Algorithm Accountability Act

Summary#

This bill would change section 230 of the Communications Act. It adds a new rule called "Algorithmic Product Design Accountability." Under that rule, a for‑profit social media platform must exercise reasonable care when it designs, trains, tests, deploys, operates, or maintains a recommendation‑based algorithm if a foreseeable design problem could cause bodily injury or death to a user or cause a user to injure or kill another person. The bill defines a recommendation‑based algorithm as an automated system that ranks, orders, promotes, recommends, amplifies, or curates content based on a user’s personal data. It defines social media platforms as for‑profit interactive services that let users create accounts and mainly interact with content, but it excludes services with fewer than 1,000,000 registered users and several other types of services (for example, email, direct messaging, teleconferencing, certain review sites, commerce platforms, streaming audio, and news or sports coverage).

The bill says platforms that fail this duty of care would lose the liability protection in section 230(c)(1). It creates a private right of action: a person who suffers bodily injury or dies as a result of a violation can sue the platform in federal court for compensatory and punitive damages. The bill also says predispute arbitration agreements and predispute joint‑action waivers cannot be used to bar these disputes and that courts, not arbitrators, must decide the scope of that rule. The bill includes a First Amendment limitation that the Federal Communications Commission cannot enforce the duty based on viewpoint, and it makes technical updates to other federal statutes to reflect the change to section 230.

What it means for you#

• If you are a user of a large social media platform, this bill would let you or your legal representative sue in federal court for physical injury or death that the bill says was caused in whole or in part by a platform’s recommendation algorithm.\
• Platforms covered by the bill would need to pay attention to how they design and run recommendation systems.\
• Small services (fewer than 1,000,000 registered users) and listed types of services would not be covered by this subsection.

Expenses#

No publicly available information.

Proponents' View#

The bill’s text shows its sponsors intend to limit section 230 protections for certain social media platforms and to hold platforms accountable when recommendation algorithms cause foreseeable bodily injury or death. The bill creates a private right of action and removes some arbitration and class waivers for those cases.

Opponents' View#

No publicly available information.