Even I can see the obvious overreach—notwithstanding that I'm on the side maximally distant from X's politics. It doesn't matter if it's falsehoods, racism, or advocacy of violence: California has no legitimate interest in regulating online speech. That's expressly prohibited by the US Constitution. It has no legitimate interest in mandating statistical data-collection about online speech, either: because there's no legitimate government function that data serves and informs. (You have no legitimate business casing the bank's vaults because there's no plausible lawful action you can do with the information you're gathering. That pile of money doesn't belong to you).<p>If you're having trouble sympathizing with the civics because the litigant, X, is horrible, and X users are horrible—just flip to a hypothetical where it's the government position that's horrible. Like so: "the DeSantis government of Florida has mandated social media platforms disclose statistics about LGBT content on their platforms". Does this make it easier to see how (0) indirect laws about speech (i.e. mandatory statistics) have direct chilling effects on that speech, and (1) "mere data-collection" about speech doesn't apparently serve any legitimate government function? (Political signalling isn't a legitimate government function). And: suppose the mandatory forms you have to fill out for DeSantis Transparency describe the LGBT content field in offensive, homophobic language. Could you then consider the X attorneys' argument that filling out forms can be an unconstitutional form of compelled speech?
I seem to remember that musk promised to make moderation decisions more transparent and even open source the algoritm, I wonder why they are against this.
>How closely the state should be involved in the moderation practices of private platforms is certainly a matter of some dispute and delicacy. Too far in one direction results in censorship like China’s, <i>while a totally hands-off approach results in rampant abuse, as we’ve seen in the past.</i><p>Citation needed, I guess?
If, and it’s a big if, the law is really about transparency i would generally support it. There is a lot that big tech is doing behind the scenes that shape our culture, but the biases and incentives are shadowy. Without having to fix biases, having knowledge of them is so much better than not. I would like to see X’s argument about why their against the law, though i speculate there is a lot more than simple transparency.
From FTA: "The law requires social media companies to publicly detail moderation practices around hate speech, racism, extremism, disinformation, harassment and foreign political interference. How these concepts are defined, how rules around them are enforced and what users can do to better understand (and if necessary, challenge) the pertinent processes must be submitted twice a year starting in 2024."<p>I fail to see how this can be seen as a free-speech issue - it's not restricting speech nor, as per their other argument, is it "a form of compelled speech". Instead, it's simply making their policies, whatever they are, public.<p>If Xitter wants to promote free speech and not moderate anything, it can, it just needs to say that's what it's doing.<p>If Xitter wants to have free speech, but follow the law and remove anything illegal, it can, it just needs to document that.<p>If Xitter wants to moderate stuff, it totally can, it just needs to say what it's moderating, and how.<p>The reason they're objecting to this, almost certainly isn't to do with free speech, rather the opposite - they will want to retain the ability to moderate things they don't like out of existence whilst pretending that they absolutely don't moderate anything because then they can claim the exemptions that allow them not to be responsible for their moderation.
I saw we torch the constitution and start over. I also find a technology company clutching this particular dead tree document to be hypocrisy to the max. But then again half these fools want to run for president now... I don't think this is about tech, its clearly about white power.