WASHINGTON–Today, Senators Chris Coons (D-DE) and Bill Cassidy (R-LA) introduced the “Platform Transparency and Accountability Act,” which shields researchers who are studying the platforms from legal liability while preserving the privacy of people posting on the platforms. The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, which has long supported measures to improve platform transparency and enable independent researcher access, welcomes the introduction of today’s bill and applauds the senators for their leadership on this issue.

The following can be attributed to Nadine Farid Johnson, policy director at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University.

“Independent research into and public understanding of social media platforms is vitally important because of the ways these communications platforms have transformed our digital public sphere and the outsized role they play in our democracy. But journalists and researchers who study the platforms and their black-box algorithms continue to do so under the threat of serious legal liability, and the public suffers for it. The Platform Accountability and Transparency Act is a vital step in the right direction, providing a safe harbor for public interest research while preserving user privacy. The Knight Institute commends Senators Coons and Cassidy for their steadfast leadership on this bill and their commitment to transparency online.”

Since 2018, the Knight Institute has been advocating for a safe harbor for public-interest research and journalism focused on social media platforms. The Institute published a white paper proposing a safe harbor for platform research in 2022, and supported the introduction of a previous version of the Platform Accountability and Transparency Act that same year. 

Read the bill text here.

Read more about the Institute’s related advocacy project here.

For more information, contact: Lorraine Kenny, [email protected].