SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Legal Newsline) - X Corp., the former Twitter, is appealing a federal judge's ruling that preliminarily upheld a new California law that targets terms and services for social media companies.
It filed its notice of appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on Jan. 12, two weeks after Sacramento judge William Shubb denied its request for a preliminary injunction. Shubb found X Corp. had not shown a likelihood of success in its challenge to AB 587.
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.