California lawmakers want to curb COVID myths with penalties for doctors, tech transparency

Two California lawmakers are pushing measures to help prevent the spread of harmful COVID-19 misinformation people gather online and from medical providers.

Sen. Richard Pan, D-Sacramento, and Assemblyman Evan Low, D-Campbell, on Tuesday announced Senate and Assembly bills that would require tech companies to disclose the algorithms they use to gather users’ personal information and would penalize doctors for sharing COVID misinformation with patients.

Pan’s legislation, Senate Bill 1018, would build on a 2014 state law that requires websites to post a privacy policy that identifies the kinds of personal information they collect from users.

SB 1018 would change that law to require online platforms like Facebook and Google to disclose the algorithms that determine which content users see. The platforms would also need to share their data with researchers.

Pan said these disclosures would provide information that would allow lawmakers better understand why COVID misinformation is so prevalent and how to prevent its spread.

“Transparency will allow the public to make informed decisions,” Pan said. “And lawmakers and researchers need necessary information so we can hold online platforms accountable and also set standards. We should be setting standards as a community, as a society, as a state and as a nation. You should not be left to a handful of, essentially, very rich tech executives to decide what happens to our society and how we respond to a pandemic. We all need to be able to participate in that.”

The senator has seen the impact of online misinformation first hand.

Even before the COVID pandemic, the Pan’s efforts to target vaccine exemptions drew the ire of anti-vaccine conspiracy theorists. In 2019, one such anti-vaxxer posted a video on Facebook that showed him confronting Pan on the street in Sacramento and shoving the senator.

This anger hasn’t stopped Pan from continuing to tout the importance of vaccines. The senator in January proposed a bill that would require COVID vaccines for all kindergarten through 12th grade students and would override the personal belief exemption in the California’s existing mandate.

Penalizing doctors who spread COVID myths

Low’s bill would fight COVID misinformation from another angle. His measure, Assembly Bill 2098, would make it “unprofessional conduct” for doctors licensed under the Medical and Osteopathic boards of California to share false information about COVID, treatments for the virus and vaccines.

The boards could then take disciplinary action against licensees based on a series of factors built into the law, including whether the medical provider’s guidance “resulted in an individual declining opportunities for COVID-19 prevention or treatment that was not justified by the individual’s medical history or condition.”

“These licensed physicians possess a degree of public trust, a high degree at that, and therefore must be held to account and therefore have a powerful platform in society, whether or not individuals recognize it or not,” Low said. “And so the spreading of misinformation, of inaccurate COVID-19 information, contradicts the responsibility and threatens to further erode the public trust in the medical profession and puts all patients at risk.”

The California Medical Association, an industry advocacy group, has not yet taken a stance on AB 2098, said Shannan Velayas, vice president of strategic communications.

But the CMA did back Senate Bill 276, a 2019 measure that more closely regulated vaccine medical exemptions and added more oversight for doctors issuing them to families, Velayas said.

“Health care professionals are working around the clock to end the deadly pandemic,” said Dr. Rober E. Wailes, CMA president, in a statement. “Misinformation has only prolonged it, making the work of our frontline health care workers more difficult and dangerous while harming community health.”

This story was originally published February 15, 2022 at 12:07 PM.