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After Elon Musk and his social media company, X Corp, filed a lawsuit against California’s AB 587 legislation, a federal judge has denied the request, The Verge reports. According to the court’s ruling, X’s request for a preliminary injunction of the law is rejected, adding that “the plaintiff has failed to establish the likelihood of success on the merits.”
Following the Elon Musk takeover, X, formerly known as Twitter, made some radical changes to its content moderation policies. Besides laying off most of the moderators, it even let some controversial figures like Andrew Tate and Alex Jones return to the platform.
While X never elaborated on its new content moderation policies, it sued California’s AB 587 in September. The social media firm alleged that the legislation curbs freedom of speech and violates the First Amendment right.
X failed at halting California AB 587 moderation law
The AB 587 asks social media platforms to share their content moderation policies and describe how they moderate content containing materials like hate speech or racism, extremism or radicalization, disinformation, harassment, and more.
However, US District Judge William Shubb denied X’s motion to halt the legislation in the state. “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,” the judge wrote.
Shubb added that the required disclosures are “uncontroversial.” Also, the connection with some controversial issues doesn’t make the whole report controversial. “The reports required by AB 587 are purely factual. The reporting requirement merely requires social media companies to identify their existing content moderation policies, if any, related to the specified categories.” Shubb noted.
As expected, X/Twitter didn’t respond to the request for comment. But it alleged in its complaint that AB 587 forces social platforms to “eliminate’ certain constitutionally-protected content.”
The X’s new method to moderate content also became a source of controversy for the firm amid the Israel and Hamas war. The European officials accuse X of becoming a platform to spread misinformation and hateful content. In October, the EU launched a probe into X to see if it has violated the Digital Services Act (DSA).