Elon Musk‘s X, formerly Twitter, lost its bid to change a California law on content moderation transparency by social media companies.

Elon Musk‘s X failed to block a California law that requires social media companies to disclose their content-moderation policies.

U.S. District Judge William Shubb rejected the company’s request in an eight-age ruling on Thursday.

“While the reporting requirement does appear to place a substantial compliance burden on social medial companies, it does not appear that the requirement is unjustified or unduly burdensome within the context of First Amendment law,” Shubb wrote, per Reuters.

The legislation, signed into law in 2022 by California Gov. Gavin Newsom, requires social media companies to publicly issue their policies regarding hate speech, disinformation, harassment and extremism on their platforms. They must also report data on their enforcement of these practices.

  • xor@lemm.ee
    1·
    1 year ago

    no, it’s transparency about moderation… :

    under AB 587, a “social media company” that meets the revenue threshold must provide to the California AG: A copy of their current terms of service. Semiannual reports on content moderation. The semiannual reports must include: (i) how the terms of service define certain categories of content (e.g., hate speech, extremism, disinformation, harassment and foreign political interference); (ii) how automated content moderation is enforced; (iii) how the company responds to reports of violations of the terms of service; and (iv) how the company responds to content or persons violating the terms of service. The reports must also provide detailed breakdowns of flagged content, including: the number of flagged items; the types of flagged content; the number of times flagged content was shared and viewed; whether action was taken by the social media company (such as removal, demonetization or deprioritization); and how the company responded.