A proposed bill that would prevent universities and colleges from asking prospective and current students for access to their personal social media accounts is receiving overwhelming support in the California State Senate.
The California Senate Labor and Industrial Relations Committee approved the Social Media Privacy Act on April 25 in a 5-0 vote. It was amended in the senate on May 2 and is currently awaiting action by the Senate Committee on appropriations.
The bill, authored by Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, seeks to prohibit public and private colleges and universities, as well as employers, from asking current and prospective students and employees for the usernames and passwords to their private social media accounts.
The proposed legislation is also intended to prevent businesses and postsecondary schools from accessing social media content in other ways.
Recently, there have been media reports of employees being forced to log in to their social media accounts while their managers watch, which the bill aims to prevent.
It is currently illegal for colleges and employers to discriminate based on social media content.
“I don’t really have any experience with it, but I kind of feel like it would be an invasion of privacy,” said Nicholas Thibeault, a junior environmental science and policy major. “At the same time, you’re putting this stuff up online for anybody to potentially see, so it’s like ‘where do you draw the line?’ It’s very much a grey area in my mind.”
Erica Maceda, a senior women’s gender and sexuality studies major, said she fears what could happen without protections in place.
“Granting employers and administrators access to our private lives is intrusive and more importantly, it can create conflicts surrounding sexual orientation, religion, class, race and political affiliations,” Maceda said.
Unlike most of her fellow students, Maceda avoids these types of privacy issues in her own life by staying away from social media all together.
“I don’t use any form of social media,” Maceda said. “I don’t find any interest in sites such as Facebook, Twitter or Tumblr, but that’s just me.”
After reading the proposed bill, senior political science major Alexander Hodge-Wallis was concerned about the language of the bill and its exceptions, which only prohibits asking for both the username and password of an account.
“It wants to look like it’s doing something that it actually isn’t,” Hodge-Wallis said.