EFF Urges Ninth Circuit to Reinstate X’s Legal Challenge to Unconstitutional California Content Moderation Law

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The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) urged a federal appeals court to reinstate X’s lawsuit challenging a California law that forces social media companies to file reports to the state about their content moderation decisions, and with respect to five controversial issues in particular—an unconstitutional intrusion into platforms’ right to curate hosted speech free of government interference.

While we are enthusiastic proponents of transparency and have worked, through the Santa Clara Principles and otherwise, to encourage online platforms to provide information to their users, we see the clear threat in the state mandates. Indeed, the Santa Clara Principles itself warns against government’s use of its voluntary standards as mandates. California’s law is especially concerning since it appears aimed at coercing social media platforms to more actively moderate user posts.

In a brief filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, we asserted—as we have repeatedly in the face of state mandates around the country about what speech social media companies can and cannot host—that allowing California to interject itself into platforms’ editorial processes, in any form, raises serious First Amendment concerns.

At issue is California A.B. 587, a 2022 law requiring large social media companies to semiannually report to the state attorney general detailed information about the content moderation decisions they make and, in particular, with respect to hot button issues like hate speech or racism, extremism or radicalization, disinformation or misinformation, harassment, and foreign political interference.

A.B. 587 requires companies to report “detailed descriptions” of its content moderation practices generally and for each of these categories, and also to report detailed information about all posts flagged as belonging to any of those categories, including how content in these categories is defined, how it was flagged, how it was moderated, and whether their action was appealed. Companies can be fined up to $15,000 a day for failing to comply.

X, the social media company formerly known as Twitter, sued to

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