Social media platform X filed a lawsuit against a California law aimed at censoring political content online, arguing that the measure chills free speech and violates the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
“The statute mandates the creation of a system designed to allow for expedited ‘takedowns’ of speech that the State has targeted for removal,” the lawsuit states.
The lawsuit accuses the government of being “involved in every step of that system,” including identifying the speech targeted for removal. Furthermore, the law authorizes state officials to take action to remove content and make an ultimate determination of “what speech is permissible.”
The law empowers the government to impose its judgments rather than allowing platforms to make their own decisions regarding content moderation.
AB 2655 will result in the censorship of wide swathes of political speech and commentary, the lawsuit said. It will limit the type of “uninhibited, robust, and wide-open” debates on public issues that the First Amendment is designed to protect.
X accused AB 2655 of violating the First and 14th Amendments of the U.S. Constitution, the free speech protections enshrined in the California Constitution, and the immunity offered to “interactive computer services” under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
Imposing the law would lead to severely chilling “important political speech—specifically, the use of exaggerated or unfavorable visual means to undermine and combat political opponents, which, as the Supreme Court has recognized, is ingrained in the historical fabric of U.S. political commentary,” the suit states.
AB 2655 was one of the three bills targeting deepfake election content that Newsom signed on Sept. 17. At the time, his office claimed these bills would “remove deceptive content from large online platforms, increase accountability, and better inform voters.”
“Safeguarding the integrity of elections is essential to democracy, and it’s critical that we ensure AI is not deployed to undermine the public’s trust through disinformation—especially in today’s fraught political climate. These measures will help to combat the harmful use of deepfakes in political ads and other content,” the governor said.
The recent X lawsuit claimed that YouTube videos, X tweets, and Facebook posts are today’s newspaper adverts and political cartoons, with creators frequently using artificial intelligence to generate these types of content.
The requirements of AB 2655 are “so vague and unintelligible” that platforms cannot understand how to comply with them. As such, the platforms would end up over-censoring speech in a bid to avoid costly litigation.
Need for the Law, Free Speech Threat
When the California Legislature passed AB 2655, Assemblymember Marc Berman (D-Calif.), who authored the bill, justified its necessity by pointing out that the world has entered an age of AI-fueled disinformation that poses a “severe risk” to election and democracy. The lawmaker claimed that the bill’s passage was a win for California voters.“Deepfakes are a powerful and dangerous tool in the arsenal of those who want to wage disinformation campaigns, and they have the potential to wreak havoc on our democracy by attributing speech and conduct to a person that is false, or that never happened,” he said.
“AB 2655 will ensure that online platforms restrict the spread of election-related deceptive deepfakes meant to deceive or disenfranchise voters based on fraudulent content.”
The organization noted that implementing AB 2655 threatens Californians’ right to freely speak on political matters in their state. It said that many of the complaints that will be lodged as part of the law will be “frivolous attempts” to silence political adversaries.
“This bill will not stop bad actors, and the threat of legal liability will lead platforms to remove legitimate political speech,” he said.
