In light of the recent ruling by the Fifth Circuit that the White House overstepped 1st Amendment on social media [0], I suppose Musk has a good case.
[0]: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/08/business/appeals-court-fi...
[0]: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/08/business/appeals-court-fi...
The US 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that certain administration officials – namely in the White House, the surgeon general, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation – likely “coerced or significantly encouraged social media platforms to moderate content.”
What California wants is clarification and explanation of the moderation process as it applies to X. a product disclosure like this is common in nearly every other consumer product in the US. Prop 65 for example routinely mandates this sort of disclosure for lead or cadmium content in a product.
The reason musk specifically does not want to disclose this information is because the moderators were all sacked a year ago...i think California knows this.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/elon-musk-twitter-layoffs-outso...
... for that matter, what does it mean for content moderation to be "mishandled?"
Stochastic terrorism.
Unfortunately, nothing about the California law really addresses it. The Fifth Circuit Court decision regarding coercion of social media sites will bind to the states via the Fourteenth Amendment, so California can't really enforce anything if they disagree with a company's moderation policy.
That means the law reduces to perfunctory data collection, and it doesn't really tell consumers anything that logging into the site and going "Gee, this site sure is full of white supremacists advocating stochastic terrorism and nobody does anything about it" wouldn't tell them.
This law is so consumers can make educated choices about the platforms they want to use.
Mishandling of heavy metals can cause lifelong affects not just to those handling them, but to anyone in the vicinity.[0] it’s estimated that 1M people die per year from lead poisoning[1].
Content moderation cannot directly cause any physical harm. If you consider indirect physical harm related to all social media (which I’d have more sympathy toward), it would not come close to the affects of heavy metals and other substances known to the state of California to cause cancer, birth defects, or other reproductive harm.
0 - https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2009/aug/20/china-children...
1 - https://www.who.int/news/item/23-10-2022-almost-1-million-pe...
$15k/day -- 5M/year -- on companies over $100M in gross revenue (much less the several billion generated by Twitter) is not more coercive than many other laws. The penalties for some laws go up to and including death... so this is definitely within the typical range of penalties.
The law requires disclosing your policy and how you applied it. Musk is out on a limb if he's claiming that giving stats on what actions were taken is the same as the action itself.
The dangerous (overt?) implication you're making is that some speech is "poisonous" and the government needs to step in and make sure the people aren't being "poisoned"
That's dangerous, and the law should rightly restrict that
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_the...
""" The Court in Brandenburg, in a per curiam opinion, held that Ohio's Syndicalism law violated the First Amendment. According to the Court, "constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action. """
https://supreme.findlaw.com/supreme-court-insights/brandenbu...
The court case where that quote came from was overturned 54 years ago!
https://www.techdirt.com/tag/fire-in-a-crowded-theater/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTsPgiUoBKA
https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-tim...
But based on reading through the report at the findlaw article in a sibling comment, (in my opinion) I think it's a pretty dangerous precedent, and definitely a pillar of the breakdown of modern political discourse.
It did not come from a case about a theater and a human stampede as many naturally assume. It came from a case about a war protestor being arrested for telling people they should resist the draft (decidedly political speech.)
> Words can kill, a Massachusetts Juvenile Court judge decided last Friday, when he found 20-year old Michelle Carter guilty of involuntary manslaughter in the 2014 suicide of her then-boyfriend, Conrad Roy III.
[1] https://www.yahoo.com/now/2017-06-22-you-may-be-jailed-for-t...
Of course, arguably most people _want_ some minimum level of content moderation, so whether it's beneficial to do more or less content moderation is up to the company, they just have to disclose it.
Yes, this kind of speech is called 'perlocutionary' and is dicussed in international human rights law, https://revistaselectronicas.ujaen.es/index.php/TAHRJ/articl...
Telling a bank teller “give me all the money, now!” is illegal. Telling a hit man “go kill that person who owes me money” is also illegal.
I don't understand why anyone would downvote this. Can't people ask questions these days? Especially questions that prompt significant discussions and clear the climate and misconceptions some of us have?
If the case was decided on 1st amendment grounds, it's absolutely true.
Edit: not necessarily saying they should, I’m just wondering if they can.
Edit 2: Looks like the most they could do is make it harder for social media companies in general to do business. If they were perceived as targeting Twitter then they could have grounds to sue.
Based on 20 minutes of reading so grain of salt applies.
If companies can now argue that complying with a law is against free speech, they can literally ignore all laws.
Commercial Speech is a narrow carve-out for "advertisements and solicitations". It's not applicable to Twitter moderation.
The law does not make any requests about how Twitter should moderate things, it asks for information about how Twitter does moderate things. First amendment protection should ensure that government is prohibited to impose restrictions if a company says they will/won't ban accounts for praising Hitler, however, the people certainly have the right to take action in response to that, and the government has the right to compel Twitter to disclose to these people truthful information about their media product.
If they have a policy document stating "posts which contain more than three letters 'z' shall be deleted", they have a right to moderate this way if they wish - however, do they have a constitutional right to keep that policy document secret from the public? The way I see it, laws are permitted to regulate the disclosure of company policies.
There is the supremacy clause, but goodness knows where that would end up here. _Everything_ involving real money or power seems to make it to the supreme court these days, and who knows what the political landscape will look like by the time it does (yes, I am asserting that the supreme court has become more political than it used to be, _and_ that it used to be pretty political...).
Taken literally, yes. But legally, many (but not all) for the rights have been 'incorporated' to apply to the states. This includes First Amendment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorporation_of_the_Bill_of_R...
The First Amendment as it is literally worded is, since it specifically says "Congress shall make no law...". But the rest of the amendments have no such restriction; they just say certain things shall not be done, period. Given the Supremacy Clause, that means those provisions should apply to all levels of government, not just federal. (Granted, the courts originally did not interpret them that way, but IMO they should have.)
That said, current jurisprudence, regardless of the literal wording of the bill of rights, is that they apply to the States, even the First Amendment. IIRC most Supreme Court decisions along these lines have cited the Fourteenth Amendment.
That hasn't been the case since the ratification of the 14th Amendment way back in 1868.
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Courts have repeatedly held that the Bill of Rights does apply to the states, by means of this so-called "due process clause" in the 14th Amendment.
Edit: changed "incorporation clause" to "due process clause", as that seems to be the name under which it is more generally known.