Thread by @tracybeanz

🚨THREAD: @elonmusk and X Corp have filed a lawsuit against California.

X is challenging AB 587, which requires large social media companies to post their TOS as dictated by the government, and submit a report to the AG (a law enforcement officer) that provides:

1. A detailed description of content moderation practices used by the SM company

2. Information about how and whether the company moderates hate speech or racism, extremism or radicalization, disinformation or misinformation, harassment, foreign political interference - and -

3. Information and statistics about action they have taken to moderate for these categories…..

X stands for the 1st Amendment here- both for themselves, and for you and I. There hasn’t ever been a social media company who has done this, as evidenced in Missouri v. Biden. X states that this law violates the 1st amendment of both the Federal and CA state constitution. It stifles THEIR right to free speech, and also has the purpose of pressuring companies to remove, demonetize, and deprioritize CONSTITUTIONALLY PROTECTED SPEECH.

They tout the bill as a “transparency” measure, but in actuality, says X in filings, the laws true intent is to “eliminate” certain constitutionally protected content the STATE views as “problematic.”

He really needs a standing ovation for this…

In fact, they explicitly state that the bill is a ploy to make social media companies better “corporate citizens” and make them do more to eliminate what CA considers “hate speech and disinformation.” We don’t need to explain more what they believe to be hate speech etc…

The Assembly reports on the bill lay out how difficult it is given the importance of social media- generally accepted for removal are the ones you would expect; however, other categories like “misinformation” are politically charged and biased, and coming up with policy for them is extremely difficult.

(This is why the government steps in and says “We are here to help…”)

So, legislators knew what a bind social media companies would be in even CRAFTING this bill that became a law, because they themselves wrote it down! Separately, why does the Chief LAW ENFORCEMENT officer in CA need this information?

“Put another way, though AB 587, the State compelling social media companies to take public positions on controversial and politically charged issues. And because X Corp must take such positions on these topics AS THEY ARE FORMULATED BY THE STATE, X Corp is being forced to adopt the State’s politically charged terms, which is a form of compelled speech in and of itself..” (Emphasis added, sort of.)

*through… Sorry about that.

The law mandates X to speak about topics it wouldn’t want to speak about and they are using this cudgel to pressure X into censoring non state sanctioned 1st amendment protected speech - so the state is violating not only citizens rights, but X’s as well.

🚨It looks to me like there is a lot more here than meets the eye. X seems to be using the VERY blurred lines of Section 230 “platform v. Publisher” arguments citing numerous lawsuits as precedent for their basis. I happen to agree with how they are positioning this; after all, X is a private company…

The law imposes burdensome and very expensive requirements, especially when it comes to record keeping, and fines for “compliance.” X argues the vagueness of the language would give the government access to fine SM companies if their TOS aren’t to their liking..

Again here, “editorial judgements..” Someone a little more knowledgeable on 230 than me is going to need to step in here….

X has already been threatened about this, AND, they aren’t limiting the information requested to ONLY CA residents, which seems like overreach as it is. They clearly stated that it will have national implications.

Now we are getting more into 230…Here they are arguing that the law VIOLATES their 230 immunity because they are being fined for inaction.. This is getting super interesting.

This lawsuit is going to be one to watch for sure - numerous implications here for free speech, section 230, and other provisions..

Here is the list of what the law requires SM companies to provide to the ATTORNEY GENERAL. Among them, how their AI works, what their definitions of “hate speech” are, how they remove content and why, how many times they have done it…. It’s pretty expansive.

This is pretty insane - they will FINE these companies $15k PER DAY if the government judges them to be in violation.. My question is how California thinks they will KNOW if a PRIVATE company withholds certain data, and herein lies the issue. What if X or Meta misrepresent the number of folks banned, lets say? Are they going to have a running subpoena or agent INSIDE to know??

And for what concerns you and I, X aptly points out (as did the CA committee when they drafted this) that there isn’t a consensus on what defines “hate speech” or “misinformation.” Who decides that? THEY couldn’t even do it! We know what they have considered “misinformation” in the past, particularly at CISA and the WH etc., has been truthful information HARMFUL to the state sponsored narrative.. (I can’t believe we are even TALKING about this in America)

X takes just four examples of hotly contested “non-consensus” that could potentially be at issue here: Misgendering, criticism of Israel as antisemitism, what is considered racism/reverse racism, and of course, COVID-19 lab leak theory for their example demonstrating “disinformation.”

And so, the way the law is written forces X to take a public stance on these (and more) hotly contested issues, where they are bound to insult SOMEONE. If Budweiser is any indication, a smart private company would want to stay FAR away from doing something like this, and with X focused on PROFIT for once, instead of running as a quasi state controlled entity, you can completely understand what they mean— in ADDITION to preserving their free speech rights.

We have an interesting analogy here. What if Presidential candidates were required under the law to publicly state their positions and then held them to penalty?

I think another analogy would work better, say, forcing a beer company to publicly support or denounce gender fluidity, for example?

Also, this could be weaponized against a company. In this climate, if a company is *perceived* to not be moderating *enough* (by whose standards, we would never know) it could be bad for that companies bottom line.

And, it seems that is what this law is ultimately aimed at - indirectly and directly penalizing companies who don’t adhere to the “state” accepted moderation policy. Evil.

Not only that, but they TOLD EVERYONE the bill was meant for censorship as they pretend its about “transparency..” What is the definition of the word “gaslight” again?

And its global in scope, because what someone in CA sends is visible by someone in Australia. This makes compliance impossible and ridiculously expensive.. There are 200 BILLION posts on X per year.

So, X is suing for violation of the First Amendment, Declaratory Relief and Permanent Injunctive Relief for violation of the dormant commerce clause of the Constitution, as well as relief for immunity under preemption by Section 230, and this:

You can read the entire filing here:

I will continue to cover this important case as it moves through the courts.storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco…