Elon Musk: "Something MAJOR Is About To Happen!"

In September 2022, one month before Elon Musk took over Twitter, California governor Gavin Newsom signed AB 587 into law. Dubbed by its proponents as a “transparency law,” the state statute requires large social media companies to publicly post their content moderation policies and hand over lots of data to the government about their decision-making and enforcement.

“California will not stand by as social media is weaponized to spread hate and disinformation that threaten our communities and foundational values as a country,” Newsom said last year. “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.”
On Sept. 8, Twitter, now called X, sued California, arguing the law infringes on its First Amendment rights. In the complaint, Twitter alleges the bill illegally interferes with the company’s editorial process and pressures it to “remove, demonetize, or deprioritize” speech that the government finds “problematic.”

“The legislative record is crystal clear that one of the main purposes of AB 587—if not the main purpose—is to pressure social media companies to eliminate or minimize content that the government has deemed objectionable,” Twitter’s lawyers wrote in the complaint.
In other words, Twitter has a legal right to moderate user-generated content in the manner it sees fit and the government hasn’t demonstrated why it should be allowed to probe the company’s policies and enforcement statistics.