The California Senate just passed SB-771 Personal rights: liability: social media platforms, which essentially negates Section 230 and will make social media platforms liable for any "hate speech" published on their platforms.
This is not getting much attention, but it would be a terrible precedent to set and would put X, YouTube, Meta, Twitch and other platforms at risk of having to pay millions in fines.
The bill stipulates that only platforms with more than $100,000,000 | 890 BTC in revenue per year would be subjected to this law.
Interestingly, the California lawmakers are attempting to use the feed algorithms as the loophole to get around Section 230 by claiming that "deploying an algorithm that relays content to users may be considered to be an act of the platform independent from the message of the content relayed." (highlighted in red in the third screenshot)
It will be interesting to see how this plays out and whether or not it gets taken to the Supreme Court if and when Gavin Newsome signs it into law, which is the last step. If signed, it will go live on January 1st, 2027.
Funny to see the Center for Countering Digital Hate cited in the bill. They threw
@TFTC on a list of "new climate deniers" and lobbied YouTube and other platforms to censor our content in 2023.
If you exhibit hate speech toward the designated groups laid out in the bill, the State of California could charge and fine the social media platform you publish it on. It looks like California is trying to pressure the platforms to censor their users by threatening them with fines.
