Musk's X sues New York state over social media hate speech law

 

Elon Musk's X has challenged a New York state law that requires social media companies to disclose how they monitor hate speech, extremism, and other contentious content.

 In a lawsuit filed on Tuesday, the social media platform, formerly known as Twitter, argues that the law forces companies to disclose "highly sensitive and controversial speech" that is protected under the constitution's First Amendment.

 New York Attorney General Letitia James, who is in charge of enforcing this law, is the named defendant in X's lawsuit.

 According to new research from the Reuters Institute, social media sites have emerged as the primary source of news for Americans, with the majority of them consuming it on networks like X.

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."

 According to Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal and Assemblymember Grace Lee, social media platforms like X "have consistently failed to inform the public about their policies regarding hatred and misinformation." On Tuesday, neither X nor New York Attorney General Letitia James provided a response to the BBC's request for information. Nine months after the company successfully blocked a California law requiring large social media companies to submit reports regarding their content-moderation policies, X files a lawsuit against New York State.

 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.

 Professor Laura Edelson, who teaches computer science at Northeastern University, says that Musk, who bought X in 2022, has drastically relaxed the guidelines for what content and behavior are acceptable on the platform. She stated that he has "also significantly reduced the resources the platform puts into enforcing even the rules it still has." "This is why, even though rules around spam haven't changed on X, there is so much more floating around than there used to be."

 A federal judge dismissed Musk's lawsuit against a research group that found an increase in hate speech on the site last year.