For people saying, “oh this is just a reporting requirement and fear mongering over this law is a slippery-slope fallacy”: it would be, except the people behind

For people saying, “oh this is just a reporting requirement and fear mongering over this law is a slippery-slope fallacy”: it would be, except the people behind the law have been repeatedly documented as wanting to jump headfirst down this slippery slope: > if social media companies are forced to disclose what they do in this regard [i.e., how they moderate online content], it may pressure them to become better corporate citizens by doing more to eliminate hate speech and disinformation. > [T]he Legislature also considered that, by requiring greater transparency about platforms’ content-moderation rules and decisions, AB 587 may result in public pressure on social media companies to ‘become better corporate citizens by doing more to eliminate hate speech and disinformation’ on their platforms. . . . This, too, is a substantial state interest. > important first step in protecting our democracy from the dangerously divisive content that has become all too common on social media. Note that “hate speech” and “disinformation” are not legal concepts and both include various protected speech. This is your government arguing in the open how this law in fact is a great first step towards restricting some of this protected speech.