Enlarge (credit: Bloomberg / Contributor | Bloomberg )

Today, Elon Musk's X Corp. sued to block California's content moderation law, AB 587. In its complaint, filed a US district court in California, X Corp. is seeking a preliminary and permanent injunction stopping California Attorney General Robert Bonta from enforcing the law.

AB 587 passed in September 2022, requiring social media platforms to submit a "terms of service report" semi-annually to California's attorney general, providing "a detailed description of content moderation practices used" and "information about whether, and if so how, the social media company defines and moderates" hate speech or racism, extremism or radicalization, disinformation or misinformation, harassment, and foreign political interference. Under the law, social media platforms must also provide information and statistics on any content moderation actions taken in those categories.

In X's complaint, the company accused California of trying to dictate X's terms of service and compel "controversial disclosures about how X Corp. moderates content on its platform."

Enlarge / A sign asking people to "Pray for Allen, Texas," stands at a memorial to those killed at the Allen Premium Outlets mall after the mass shooting on May 8, 2023, in Allen, Texas. (credit: Joe Raedle / Staff | Getty Images North America )

Graphic images from a Texas mass shooting on Saturday that killed nine (including the gunman) and wounded seven are still circulating on Twitter after spreading virally all weekend. Critics told The New York Times that unlike other platforms, Twitter isn't doing enough to remove or label these "unusually graphic" images, especially in footage where dead bodies of some victims, including a young child, appear to be identifiable, Reuters reported .

Family members do "not deserve to see the dead relatives spread across Twitter for everybody to see,” photojournalist Pat Holloway told the Times. Over the weekend, Holloway joined others in tweeting directly at Twitter CEO Elon Musk to step up the platform's content moderation.

Twitter's policy on sharing content after a violent attack acknowledges that "exposure to these materials may also cause harm to those that view them." That policy is primarily focused on banning the distribution of content created by perpetrators of attacks, but it also places restrictions on "bystander-generated content" depicting "dead bodies" or "content that identifies victims."