The Senate bill would prevent the internet giant companies from tricking the users to allow handling of personal information.
Senators Deb Fischer and Mark Warner have introduced a Senate bill called the Deceptive Experiences To Online Users Reduction Act or the DETOUR Act on April 9, 2019. The bill prevents the internet giant firms from tricking the active users to allow personal handling of private data. These internet giant companies will not be allowed to develop certain interfaces which prevent 100 million users from taking an informed decision. According to this act, they cannot make groups and sort the users depending upon various factors without their permission. The firms also cannot target the children aged 13 years for developing experiences through the auto playing videos.
The Senate bill also declare that the internet giant firms will have to report the experiments to the public and the 100 million users, in every ninety days. They are also supposed to maintain review boards independent of any authority for psychological and behavioral research. The Federal Trade Commission will be responsible to handle any sort of violations that re countered in the upcoming future. The senators also note the fact that the internet companies make the privacy route very difficult for users through interruptive default settings. Thus, this gives the companies an unfair advantage over the rivals and the public users.
The DETOUR Act is a direct message to the internet platforms that have been repeatedly blamed for scandals such as, Twitter, Facebook and Google. Passing of this act only means that the process would become more transparent than ever before. According to the source, The Verge, this act would discourage several small internet companies who will be limited to internal experiments.