A bipartisan group of House lawmakers introduced legislation on Tuesday to require Big Tech platforms such as Facebook and Google to allow users to view content that has not been curated by secret algorithms, forcing transparency about content delivery.
The Filter Bubble Transparency Act, which already has a companion bill in the Senate, would require online platforms with over 1 million users and more than $50 million in revenue per year to notify users that their platform uses an algorithm to determine the timing and fashion in which information is delivered to users.
It would also force social media giants to give users the option to view content without any algorithms at play, thereby allowing users to toggle between a personalized, algorithm-influenced timeline and a purely chronological timeline.
The top leaders of the House antitrust panel, Democratic Rep. David Cicilline of Rhode Island and Republican Rep. Ken Buck of Colorado, introduced the legislation in conjunction with Republican Sens. John Thune of South Dakota, Jerry Moran of Kansas, and Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, along with Democratic Sens. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, and Brian Schatz of Hawaii.
“The Filter Bubble Act will bring more transparency and accountability, while giving consumers more control of their online experience on Big Tech platforms,” Buck said in a statement. “Consumers should have the option to engage with internet platforms without being manipulated by secret algorithms driven by user-specific data.”
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Multiple congressmen on both sides of the aisle have pointed to Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen’s Senate testimony in October as evidence of the social media giant’s malicious use of algorithms.
Haugen’s trove of internal Facebook documents, collected earlier this year, indicated that the company’s engagement-based ranking algorithms reward controversial and extreme content on the platform and can be toxic for some teenagers.
“Facebook and other dominant platforms manipulate their users through opaque algorithms that prioritize growth and profit over everything else,” Cicilline said in a statement. “And due to these platforms’ monopoly power and dominance, users are stuck with few alternatives to this exploitative business model, whether it is in their social media feed, on paid advertisements, or in their search results.”
The social media giants say that the new algorithm legislation would cause harmful content to be spread online.
“Algorithms are what protect people online from spam, scams, and hate speech, so requiring Facebook and Twitter to provide algorithm-free feeds is like demanding that they offer a ride in the Internet’s worst filth,” said Adam Kovacevich, CEO of the Chamber of Progress, an advocacy group backed by Big Tech companies such as Amazon, Facebook, and Google.
“Most people want online services to moderate more content, not expose them to a completely unfiltered stream,” Kovacevich added, pointing to a recent Morning Consult survey showing that 70% of the public backs stricter content standards online.
Kovacevich also said that the two House Republican co-sponsors of the bill, Buck and Rep. Burgess Owens of Utah, are top spreaders of misinformation that the bill allows carriage of.
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“If Republican lawmakers are concerned about harmful content on social media, they should take a long look in the mirror,” Kovacevich said in a statement. “Reps. Ken Buck and Burgess Owens are top contributors to COVID-19 misinformation and xenophobia, both on and offline. It’s no wonder they want to mandate Facebook and Twitter to carry their lies, unchecked.”
