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Senate Engrossed
social media platforms; standards; notification |
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State of Arizona Senate Fifty-sixth Legislature Second Regular Session 2024
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SENATE BILL 1124 |
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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
18-701. Definitions
In this article, unless the context otherwise requires:
1. "Candidate" has the same meaning prescribed in section 16-901.
2. "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.
3. "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.
4. "Social media platform":
(a) Means a 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 operating the social media platform and not from selling 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 do 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.
5. "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 previously posted content or material to the social media platform.
18-702. Candidates; deplatforming prohibited; civil penalty
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.
18-703. Censorship standards
A social media platform shall publish the standards, including detailed definitions, that the social media platform uses for determining how it will censor or deplatform the social media platform's users.
18-704. Penalties; exceptions
A. An employee who violates this chapter is subject to removal from state service, reduction in grade, debarment from state employment for a period of not more than 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.