that is viewable by other users.

(b) Does not include a broadband internet access service provider or an online service, application, cloud services provider or website:

(i) that consists primarily of news, sports, entertainment, e-commerce or information or content that is not user-generated but is preselected by the provider.

(ii) for which any chat, comments or interactive functionality is incidental to, directly related to or dependent on the provision of the content described in item (i) of this SUBDIVIsion.

(c) Does not include cloud storage, shared document collaboration and other cloud computing services.

8. "User" means a person who resides or is domiciled in this state and who has an account on a social media platform, regardless of whether the person posts or has posted content or material to the social media platform. END_STATUTE

START_STATUTE18-702. Candidates; deplatforming prohibited; civil penalties

A. A social media platform may deplatform a candidate who is known by the social media platform to be a candidate, beginning on the date of the candidate's qualification and ending on the date of the election or the date the candidate ceases to be a candidate as allowed under the communications decency act of 1996 (p.l. 104-104; 110 stat. 133; 47 united states code 230).

B. If the secretary of state finds THAT a social media platform has violated subsection A of this section, the secretary of state may impose a civil penalty on the social media platform of $250,000 per day for a candidate for statewide office who was deplatformed by the social media platform and $25,000 per day for a candidate for any other office who was deplatformed by the social media platform. END_STATUTE

START_STATUTE18-703. Censorship standards

A social media platform shall publish the standards, including detailed definitions, that the social media platform uses for determining how it will deplatform the social media platform's users.

18-704. Penalties; exceptions

A. An employee who violates this chapter shall be subject to removal from state service, reduction in grade, debarment from state employment for a period not to exceed five years, suspension, reprimand or a civil penalty not to exceed $1,000.

B. This chapter does not prohibit an employee from engaging in lawful actions within the official authority of the employee for the purpose of either:

1. Exercising legitimate law enforcement functions directly related to activities to combat child pornography, human trafficking or the illegal transporting of or transacting in controlled substances.

2. Safeguarding or preventing the unlawful dissemination of properly classified state security information.END_STATUTE

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