Elon Musk’s X is rightly challenging a new censorship law in New York, but the platform made a shocking admission in the process.
X brought the legal complaint on Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York against New York Attorney General Letitia James and a law that will force tech platforms to tell the government how and what they are censoring based on arbitrarily defined categories of speech, including “hate speech,” “disinformation or misinformation” and “extremism.” These terms are often weaponized by leftists to refer to anything with which they disagree, even when it is protected by the First Amendment.
X rightly labels the new law as unconstitutional. Yet it also made a bombshell claim about its “editorial judgments” that could call into question its status as a platform protected from third-party liability under Section 230. The tech platform claimed that it has “First Amendment-protected editorial judgments … to remove, demonetize, or deprioritize such speech” on its platform with which the New York law “impermissibly interferes.” [Emphasis added.]
This poses a conumdrum, said MRC Free Speech America Director Michael Morris. “X said the quiet part out loud. As much good as Elon Musk has done to push X in a more pro-free speech direction, his company is acknowledging in its suit against this anti-free speech New York law that it wants to have its cake and eat it too. Either tech giants are publishers and liable for content posted on their sites, or they are platforms with Section 230 liability protections. They can’t have it both ways.”
X explained in its legal complaint, “Plaintiff X Corp. brings this action challenging the constitutionality and legal validity of certain provisions within New York Senate Bill S895B1 that force social media companies (collectively, the ‘covered companies’) to divulge—under threat of significant financial penalties and lawsuits for injunctive relief—highly sensitive information about whether, and if so how, their platforms define and moderate (i) hate speech or racism, (ii) extremism or radicalization, (iii) disinformation or misinformation, (iv) harassment, and (v) foreign political interference.”
The New York law, X asserted, violates both state and federal constitutional law. “The Content Category Report Provisions violate the First Amendment of the United States Constitution and Article I, Section 8, of the New York Constitution,” X argued. “On their face, the provisions compel disclosure of highly sensitive and controversial speech that is both fully protected by the First Amendment and that is disfavored by the State of New York.”
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