Elon Musk’s X Corp. is suing the state of California over AB 587, a state bill that requires social media platforms to report to the state attorney general, every six months, on how they deal with the moderation of certain categories of speech. The complaint says the bill violates federal and state free speech laws because it “forces companies like X Corp. to engage in speech against their will,” because they are forced to to settle definitions for “politically charged” issues such as hate speech. or racism.
The complaint of X Corp. explains that it is “difficult to reliably define” hate speech, misinformation, political interference, and other categories of content. It added that defining them is “often fraught with political bias” because there is no accepted consensus within the public sphere about what the terms mean. X Corp. says that to define things, it is forced to take a position on them.
The lawsuit says AB 587 is intended to make social media companies “‘remove’ certain constitutionally protected content” that the state deems “problematic.” Governor Gavin Newsom’s office promoted it as a “national transparency on social media” when he signed this law in September of last year. Laws that determine how social media companies handle moderation have been enacted in Texas and Florida, and those laws are pending for the Supreme Court to hear challenges to them.
Social media moderation is not a solvable problem. X uses tools such as automated systems and community flagging for moderation and fact-checking. This week the company launched Community Notes for videos, which allow “Key Writers” to submit the context of potentially misleading videos, but may carry false information. Reddit recently drew criticism after it began booting longtime moderators and replacing them with potentially less critical, inexperienced ones, while Bluesky’s own moderation manifesto acknowledges that its moderation approach suppresses the fact -checking the site.
