Colorado governor vetoes bill requiring sites ban users who violated state law

https://www.denver7.com/news/politics/colorado-senate-overrides-polis-veto-of-social-media-bill

by ytpete • 1 year ago

5 3 1 year ago

ytpete2• 1 year ago

The veto might be overturned by a 2/3 majority of the state legislature though.

The bill requires social media platforms to investigate allegations that a user violated state law, to suspend their account while investigating, and permanently ban the account if the investigation finds that the law was violated. Allegations can be made by virtually any member of the public.

Part of the governor's statement at the time of veto:

"This law imposes sweeping requirements that social media platforms, rather than law enforcement, enforce state law. It mandates a private company to investigate and impose the government’s chosen penalty of permanently deplatforming a user.... In our judicial proceedings, people receive due process when they are suspected of breaking the law. This bill, however, conscripts social media platforms to be judge and jury when users may have broken the law or even a company’s own content rules. This proposed law would incentivize platforms, in order to reduce liability risk, to simply deplatform a user in order to comply with this proposed law."
"Further, the costly and mandatory data and metadata collection requirements in this bill throw open the door for abuse by guaranteeing the availability of sensitive information such as user age, identities, and content viewed, and these reports could even be made public at the discretion of the Attorney General."

(The full statement is in a PDF linked in the article)

apothegm• 1 year ago

All laws? Like, if you get cited for jaywalking or running a red light you can be permanently banned from social media?

ytpete2• 1 year ago

It seems narrower than that. Best I can gather from the text of the bill (https://leg.colorado.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2025A...) is it applies to any state laws violated while engaged in:

- advertising/selling illegal drugs - selling firearms - sex trafficking - "sexually exploitative material"

But it doesn't appear to enumerate a fixed list of laws, no. And there are financial penalties if the social media company judges wrong.

There are also other parts of the bill which touch on age verification of users, screen time / bedtime warning popups, requirements on responding to warrants quickly, etc. And it carves out various exemptions for gaming sites, email, collaborative editing software, education software, LinkedIn-type sites, comment threads on non-user-generated streaming or news sites, ...whole bunch of stuff. Definitely not easy to parse for us non-lawyers.

Colorado governor vetoes bill requiring sites ban users who violated state law

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