Under the “Stop Hiding Hate Act” that enters into force this week, digital content providers like the company formerly known as Twitter must disclose what efforts it is taking to police content on their respective platfforms.

X argues the new law is a “carbon copy” of California’s Assembly Bill 587 that it already successfully challenged. Last year, three judges on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued an injunction, ruling portions of the law were unconstitutional under protected free speech rights.

“We are confident we will prevail in this case as well,” X wrote in a statement on its platform on Tuesday.

The worldwide rise in alternative media platforms like YouTube, Facebook, and many others has opened a door for extremist groups to destabilize society through targeted disinformation and misinformation designed to polarize and radicalize, supporters of the bill argue. 

However, critics of such measures have countered that this is a slippery slope that could either by design or default lead to the censorship of “wrongthink”, since even good-faith attempts to guard against violence may lead to regulatory overreach. Before Musk acquired Twitter in late 2022, users could be de-platformed for misgendering trans people.

Co-sponsors label digital platforms ‘cesspools of hate speech’

“Social media companies, including X, are cesspools of hate speech consisting of antisemitism, racism, Islamophobia and anti-LGBTQ bias,” said the two New York State legislators who co-sponsored the bill, Brad Hoylman-Sigal and Grace Lee, in response to the lawsuit by X.

“We’re confident that the court will reject this attempt by X to use the First Amendment as a shield,” they added.

Musk himself has played a role fomenting popular anger online, most notably in the U.K. last summer when he backed extremist leader Tommy Robinson’s call to arms that ended in race riots across the country. 

He later platformed the far-right nationalist AfD in Germany, falsely characterizing its policies as “identical” to those pursued by President Barack Obama. The party is under surveillance by the German equivalent of the FBI as a threat to the country’s postwar democratic order. 

As a result of his politics, Musk’s Tesla has seen a backlash in Europe, with sales cratering across the continent.

X argues New York State is simply trying to censor speech it doesn’t like

Since Musk took over Twitter in late 2022, he fired the content management team and outsourced policing to a select group of volunteers. These are free to choose at their discretion whether they fact check statements from violent extremist groups or harangue drop ship outlets in China.

When brands decided to follow the advice of the World Federation of Advertisers by departing the controversial platform, Musk sued the WFA. Its affiliated non-profit, the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, shut its doors last August rather than pay the legal fees to defend itself in court. 

This approach has led to an ongoing legal fight with the European Union, after the latter said X violated content moderation guidelines under its Digital Services Act.

On Tuesday, Musk’s X said that New York’s Stop Hiding Hate Act was just another attempt by the government to “eliminate” certain speech it didn’t like. Cosponsors Hoylman-Sigal and Lee disagreed.

“The fact that Elon Musk would go to these lengths to avoid disclosing straightforward information to New Yorkers as required by our statute illustrates exactly why we need the Stop Hiding Hate Act,” they wrote.