Rep Trahan Unveils Comprehensive Online Transparency Legislation

Rep. Lori Trahan (D-MA-03), a member of the House Commerce Committee’s Consumer Protection and Commerce Subcommittee, unveiled the Digital Services Oversight and Safety Act (DSOSA), comprehensive transparency legislation to establish a Bureau of Digital Services Oversight and Safety at the Federal Trade Commission that would have the authority and resources necessary to hold powerful online companies accountable for the promises they make to users, parents, advertisers, and enforcers. The bill would create the Bureau of Digital Services Oversight and Safety tasked with investigating systemic risks on online platforms and issuing transparency requirements and guidance on content-neutral safety processes and design features. Housed within the FTC, the Bureau would employ at least 500 employees, including technologists, constitutional lawyers, and interdisciplinary experts like child development specialists and statisticians with the expertise needed to equip federal agencies and lawmakers with evidence-based research that informs enforcement actions and legislative proposals. Under this legislation, the Bureau would issue and enforce comprehensive transparency and accessibility requirements, including:

• Mandating a series of transparency, risk assessment, and risk mitigation reports – depending on companies’ size and practices – all aimed at better informing enforcers, researchers, and users about platforms’ policies.
• Creating an Office of Independent Research Facilitation tasked with standing up and overseeing a system through which certified researchers can study the impacts of covered platforms and their content moderation practices, product design decisions, and algorithms.
• Publishing annual reports on the systemic risks present in the ecosystem of large covered platforms and the effectiveness of existing mitigation methods.
• Requiring that platforms have a functioning, well-resourced internal complaint, and appeal process for individuals who feel their content or accounts has been wrongfully taken down.
• Providing voluntary guidance for platforms on content-neutral trust and safety processes, as well as age and audience-specific product design features.
• Empowering the creation of a digital advertisement library similar to Trahan’s Social Media DATA Act.
• Requiring that platforms maintain publicly accessible community standards with machine readable XML tags that facilitate independent research.
• Providing whistleblower protections to any employee at a hosting service who provides evidence that platforms have broken the law under the rules and regulations of this Act.