A group of Republican and Democrat senators want social media companies like Meta to face legal action if they don't share internal data with outside researchers

• Senators have introduced a bill to force social media companies to hand over internal data to outside researchers.
• The proposed law would allow researchers to take social media companies to court for failing to give up data.

Meta and other social media companies would face legal action if they failed to open up their data to independent researchers under a new law proposed by a bipartisan group of senators.

The proposed "Platform Accountability and Transparency Act" was unveiled Thursday by Democratic senators Amy Klobuchar and Chris Coons and Republican senator Rob Portman, and aims to "support research about the impact of digital communication platforms on society."

The bill was published after 300 scientists sent an open letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on December 6 asking the social media giant to voluntarily share its research on teen and child mental health. The letter was prompted by internal documents leaked by whistleblower Frances Haugen on the potential negative effects on teen mental health of Instagram, which is owned by Meta.

The proposed law would force social media companies with a minimum of 25 million monthly users to hand over data to university-affiliated researchers who request it through the National Science Foundation. If a company failed to hand over data, the researchers and their universities would be able to take legal action.

The bill proposes that a company found by a court to have failed to hand over data should lose its Section 230 protections. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act allows tech companies to determine how to moderate their own platforms, and protects them from being liable for content posted by users.

"Social media companies have incredible amounts of data about each of us – but right now, they're the only ones that get to use it to their advantage," Sen. Coons tweeted.

Neither Meta, formerly Facebook, or Twitter immediately responded when contacted by Insider for comment on the bill.

On Wednesday, Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri testified before Congress about child safety on the platform.

In October 2020, Facebook clashed with academics from the NYU Ad Observatory project who were studying political ads on the platform. Facebook said in August 2021 it had blocked the researchers because they were "using unauthorized means to access and collect data" and had breached a privacy consent agreement put in place by the Federal Trade Commission. The FTC denied this was the case.