A New York state law that requires social media companies to disclose how they monitor hate speech, extremism, and other contentious content has been challenged by Elon Musk's X. Twitter, a social media platform, claims in a lawsuit filed on Tuesday that the law requires businesses to disclose "highly sensitive and controversial speech" that is protected by the First Amendment. The named defendant in X's lawsuit is New York Attorney General Letitia James, who is in charge of enforcing this law. Social media sites have become the main source of news for Americans, with majority consuming it on networks like X, according to a new research from the Reuters Institute.
X stated, "engenders considerable debate among reasonable people about where to draw the correct proverbial line" when deciding what content is acceptable on social media platforms. "The government should not be playing this role," Social media companies are required by the Stop Hiding Hate Act, which was passed in December, to disclose the measures they take to eradicate hate speech from their platforms and to report how far they have come. The two New York state lawmakers who authored the Stop Hiding Hate Act released a statement on Tuesday in which they claimed that the law did not infringe the First Amendment and referred to social media platforms like X as "cesspools of hate speech." Social media platforms, including X, "have consistently failed to inform the public about their policies regarding hatred and misinformation", Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal and Assemblymember Grace Lee said.
Neither New York Attorney General Letitia James nor X replied to the BBC's request for comment on Tuesday.
X's lawsuit against New York state comes nine months after the company successfully blocked a California law that required large social media companies to submit reports about their content-moderation policies.
The company extensively cited its earlier victory in its Tuesday's lawsuit and criticised New York lawmakers for failing to revisit the legislation's language even after the California law was largely struck down.
Musk, who acquired X in 2022, has dramatically scaled back the rules that govern what content and behaviours are acceptable on the platform, according to Professor Laura Edelson, who teaches computer science at Northeastern University.
He has "also significantly reduced the resources the platform puts into enforcing even the rules it does still have," she said. "This is why, despite the fact that the rules regarding spam have not changed on X, there is so much more than before." Last year, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit brought by Musk against a research group that documented an uptick in hate speech on the site.
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