Senate President Pro tem Kerry Donovan, D-Vail, may have run into massive criticism and roadblocks over a bill to regulate social media, but she found a way forward with Senate Bill 132, winning a party-line 3-2 vote Tuesday in the Senate State, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee.

But that meant scrapping the bill and starting over. 

As introduced, SB 132 sought to create a Digital Communications Division and Commission in the Department of Regulatory Agencies. That commission would register digital communications platforms and enforce unfair or discriminatory digital communications practices on the platforms. The commission also came with a $2.4 million cost, not a popular idea in a year when lawmakers’ focus is on improving the state’s economy and recovering from the pandemic. 

The targets: Social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Twitch and YouTube and any others  that conduct business in Colorado. 

When problems arise, these behemoths tell Congress it’s not their fault and they can’t do anything about it, she explained. “I can’t sit by and let that be an acceptable answer.”

She cited last summer’s Black Lives Matter protests, where social media platforms gathered data and then sold it to police departments. People have been murdered because of rumors on Facebook, she said, and two-thirds of teenagers report being bullied on social media. The companies’ response is that they have no control over what happens on their platforms; that it’s just a location for people to meet, she said. 

At the heart of the bill is a desire to create a consumer complaint division, a place for people to go when they have a complaint about social media. Right now, there’s nothing. “You as an individual are not who [the companies] are there for. They are there to sell your actions. They will never be there” to address complaints, she said.

Donovan said the business model of social media companies is designed to keep you on their platform, engaged and clicking, to gather data. “If that’s the business model, then data is the product… . We can’t sit by and say it’ll fix itself, that these guys will do the right thing,” she added. 

The bill was hit almost immediately with criticism on social media, which Donovan spoke about on Tuesday. Some of it was pretty vulgar, but she told Colorado Politics after the hearing that the criticism proved her point. 

SB 132 was also viewed skeptically by First Amendment advocates, including the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition. Executive Director Jeff Roberts told Colorado Politics that his board did not take a position on the bill; they had concerns about legislation that imposes governmental sanctions on speech protected by the First Amendment. “This bill talks about practices that promote hate speech and intentional disinformation,” Roberts said, yet none of those terms were defined in the bill as introduced.

“I’m sure there are good intentions,” Roberts said, adding that disinformation is a huge problem, even overwhelming in a lot of ways. It’s a problem that needs to be addressed, but imposing governmental sanctions raises constitutional questions, he said.

Donovan went back to the drawing board and scrapped the original bill, replacing it with a strike-below amendment that turned the whole thing into a study, to be handled by the legislature’s Joint Technology Committee. The committee would examine whether – and how – the General Assembly could address through legislation consumer protection concerns related to social media platforms.

That could include looking at how those platforms address issues such as promoting violence, undermining election integrity, deliberately allowing disinformation or attacking protected groups, as well as marketing policies and data collection without the user’s consent.

The committee would bring in state agencies or other experts to assist, although the Colorado Press Association advocated for an amendment that would also bring in First Amendment advocacy groups or media organizations. That’s an amendment that could show up when the bill is debated in the full Senate.

Social media platforms believe they are above the law, Donovan said, both the laws of Colorado and of the United States. It’s the job of the General Assembly to lead, identify issues that are not working well and figure out how to make them better, she told the committee.

Cory Gaines, who teaches physics at Northeastern Junior College in Sterling, said the bill raised concerns about privacy. “I have little love for social media companies,” he said. “I don’t like how much data they share or mine from me.”

That said, the creation of an unelected commission could result in a takeover of personal choice, he said. He also objected to the lack of definitions in the introduced version of the bill. “That’s not for a government agency to define.”

Donovan also noted that those who designed those platforms are now speaking out against them, and brought in a former Google engineer to make her point.

Joe Toscano recently appeared in the Netflix documentary, “The Social Dilemma,” in which he spoke about his work for a Google subsidiary and the moral issues he faced.