X Sues California for New ‘Draconian’ Transparency Law

Elon Musk's social media platform isn't happy with California's new law.

The social media company has recently filed a lawsuit against its home state of California for its new content moderation law.

California signed the law in question in Sept. 2022 to better monitor hate speech, extremism, harassment, and other objectionable behaviors on social media platforms, per The Verge.

Fighting For Freedom Of Speech?

Musk's X doesn't seem to agree with the transparency law California signed in Sept. 2022. According to a report from Tech Crunch, the company is suing the state because the law violated the company's constitutional right to free speech.

X said in its complaint, which it filed at a US district court in California, that the state was trying to dictate X's terms of service and compel "controversial disclosures about how [the company] moderates content on its platform," per Ars Technica.

It also alleged in its complaint that the transparency law's true intent is to pressure social media platforms to remove certain constitutionally protected content the state could consider problematic. It also decried the financial penalty the law places on offending companies, which can go up to $15,000 per violation per day - a draconian amount as X puts it.

As such, X's lawsuit aims to get a preliminary and permanent injunction to stop California Attorney General Rober Bonta from enforcing this new law. The company also said that should the court fail to block the law, California could pressure companies to "remove, demonetize, or deprioritize constitutionally protected speech the state deems undesirable or harmful."

For those unaware, the transparency law in question, formally known as AB 587, requires social media companies to publicly detail their moderation practices around hate speech, racism, extremism, disinformation, harassment, and foreign political interference. They must also reveal how they create their policies, how they enforce them on their platforms, and what users can do to understand (or challenge) them.

AB 587's author, California assemblymember Jesse Gabriel, said that the law is a pure transparency measure that requires companies to be transparent about if and how they moderate content. He also clarified that it doesn't require any specific content moderation policies, which is why AB 587 passed with "strong, bipartisan support."

Gabriel even retorted that if [X] has nothing to hide, it should have no objection to the law.

Is It Really Unconstitutional?

X isn't the only company that finds the transparency law concerning. Certain tech groups and policy experts echoed X's concerns over the law in question.

For instance, Adam Kovacevich, the CEO of the tech industry policy coalition Chamber of Progress, said the law itself is a bad idea. He explained that companies who follow it could give their content moderation playbook to bad actors and shady individuals.

Netchoice, a group representing tech companies and trade associations, called AB 587 as California's new online censorship law, saying that it would force companies to submit disclosures about constitutionally protected editorial decisions that are intrusive and oftentimes impossible to comply with.

"The First Amendment prohibits the government from regulating lawful speech-directly or indirectly," Netchoice's director of litigation, Chris Marchese, said. "States cannot avoid this prohibition by rebranding censorship as 'transparency' requirements."