[ sourced from TechCrunch ]
This is the best summary I could come up with:
X, formerly known as Twitter, has filed a lawsuit alleging that a new California law requiring social networks to declare certain moderation practices, is a violation of the company’s Constitutional right to free speech.
At the time, CA Governor Gavin Newsom wrote: “Californians deserve to know how these platforms are impacting our public discourse, and this action brings much-needed transparency and accountability to the policies that shape the social media content we consume every day.”
The law requires social media companies to publicly detail moderation practices around hate speech, racism, extremism, disinformation, harassment, and foreign political interference.
Responding to the lawsuit, CA Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel, author of the bill, said that AB 587 is “a pure transparency measure that simply requires companies to be upfront about if and how they are moderating content.
He added, perhaps unnecessarily, that “If Twitter has nothing to hide, then they should have no objection to this bill.” Sadly, that type of language is frequently employed in cases where government overreach is blatant, like New York’s infamous stop-and-frisk policies.
Gabriel would do well to remember that although he is pursuing a more perfect union through transparency, he does represent a government for which intrusion on private data (though personal rather than corporate, for reasons we shall not explore here) is a commonplace affair.
The original article contains 840 words, the summary contains 218 words. Saved 74%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
HappyMeatbag@beehaw.org 1 year ago
In my totally unprofessional opinion, if an irresponsible asshole is against a law designed to force responsible behavior, said law is probably a good idea.
railsdev@programming.dev 1 year ago
One thing I get sick of as a California transplant (going on 10 years) is people from other states crying about laws meant to benefit them.
When I worked in the shipping industry I had a guy calling from Tennessee crying about California’s new (at the time) law forcing drivers to take breaks more frequently. The drivers themselves would complain that they couldn’t deliver as quickly because of the “restrictive” law.
Fucking people man, damned if you do, damned if you don’t.