Elon Musk’s social media platform, formerly known as Twitter, has filed a lawsuit against the state of California regarding a law that mandates social media companies to publish their policies for removing offensive content, such as hate speech, misinformation, and harassment.
The first-of-its-kind legislation was enacted a year ago by California Governor Gavin Newsom. X Corp. filed a lawsuit on Friday against State Attorney General Robert Bonta, challenging the constitutionality and legal validity of the law, claiming it violates the First Amendment.
Assembly Bill 587 requires social media platforms to publicly share their content moderation policies, which they already do, and submit a biannual report to the state about how they address hate speech, racism, misinformation, foreign political interference, and other related issues.
According to the lawsuit, the law “forces companies to engage in speech against their will, interferes with the constitutionally-protected editorial judgments of companies like X Corp.,” and pressures companies to remove or demonetize protected speech. The lawsuit was filed in the Eastern District Court of California.
Since Musk took over Twitter in October 2022, he has disrupted the platform’s content moderation system by laying off employees responsible for reviewing problematic content and reinstating accounts that were banned for hate speech, promoting Nazi and white nationalist material, and harassing users.
He also dissolved the Trust and Safety Council, a key advisory group comprised of various independent civil rights, human rights, and other organizations, which was established by the company in 2016 to address issues such as hate speech, harassment, child exploitation, suicide, and self-harm on the platform. While Musk has described himself as a “free speech absolutist,” he has shown sensitivity towards critical speech directed at him or his companies. Last year, he suspended the accounts of several journalists who covered his takeover of Twitter.
The author of the bill, Democratic Assemblyman Jesse Gabriel, stated that it is “a transparency measure that simply requires companies to be upfront about their content moderation practices. It does not mandate specific content moderation policies, which is why it garnered strong bipartisan support.”
He added, “If Twitter has nothing to hide, then they should not object to this bill.”
As of Friday, there has been no response from representatives of X Corp. or the Attorney General’s office regarding the lawsuit.
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