California’s Online Violence Prevention Act

Title 1.81.46 of Part 4 of Division 3 of the Civil Code deals with the Online Violence Prevention Act.

Section 1798.99.20 defines the terms “content,” “social media platform,” “public or semipublic internet-based service or application,” “user,” and “violent post.”

Section 1798.99.21 requires a social media platform to clearly and conspicuously state whether it has a mechanism for reporting violent posts that is available to users and nonusers of the platform. If the social media platform has a reporting mechanism, the statement required by this subdivision must include a link to the reporting mechanism.

Section 1798.99.22 provides that a person who is the target of a violent post, or reasonably believes the person is the target of a violent post, may seek an order requiring the social media platform to remove the violent post and any related violent post the court determines shall be removed in the interests of justice.

A person may bring an action pursuant to this paragraph before 48 hours have passed since providing notice to a social media platform, but the court cannot rule on the request for an order until 48 hours have passed from the provision of notice. The court may dismiss an action if the social media platform deletes the post before 48 hours have passed from the provision of notice.

Section 1798.99.23 states that this title does not apply to a social media platform with fewer than 1,000,000 discrete monthly users.