The power of their censorship over individuals and organizations including what i believe is clear viewpoint discrimination and as these companies have grown and their influence expanded big tech has come to look more like big brother with each passing day but this is 2021 not 1984 and this is real life not george
Orwell’s fiction so today we announced during this legislative session that we will seek to do the following ensure that floridians are safeguarded against these practices from technology companies by requiring proper notice and disclosure of these changes to the standards and full disclosure of any actions taken against a user for violating the standards
We also seek to prevent these platforms from rapidly changing these standards and applying them unequally against users we’ll also require that users be provided the option to opt out of the various algorithms these platforms use to steer content or in many cases suppress content from the view
Of other users but these provisions are of no use without enforcement and we will provide recourse for floridians both by enabling a user to bring a cause of action against the technology company for violating these requirements of florida law and empowering the attorney general to bring action against the technology company
For violations of these requirements under florida’s unfair and deceptive trade practices act we’ve also seen the breadth of big tech’s influence on campaigns and elections while there wasn’t a state in the union that ran a better election than florida last year we still saw on a national scale how articles candidates and content
Had the thumbprints of big big tech executives all over them you can look no further than the last several months of the election as coordinated calculated efforts were undertaken to advance an increasingly evident political agenda of the big tech companies the problem is these companies are playing a
Significant role in the advancement of issues and candidates but do so without recording many of their efforts for what they are political contributions if i were to give something of value to a candidate or political committee it would be a contribution but big tech has been manipulating news content and designing algorithms
To give the upper hand to their candidates of choice and they do so scot-free again euphemistically called content moderation i think it’s more political manipulation that’s why in florida we’re going to take action we’re going to take aim at those companies and pull back the veil and
Make sure these guys don’t continue to find loopholes and gray areas to live above the law under our proposal if a technology company deep platforms a candidate for elected office in florida during an election a company will face a daily fine of a hundred thousand dollars until the candidates access to the platform
Is restored again any floridian can de-platform any candidate they choose you simply unsubscribe and it’s a right that i believe belongs with the citizen further if a technology company promotes a candidate for office against another the value of that free promotion must be recorded as a political campaign contribution
Enforced by the florida elections commission and lastly the technology company uses their content and user related algorithms to suppress or prioritize the access of any content related to a political candidate or cause on the ballot that company will also face daily fines
