Billionaire and a self-described free speech absolutist, Elon Musk’s X Corp sued California last week over a state law establishing new transparency rules for social media companies, requiring them to publish their policies for policing disinformation, harassment, hate speech and extremism.
As per the Reuters report, in a complaint filed in federal court in Sacramento, California, X said the law’s “true intent” was to pressure social media companies into eliminating content the state found objectionable.
Last October, Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion and since then has laid off many employees, restored banned accounts and rebranded the company. Since his takeover, hate-speech monitoring groups have documented increases in the volume of hate speech on X targeting Jews, Black people, gay men and trans people since Musk took over, as per the report.
A.J. Brown, who resigned in June as X’s head of brand safety and ad quality, said in a recent interview, policy changes adopted by Musk that limited the visibility of objectionable posts on X rather than removing them made it difficult to convince advertisers the platform was safe.