SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Legal Newsline) - X Corp., the former Twitter, hasn't shown a likelihood of success in its challenge to a new California law imposing requirements to social media companies.
X Corp. is fighting AB 587 in Sacramento federal court, where Judge William Shubb on Dec. 28 denied their request for a preliminary injunction. The law requires social media outlets to post their terms of service "in a manner reasonably designed to inform all users... of the existence and contents of the terms of service."
It also makes them filed "terms of service reports" with the Attorney General's Office twice a year. Those reports contain the current terms of service and a description of content-moderation practices for handling hate speech, racism, extremism, radicalization, disinformation, misinformation, harassment and foreign political interference.
"The reports required by AB 587 are purely factual," Shubb wrote.
"The statistics required if a company does choose to utilize the listed categories are factual, as they constitute objective data concerning the company's actions. The required disclosures are also uncontroversial.
"The mere fact that the reports may be 'tied in some way to a controversial issue' does not make the reports themselves controversial."
Shubb noted the reporting required does place a substantial compliance burden on companies like X Corp., they haven't shown it is unduly burdensome.
"(T)he Attorney General (Rob Bonta) has met his burden of showing that the compelled disclosures are reasonably related to a substantial government interest in requiring social media companies to be transparent about their content-moderation policies and practices so that consumers can make informed decisions about where they consume and disseminate news and information," the decision says.
NetChoice was more successful in challenging California's laws when in September it obtained a preliminary injunction against the California Age Appropriate Design Code Act. California is appealing.
The law requires websites to create a data protection impact assessment identifying every service, product or feature likely to be used by individuals under 18 years old and what detriments to them could follow.
Then the sites create a plan to mitigate or eliminate those risks.
NetChoice alleges in its complaint that the law forces online business to "over-moderate" and restrict information for users. NetChoice specifically alleges that AB 2273 actually harms minors and places "draconian penalties" to online businesses and pressures the companies to "serve as roving censors" to internet speech by requiring them to verify the age of their users.