Senators Introduce Dashboard Act to Increase Data Transparency

A bipartisan group of US Senators plan to introduce the Dashboard Act into Congress today to require social media companies to disclose information about their data collection and monetization. Dashboard is short for Designing Accounting Safeguards to Help Broaden Oversight And Regulations on Data.

If adopted, the bill would require companies with 100 million monthly active users to disclose the total value they derive from personal data collection to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission annually.

The companies will also need to disclose an assessment of the value to users once every 90 days, in addition to disclosure of the types of data collected and how it is used. The bill also requires companies to provide a tool or setting to allow users to delete all or part of their data.

The Dashboard Act was introduced by Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) and Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO). It is part of what seems to be a growing trend of privacy bills in Congress that aim not to replicate the comprehensive nature of the European Union General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) or the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), but to target a specific problem. Congress has to this point had trouble reaching a consensus on a new federal privacy law despite more than a dozen proposals that have been introduced into congress in the last fifteen months.

The proposed privacy bill follows a proposal earlier this year floated by California Governor Gavin Newsom to pay California state residents a “data dividend” to allow consumers to share in the money that tech companies make on their personal information. The California proposal goes a step farther than the Dashboard Act, which does not propose to pay residents but would require companies to calculate and disclose the value of the data they are collecting.