A sweeping proposal to regulate tech.

From American public media, this is Marketplace Tech.

I'm Lily Dramale. It is the rare issue that can bring both political parties together in Congress.

The need to regulate social media companies ranks high

on that very short list. Will two industry veterans want Congress to create an agency that

sets safety and privacy rules for platforms and enforces them.

They argue today's status quo is like letting airlines fly without the FAA regulating

them or the National Transportation Safety Board investigating when

something goes wrong.

The idea comes from Anika Kaleer Navaroli and Ellen Powell.

Powell pushed to ban revenge porn on Reddit during her time as interim CEO a decade ago.

Navaroli was involved in Twitter's decision to ban former President Donald Trump in 2021

when she was a senior policy expert there.

There's no safety net that is saying these are the these are the baseline things that you at least have to have,

right? Like let's do something like make sure that you know terrorist organizations are not

monetizing off of content right and ads like it's these very simple things that like

we know are possible right that we know that companies can do, that they don't have the incentive to do but are exceedingly dangerous that we would love to see again a sort of external agency that has the power to be able to do this in a bipartisan

across the aisle way that we can come together and have these conversations.

And when the black box shows information that the company knew was dangerous or risky and was negligent or grossly negligent,

then there's some accountability for the company.

It's not just, oh, you can continue doing business as usual, it's, hey, you violated the agency

rules on safety and you're not allowed to operate this way anymore.

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