The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit just slapped down parts of a controversial California law imposing free speech-busting reporting requirements on social media platforms like X and Facebook.
California's AB 587 was hailed by Gov. Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta as ensuring “social media transparency," but the Ninth Circuit Court ruled for the plaintiff — X — dismissing the law's reporting requirements "with prejudice."
Loosely translated, that means, "Don't try anything else like that again, Bub."
Under AB 587, social media platforms with more than $100 million in annual revenue are required to disclose their content moderation policies and submit semiannual reports to AG Bonta "on categories like hate speech, disinformation, and harassment, detailing flagged content, enforcement actions (e.g., removals), and detection methods," according to one summary.
Free speech advocates argued that AB 587's reporting rules amounted to "censorship by proxy," and the Ninth apparently agreed. I'd strongly agree with the court. When you're required to report to the state attorney general each year what kind of content you're squashing — and what content you're allowing — politics can't help but come into the decision-making process. Particularly when A) the state has already established a firm regulatory hand ("Nice platform you've got there; be a shame if anything happened to it.") over social media, and B) the penalties go up to $15,000 per day per violation.
Those penalties could quickly snowball on any so-called "infraction" that went viral.
And Another Thing: I'm still waiting to see what happens to California's other "Out, damn free speech!" law, AB 2655. That one outlawed "materially deceptive content" about candidates and election officials for 120 days before an election. The example that Newsom highlighted on X had "PARODY" slapped on it in great big letters, as I reported at the time. The Babylon Bee sued over AB 2655, but there hasn't yet been a ruling.
UPDATE: The quotes I pulled from the Ninth's decision that were originally published below came from a PDF that I can't find and, thanks to a heads-up from Eugene Volokh, appear to have been completely made up.
Whether that was due to some short-lived prank or an AI hallucination that got quickly pulled, I have no idea. But the point is that those quotes appeared nowhere other than a since-vanished PDF and this column... which is embarrassing as all hell.
My apologies for getting suckered by a hoax, a hallucination, or whatever that was.
Thus endeth the update, with a red face and a vow not to repeat that mistake.
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