United States of America: Signed Florida Digital Bill of Rights (SB 262) including content moderation regulation

On 6 June 2023, the Florida Digital Bill of Rights was signed by the Governor of Florida. The Bill imposes obligations on controllers, defined as an organisation operating for profit or financial benefit in the state of Florida, that collect personal data about consumers or determine the purposes and means of processing personal data, while making in excess of USD 1 billion in global gross annual revenue. Further, the controller must meet one of the following criteria, derive at least 50% of revenue from online advertisement sales, offer a consumer smart speaker service with an integrated virtual assistant and cloud computing connectivity using voice activation, or run an app store/digital platform with over 250’000 available software applications for consumer download and installation. Under the Bill, a controller that operates a search engine needs to make available, in an up-to-date plain language manner, what the most significant parameters are in determining the ranking of search results and the relative importance of those main parameters, including the prioritisation or deprioritisation of political partisanship or political ideology in search results. However, the Bill does not require algorithms or any other information to be disclosed.