Social media apps are displayed on a smartphone screen.
NEW YORK – X Corp. has failed to stop a New York law that imposes new duties on social-media companies and allows the State to post their terms of service online.
State lawmakers enacted S.B. 895 in 2024 to require those platforms to disclose certain aspects of their content-moderation policies, and their intention in doing so defeats X’s First Amendment challenge, federal judge John Cronan ruled Wednesday.
“X Corp. wants to share less of its policies than New York requires, so it invokes the First Amendment to avoid New York’s requirement,” he wrote. “But the First Amendment poses no obstacle to New York’s law.
“Here, more speech – like sunlight – is the ‘best of disinfectants.’”
The law forces social-media companies to post terms of service for each of their platforms that include contact information for users with questions. They also include the process that users must follow to flag content they believe violates the terms of service and the company’s response and resolution time.
Also required is a list of potential actions the company may take against a user who violates the terms of service. These disclosures are included in a semiannual report submitted to the state Attorney General’s Office’s office, which posts it on the AG’s website.
It’s all designed to let the public see how social-media companies moderate hate speech, disinformation and foreign political interference, among other things. Companies like X must reveal the total number of flagged items and the total number acted upon.
X Corp. mounted a court challenge last year, citing alleged First Amendment violations and protection under Section 230 of the Communications Act, which says online platforms can’t be liable for what third parties (users) post on them.
Cronan wrote that the First Amendment challenge is defeated because the law requires disclosure of content-moderation policies and not its opinions about them. He disagreed with X’s contention that its content-moderation policies can’t be “purely factual” because they involve its exercise of judgment.
“But that reasoning misses the mark,” he wrote. “Businesses always exercise their discretion, judgment, and opinions when deciding what goods or services to offer. Burger King chooses to generally offer higher-calorie items than, say, Sweetgreen, but the ‘disclosure of calorie information’ remains purely factual.”
