I 
118TH CONGRESS 
2D SESSION 
H. R. 9126 
To require digital social companies to adopt terms of service that meet 
certain minimum requirements. 
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 
JULY 24, 2024 
Ms. PORTER introduced the following bill; which was referred to the 
Committee on Energy and Commerce 
A BILL 
To require digital social companies to adopt terms of service 
that meet certain minimum requirements. 
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa-
tives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, 
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. 
This Act may be cited as the ‘‘Digital Social Platform 
Transparency Act’’. 
SEC. 2. TERMS OF SERVICE REQUIREMENT. 
(a) TERMS OF SERVICE.—Not later than 180 days 
after the date of enactment of this Act, digital social com-
panies shall post terms of service for each digital social 
platform owned or operated by the company in a manner 
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reasonably designed to inform all users of the digital social 
platform of the existence and contents of the terms of 
service. The terms of service posted pursuant to this sec-
tion shall include each of the following: 
(1) Contact information for the purpose of al-
lowing users to ask the digital social company ques-
tions about the terms of service. 
(2) A description of the process that users must 
follow to flag content, groups, or other users that 
they believe violate the terms of service, and the dig-
ital social company’s commitments on response and 
resolution time. 
(3) A list of potential actions the digital social 
company may take against an item of content or a 
user, 
including 
demonetization, 
deprioritization, 
muting, or banning. 
(b) TRANSLATIONS.—The terms of service posted 
pursuant to this section shall be made available in all lan-
guages in which the digital social platform offers product 
features, including menus and prompts. 
SEC. 3. REPORTING REQUIREMENT. 
(a) TERMS OF SERVICE REPORT.—Not later than 
360 days after the date of enactment of this Act, and on 
a semiannual basis thereafter, each digital social company 
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shall electronically submit to the Attorney General a terms 
of service report. 
(b) CONTENTS OF TERMS OF SERVICE REPORT.— 
The terms of service report shall include, for each digital 
social platform owned or operated by the company, each 
of the following: 
(1) The version of the terms of service of the 
digital social platform in effect on the date of the re-
port. 
(2) If applicable, a complete and detailed de-
scription of any changes to the terms of service since 
the previous report. 
(3) A statement of whether the version of the 
terms of service in effect on the date of the report 
defines each of the following categories of content 
(or any substantially similar categories), and, if so, 
the definitions of those categories, including any 
subcategories: 
(A) Hate speech or racism. 
(B) Extremism or radicalization. 
(C) Disinformation or misinformation. 
(D) Harassment. 
(E) Foreign political interference. 
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(4) A detailed description of content moderation 
practices used by the digital social company for that 
platform, including each of the following: 
(A) Any existing policies intended to ad-
dress the categories of content described in 
paragraph (3). 
(B) How automated content moderation 
systems enforce terms of service of the digital 
social platform and when these systems involve 
human review. 
(C) How the digital social company re-
sponds to user reports of violations of the terms 
of service. 
(D) What standards, policies, or decision- 
making systems the digital social company em-
ploys when deciding to action individual pieces 
of content, users, or groups. 
(5) Information on content that was flagged to 
the digital social company as belonging to any of the 
categories described in paragraph (3), including each 
of the following: 
(A) The total number of flagged items of 
content. 
(B) The total number of actioned items of 
content. 
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(C) The total number of actioned items of 
content 
that 
were 
removed, 
demonetized, 
deprioritized, muted, or banned by the digital 
social company, disaggregated by each type of 
action. 
(D) The number of times actioned items of 
content were viewed by users. 
(E) The number of times actioned items of 
content were shared, and the number of users 
that viewed the content before it was actioned. 
(F) The number of times users appealed 
digital social company actions taken on that 
platform. 
(G) The number of reversals of digital so-
cial company actions on appeal disaggregated 
by each type of action. 
(6) All information required by paragraphs (4) 
and (5) shall be disaggregated into the following cat-
egories: 
(A) The category of content, including any 
relevant categories described in paragraph (3). 
(B) The type of content, including posts, 
comments, messages, in-game structures or ob-
jects, or profiles of users, or groups of users. 
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SEC. 4. PENALTIES FOR LACK OF SUBMISSION. 
(a) ADMINISTRATIVE ASSESSMENT.—A digital social 
company that violates the provisions of this Act shall be 
liable for an administrative assessment not to exceed 
$15,000 per violation per day. 
(b) VIOLATIONS.—A digital social company shall be 
considered in violation of the provisions of this Act for 
each day the digital social company does any of the fol-
lowing: 
(1) Fails to post terms of service in accordance 
with section 2. 
(2) Fails to timely submit to the Attorney Gen-
eral a report required pursuant to section 3. 
(3) Materially omits or misrepresents required 
information in a report submitted pursuant to sec-
tion 3. 
(c) RELIEF.—The Attorney General has the exclusive 
authority to bring an action in any court of competent 
jurisdiction, upon their own complaint or upon the com-
plaint of any board, officer, person, corporation, or asso-
ciation, to enjoin a violation of this Act by a digital social 
company. 
(d) DEPOSITS INTO FUND.— 
(1) ESTABLISHMENT.—There is established in 
the Treasury a separate account to be known as the 
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Digital Social Platform Terms of Service Fund 
(hereinafter referred to as the ‘‘Fund’’). 
(2) DEPOSITS.—There shall be deposited in the 
Fund one-half of the administrative assessment 
funds collected pursuant to this section, which funds 
may be used to maintain the reporting website and 
support the enforcement of this Act. 
SEC. 5. DUTIES AND OBLIGATIONS; REMEDIES AND PEN-
ALTIES. 
(a) DUTIES AND OBLIGATIONS.—The duties and obli-
gations authorized under this Act are cumulative to any 
other duties or obligations imposed under local, State, or 
Federal law and shall not be construed to relieve any party 
from any duties or obligations imposed under law. 
(b) REMEDIES AND PENALTIES.—Remedies or pen-
alties authorized under this Act are cumulative to any 
other remedies or penalties available under local law, State 
law, this Act or any other Federal law. 
SEC. 6. RULES OF CONSTRUCTION. 
(a) LIMITATION ON APPLICATION.—This Act may 
not be construed to apply to an internet-based service or 
application for which interactions between users are lim-
ited to direct messages, commercial transactions, con-
sumer reviews of products, sellers, services, events, or 
places, or any combination thereof. 
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(b) END-TO-END ENCRYPTION.—This Act may not 
be construed to require or encourage any internet-based 
service or application to change the effectiveness of end- 
to-end encryption of that service or application. 
SEC. 7. DEFERENCE TO AGENCY INTERPRETATIONS. 
Notwithstanding section 706 of title 5, United States 
Code, the Attorney General may make such interpreta-
tions and determinations as are reasonable and necessary 
to carry out this Act, with respect to which courts shall 
defer. 
SEC. 8. DEFINITIONS. 
In this Act: 
(1) ACTIONED.—The term ‘‘actioned’’ means 
that a digital social company, due to a suspected or 
confirmed violation of the terms of service, has 
taken some form of action, including removal, de-
monetization, deprioritization, muting, suspending, 
or banning, against a relevant user or relevant item 
of content. 
(2) CONTENT.—The term ‘‘content’’ means 
statements, posts, comments, messages, videos, 
audio, images, in-game structures or other user-cre-
ated objects, or profiles of users or groups of users, 
or structures that are created, posted, shared, or 
otherwise interacted with by users on an internet- 
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based service or application. The term ‘‘content’’ 
does not include media put on a service or applica-
tion exclusively for the purpose of cloud storage, 
transmitting files, or file collaboration. 
(3) DIGITAL
SOCIAL
COMPANY.—The term 
‘‘digital social company’’ means a person or entity 
that owns or operates one or more digital social plat-
forms, including social media platforms and online 
games. 
(4) DIGITAL SOCIAL PLATFORM.— 
(A) IN GENERAL.—The term ‘‘digital so-
cial platform’’ means a public or semipublic 
internet-based service or application that has 
users in the United States and that meets the 
following criteria: 
(i) A substantial function of the serv-
ice or application is to introduce users in 
order to allow users to interact socially 
with each other within the service or appli-
cation. 
(ii) The service or application allows 
users to do each of the following: 
(I) 
Construct 
a 
public 
or 
semipublic profile for purposes of 
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signing into and using the service or 
application. 
(II) Populate a list of other users 
with whom an individual shares a so-
cial connection within the system. 
(III) Create or post content 
viewable by other groups or commu-
nities of users, including on message 
boards, in chat rooms, or through a 
landing page or main feed. 
(iii) A service or application that gen-
erates more than $100,000,000 in gross 
revenue during the preceding calendar 
year. 
(B) EXCLUSION.—The term ‘‘digital social 
platform’’ does not include a service or applica-
tion that provides email or direct messages, 
commercial transactions, consumer reviews of 
products, sellers, services, events, or places, or 
any combination thereof on the basis of that 
function alone. 
(5) 
END-TO-END
ENCRYPTION.—The 
term 
‘‘end-to-end encryption’’ means communications 
encryption in which data is encrypted when being 
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passed through a network, but routing information 
remains visible. 
(6) PUBLIC OR SEMIPUBLIC INTERNET-BASED 
SERVICE
OR
APPLICATION.—The term ‘‘public or 
semipublic internet-based service or application’’ ex-
cludes a service or application used to facilitate com-
munication within a business or enterprise among 
employees or affiliates of the business or enterprise, 
provided that access to the service or application is 
restricted to employees or affiliates of the business 
or enterprise using the service or application. 
(7) TERMS OF SERVICE.—The term ‘‘terms of 
service’’ means a policy or set of policies adopted by 
a digital social company that specifies, at least, the 
user behavior and activities that are permitted on 
the internet-based service owned or operated by the 
digital social company, and the user behavior and 
activities that may subject the user or an item of 
content to being actioned. 
Æ 
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