• by Colin Kirkland , December 29, 2023

A federal judge has struck down the attempt of Elon Musk's social blogging company X, to bypass a social-media law in the state of California that requires social companies to report their content-moderation policies. The decision follows X's original complaint that the law, AB 587, violates the First Amendment.

In September, X's lawyers argued that the law would lead to censorship and was therefore unconstitutional, stating that AB 587 “has both the purpose and likely effect of pressuring companies such as X Corp. to remove, demonetize, or de-prioritize constitutionally-protected speech.”

According to X, the law -- which was passed just last year -- sought not to protect users but “pressure social media platforms to eliminate certain constitutionally-protected content viewed by the State as problematic.”

On Thursday, however, U.S. District Judge William Shubb decided that “while the reporting requirement does appear to place a substantial compliance burden on social media companies, it does not appear that the requirement is unjustified or unduly burdensome within the context of First Amendment law.”

Shubb added that the reports solicited by AB 587 are “uncontroversial” because they “are purely factual” and “merely requires social media companies to identify their existing content moderation policies, if any, related to the specified categories.”

In other words, what the state of California is asking from Silicon Valley is relatively straightforward in aiding the protection of social-media users against hate speech, racism, extremism, disinformation, harassment, and foreign political interference.

But it is understandable why X would fight against such a law.

Since Musk took over the app formerly known as Twitter in 2022, the company cut the majority of its original trust and safety team, allowing the influx of harmful content. Over the past year, the lack of safety on the microblogging platform has led to a mass advertisers exodus and an ongoing investigation from the European Union into whether the company has violated the Digital Services Act (DSA).