Elon Musk's X sues California over state law requiring disclosure of content moderation practices

X (formerly Twitter), owned by Elon Musk, has filed a lawsuit claiming that California's law regarding SNS content moderation,

https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/9/23865828/elon-musk-x-corp-suing-california-ab-587-first-amendment-challenge-free-speech-twitter-social-media

X, formerly Twitter, challenges California's new transparency law as unconstitutional | TechCrunch
https://techcrunch.com/2023/09/08/twitter-x-elon-musk-california-moderation-transparency-law-as-unconstitutional-ab-587/

AB 587 is a law approved by then-California Governor Gavin Newsom in September 2022, which requires social media companies to ban hate speech, racism, extremism, disinformation, harassment, and foreign It requires detailed public disclosure of moderation practices related to political interference.

Regarding AB 587, Newsom said, 'Californians have a right to know how social media is impacting our public discourse, and this measure provides much needed policies that shape the social media content we consume every day.' 'It brings transparency and accountability.'

There is much debate about how closely government authorities should be involved in the moderation practices of private platforms. Foreign media TechCrunch explained, ``If we intervene too much, censorship like China will occur, and if we take the approach of not intervening completely, the abuses we have seen will become rampant.'' .

X, owned by Elon Musk, filed a lawsuit against California's AB 587. X's complaint points out that disclosing moderation practices is difficult because 'hate speech, disinformation, political interference, and other content categories are difficult to define with certainty.' In addition, he noted that because there is no publicly accepted consensus on the meaning of the term, 'definitions are often fraught with political bias.'

Furthermore, X claims that AB 587 is aimed at forcing social media companies to remove ``certain constitutionally protected content'' that state governments deem ``problematic.''

In response to this lawsuit, California Assemblyman Jesse Gabriel, the author of AB 587, said that AB 587 would 'require companies to be frank about whether and how they are moderating content.' 'It's a pure transparency measure that only requires us to show that. We don't necessarily require a specific content moderation policy.' Furthermore, Gabriel added, ``If Twitter(X) has nothing to hide, there should be no objection to this law.''