The social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, recently lost a court case challenging a new California law that entailed the public revelation of its content moderating procedures and required issuing a thorough service report on their moderating activity to the state.
X Corp., owned by the renowned entrepreneur Elon Musk, opposed this law in September. The Rally was on the grounds of the law being unconstitutional, as Musk claimed it violated the First Amendment and also, that this law bestowed an unfair burden on social media companies infringing the Dormant Commerce Clause of the US Constitution.
US District Judge William Shubb, however, debunked these claims and declined X Corp.’s request for a preliminary injunction against the law. His reasoning defends the necessity of such obligations for the benefit of consumers who have the right to make knowledgeable decisions about their information consumption. He found that the company was not unfairly burdened by the disclosure prerequisites since the law necessitated “purely factual” data that would not compel the company into controversial speech.
This ruling is in accordance with California AB 587, which was passed in September 2022. This requires social media companies to publicly disclose a terms of service that elucidates permissible user activities and behavior, while also identifying activities and behaviors that potentially attract punitive measures by the company. A semiannual comprehensive report detailing the violations of these terms has to be submitted to the California Attorney General.
The author of the bill, Assembly member Jesse Gabriel, praised this judgement in a press release.
I am pleased that the Court denied Elon Musk’s motion and held that he is unlikely to succeed in this lawsuit. As we have repeatedly emphasized, Assembly Bill 587 is a pure transparency measure that simply requires Twitter and other companies to be upfront about if and how they are moderating content. It in no way requires any specific content moderation policies — which is why it passed with strong bipartisan support. If Twitter has nothing to hide, then they should have no objection to complying with this law.
In recent times, social media companies have been subject to severe scrutiny regarding the propagation of disinformation and harmful content on their platforms. Measures to control such behavior were recently announced by Meta amid the Israel-Hamas conflict. X Corp., too, is not exempt from such worldwide criticism for its content handling policies. The European Union has already initiated the first formal proceedings against the company under the EU’s Digital Services Act.