DeSantis proposes ‘Digital Bill of Rights’ targeting Big Tech
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (FLV) – Gov. Ron DeSantis announced a proposal called Florida’s “Digital Bill of Rights” on Wednesday.
DeSantis said the “Digital Bill of Rights” will protect Floridians from big tech harms and big tech overreach.
Additionally, the proposal would take stronger action to address threats posed by Chinese Communist Party-related entities like TikTok.
“We want to protect your right as a Floridian to have private, in-person conversations without big tech surveilling you,” DeSantis said.
It would protect the right to participate in online platforms without “unfair censorship” and ensure the right to know how search engines are “manipulating search results.”
The “Digital Bill of Rights” would aim to protect children from “online harms.” DeSantis said the proposal would ban companies from selling minors’ information without affirmative consent from parent.
“This is helping parents, and this is of course, part of a larger effort that we’ve done to support parents’ rights in the state of Florida,” said DeSantis.
DeSantis said Florida will not allow unauthorized surveillance of conversations through cell phones.
“Private companies, they could just potentially do it, so we’re going to put a road block into that and say they can’t do that without your express authorization,” DeSantis said.
“We’re also going to prohibit the unauthorized data collection and retention of real time information about a user through cell phones such as GPS location, biometric data, and other personally identified information,” he explained.
The proposal would ban state agency partnerships, “formally or informally,” with social media platforms to enact censorship. DeSantis mentioned Twitter’s recent censorship of users.
“You have some of these massive companies that have huge amounts of power to control the discourse, control what you see, use your personal information, and even collude with the government itself, but we’ve got to fight back and provide protections for individual Floridians – and so that’s what we’re doing today,” said DeSantis.
