X Sues California Attorney General For Misleading Social Media Content Moderation Law

X (Photo: X)

JAKARTA - Twitter's rebranding platform, X reportedly sued the state of the United States (US), California. The lawsuit is against a law requiring companies to disclose details about their content moderation practices.

The law in question was AB 587 passed by California Governor Gavin Newsom last September, requiring social media companies to post their service requirements online, submitting an annual mid-year report outlining their content moderation policies and practices.

Platforms must reveal how their automated content moderation system works, the way they define controversial content categories such as hate and disinformation encouraging speech, as well as the amount of content marked or removed in that category.

In a complaint filed at California's Eastern District Court against state attorney general Robert Bonta, X accused the law of violating the First Amendment and constitution for potentially forcing companies to moderate politically charged speech from users.

"The real goal of AB 587 is to pressure social media platforms to eliminate certain constitutionally protected content that the State sees as problematic content," X wrote, quoting Antara.

The lawsuit comes as Elon Musk, owner of X, raises his rhetoric about what types of speeches may be allowed on his platform, as his advertising business is experiencing huge revenue losses as a result of an approach to content moderation, such as being confiscated from CNN International, Saturday, September 9.

Under Musk's leadership, the platform has made some changes to its content policies, including stopping enforcement of its COVID-19 misinformation policies and restoring many users that were previously banned.

Launching Engadget, it turns out that X is not alone in opposing the law. A number of industry groups also opposed AB 587.

Netchoice, a trading group representing Meta, Google, TikTok, and other tech companies argued last year that AB 587 would help criminals avoid corporate security measures, and made it difficult to enforce their rules.