United States of America: Introduced Platform Accountability and Transparency Act (PATA) to increase social media transparency

On 21 December 2022, US senators introduced the Platform Accountability and Transparency Act (PATA) to make social media companies more transparent. First, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) will be required to set appropriate privacy and cybersecurity protection standards for all data and establish the information platforms must provide to qualified researchers. The researchers will be obliged to comply with privacy and cybersecurity protection measures. Furthermore, the Act would allow researchers working with non-profit organisations or universities to request access to the company's data. The threshold for coverage of online platforms was raised, compared with the Draft Act, from 25 million to 50 million monthly users. Augmented or virtual reality platforms were included among the categories covered entities. Finally, privacy limits would be set on the data that researchers can request. The private messages, biometric data and geolocation data are excluded from the list of data that platforms will be obliged to share.