Elon Musk's social media company, X formerly known as Twitter is suing New York state under a new law, the Stop Hiding Hate Act. There's been a number of new Acts I'm now hearing of. We had the Genius ACT for stable coins, which of course was a newer Act and now this one.
The Stop Hiding Hate Act, passed in 2022 and it requires social media companies to disclose publicly their policies around hate speech, misinformation, any content that may harm people and updates regarding data on those issues.
So what is the claim of X? The company says this act violates the First Amendment and the free speech protections in it. The argument of X is that the government should not be able to demand how platforms deal with certain kinds of sensitive and controversial content. I actually do not agree with him all the way. I think the government should be able to demand. Although it infringes on a freedom it's necessary because some social platforms can over do things and that becomes a problem.
X's position is that companies should have the control and policies for handling sensitive content and that control should not be done by the state.
This law is actually being implemented by New York Attorney General Letitia James. New York lawmakers argued that this content moderation law does not violate any rights and that social media is full of hate and needs to be transparent about that. What do you guys think? Who's got the better case here, Musk or New York?
This is not their first time fighting a thing like that though. X was successful in similar litigation in California. This lawsuit is just another chapter in the never ending battle about online speech and the government role within it.
What happens when a decentralized platform like Hive hits big and there's hate speech problems, who gets sued, Hive or the community or the blogger?
Sourcing the image appropriately