TERMS Act Mandates 7-Day Warning Before Account Suspension, Expands FTC Power Over Nonprofits

The new Transparency in Enforcement, Restricting, and Monitoring of Services Act, or the TERMS Act, is taking aim at the often-opaque rules online services use to kick people off their platforms. Essentially, this legislation forces any website, app, or service that requires a unique account to clearly publish the exact rules and processes they follow when they restrict or ban a user. Providers have 180 days after the bill becomes law to get their house in order and post these policies publicly.

The Fine Print on Getting Fired

Think about the last time you read the Terms of Service—probably never. This bill tries to fix that by making the most important part—the acceptable use policy—clear and accessible. Under Section 4, providers must spell out exactly what behavior gets you restricted, how they police those rules (including if they use outside contractors or automated tools), and whether they even allow you to appeal a ban. Crucially, they also have to disclose whether they consider things you do off their platform—like a post on a different social network or a public statement—as grounds for restriction on their service. For users, this means you can finally shop around and choose services whose rules you actually agree with, which is a win for transparency.

The 7-Day Heads-Up Rule

One of the biggest changes for users is found in Section 5: the mandatory advance notice. If a service decides to restrict your account for violating their rules, they generally have to give you a written warning at least seven days before they actually pull the plug. This notice can’t be vague; it must state the specific action you took that caused the problem, how that action violated their policy, and detail the exact appeal process, if one exists. For a small business owner who relies on a specific online tool, that seven-day notice is huge—it gives them a week to migrate data or find an alternative before their livelihood disappears. The only exceptions to this warning are if a court orders the action or if the provider needs to act immediately to prevent an “imminent risk of death, serious physical injury, or a serious health risk.”

Accountability by the Numbers

If you want to know how often platforms actually enforce their rules, Section 6 is for you. This provision mandates that online service providers publish a detailed annual report on their enforcement actions. These reports must be publicly posted, machine-readable, and released under an open license. The data needs to be granular, detailing exactly how many times they restricted users, broken down by the specific rule broken and where the alert came from (user complaint, employee, automated tool, etc.). They also have to report how many appeals they received and, most importantly, how many of those appeals resulted in the original decision being reversed. This level of mandatory transparency means researchers and the public will finally get a real look under the hood of content moderation.

The FTC Gets a Bigger Jurisdiction

While this bill is great for users, it creates a new regulatory burden, particularly for smaller services and nonprofits. Section 7 gives the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) the authority to enforce this Act, treating any violation as an unfair or deceptive business practice under the FTC Act. Here’s the key expansion: the FTC’s enforcement power is explicitly extended to nonprofit organizations that operate online services requiring accounts. This means a community forum or an educational platform run by a nonprofit—organizations usually outside the FTC’s traditional commercial scope—now have new compliance costs and face the same enforcement risk as a billion-dollar tech company if they don’t follow the new reporting and notice rules. The FTC has 180 days to issue guidance to help companies comply, but the bill makes it clear that following that guidance won't guarantee immunity, and the guidance itself doesn't create new rights for users.