Last year, X won its fight to block a California law requiring social media companies to report on efforts to remove hate speech and other kinds of content the state deemed harmful.
Now, X has sued to stop New York from enforcing a law that it claims is a "carbon copy" of California's—which resulted in a settlement blocking the California law after a court ruled it likely violated the First Amendment.
In a complaint filed Tuesday, X revealed that the New York lawsuit came after New York lawmakers rejected X's attempts to reconcile its social media law with the California ruling. Not only did lawmakers refuse to acknowledge free speech issues that X seemingly views as settled, but in a letter declining to meet with X, they also called out X owner Elon Musk's controversial personal history of posting as a reason to refuse to engage with X.
"Unfortunately, we must refuse your request because of the disturbing record on the part of your client, X, and in particular, its owner, Elon Musk, that threatens the foundations of our democracy," New York state senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal and state assemblymember Grace Lee wrote in the letter.
The letter noted that "Musk has personally used the platform to promote transphobic, antisemitic, and anti-immigrant ideologies, as well as share memes and incendiary comments containing misinformation about violent protests" and "misinformation about elections and political figures in the United States." Musk's harmful posts, they said, "are almost never tagged with the user generated 'community notes,' the main tool for fact checking misinformation on X."
Claiming that the content moderation law would help X users make "informed decisions" based on "types of actions" X takes "with regards to hate speech and misinformation," the lawmakers stressed that "our bill does not ban any speech or restrict any postings online that are not already illegal."
"It is our sincere belief that the current social media landscape makes it far too easy for bad actors to promote false claims, hatred and dangerous conspiracies online, and some large social media companies are not able or willing to regulate this hate speech themselves," the letter said.
Although the letter acknowledged that X was not the only platform targeted by the law, the lawmakers further noted that Musk taking over Twitter spiked hateful and harmful content on the platform. They said it seemed "clear to us that X needs to provide greater transparency for their moderation policies and we believe that our law, as written, will do that."
This clearly aggravated X. In their complaint, X alleged that the letter made it clear that New York's law was "tainted by viewpoint discriminatory motives"—alleging that the lawmakers were biased against X and Musk.
X seeks injunction in New York
Just as X alleged in the California lawsuit, the social media company has claimed that the New York law forces X "to make politically charged disclosures about content moderation" in order to "generate public controversy about content moderation in a way that will pressure social media companies, such as X Corp., to restrict, limit, disfavor, or censor certain constitutionally protected content on X that the State dislikes," X alleged.
"These forced disclosures violate the First Amendment" and the New York constitution, X alleged, and the content categories covered in the disclosures "were taken word-for-word" from California's enjoined law.
X is arguing that New York has no compelling interest, or any legitimate interest at all, in applying "pressure" to govern social media platforms' content moderation choices. Because X faces penalties up to $15,000 per day per violation, the company has asked for a jury to grant an injunction blocking enforcement of key provisions of the law.
"Deciding what content should appear on a social media platform is a question that engenders considerable debate among reasonable people about where to draw the correct proverbial line," X's complaint said. "This is not a role that the government may play."
EVs dominate the most American-made cars index and it’s not just because of Tesla