One of the few politically unifying events of the past year was the shared response to then-presidential candidate Nikki Haley’s
plan to abolish anonymity on social media. The idea was deservedly lambasted by those on the
left,
right, and
center. For one brief, shining moment, sanity prevailed. Americans, in almost perfect unison, defended anonymous speech.
But one California lawmaker appears to like Haley’s idea and introduced a bill to implement much of it. Two committees already have approved it.
State Senator Steve Padilla’s
SB 1228 forces social media platforms to seek verification of the names, telephone numbers and email addresses of “influential” users. The bill requires platforms to request the government-issued IDs of “highly influential” users.
Any company not in compliance risks being sued by California government attorneys. If the company is subsequently found by a court to be noncompliant, it will face a court order to comply and must pay attorney fees and court costs.
Justifying the anti-free speech crusade, Padilla
blamed “(f)oreign adversaries (who) hope to harness new and powerful technology to misinform and divide America this election cycle.” With domestic friends like these, who needs foreign enemies?
Our country has a long tradition of anonymity, including the Federalist Papers, which advocated for the ratification of the Constitution under the pseudonym “Publius.” Anonymity is just as critical today. Important investigative journalism often relies on anonymous sources. Americans use social media to express political opinions that might cause them to lose their jobs. Political dissidents who fled to the U.S. to escape tyrannical governments use social media to speak out against those repressive regimes.
Online speech platforms provide an outlet for these people to be heard. In many cases, the goal is to generate as many views as possible to raise awareness about a social or political issue. But this bill intimidates people from speaking out by forcing companies to seek personal identifying information that could result in real-world harm if it falls into the wrong hands.
If the companies collect the data, state-sponsored hackers will want to get it, either to silence critics or attempt to turn them into propagandists. And all it takes is one rogue moderator offended by a post to dox one, or many, influential users. Anyone challenging power or advocating for or against a controversial issue would understandably think twice about identifying themselves and may perhaps think twice about using social media to advance the cause at all.
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However well-intentioned Sen. Padilla may be, the bill will not serve his intended purpose. One of the goals is cutting down election-related “misinformation,” but the bill targets broad swaths of speech wholly unrelated to politics and elections. For example, X would be required to ask a popular account that compares images of sports to fine art, @ArtButMakeItSports, to provide government-issued ID. What problem does that solve?
There’s little lawmakers can do to protect Americans from “misinformation” and divisive news. Disagreeing with each other about what’s true and false is an important element of our democracy. Like anonymous speech, it’s as American as apple pie.
Though lawmakers think they are protecting our democracy by proposing policies such as SB 1228, they are actually undermining it by discouraging speech.
Unfortunately, so far California legislators don’t understand. Let’s hope they come to their senses soon.
Tiffany Donnelly is deputy director of communications at the nonpartisan, nonprofit organization Institute for Free Speech.
