The CEO of Babylon Bee, along with Tim Pool and Minds Inc., filed a lawsuit against California Attorney General (AG) Rob Bonta over an “unconstitutional censorship law” passed in the state in 2022.
The satirical outlet’s CEO is suing over California AB 587, a Democrat-led law requiring social media companies to submit reports to the attorney general’s office detailing its terms of services for each social media platform owned by a company and specific categories of content posted.
Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon announced the lawsuit in a Substack statement Wednesday, arguing the law violates free speech and is “too vague to be constitutionally enforced.” He claimed the law is about “censorship” rather than “transparency,” and expressed concern the government is often the one voicing misinformation.
“They’re claiming it’s just about ‘transparency.’ That’s not true,” Dillon wrote. “This is a censorship bill, not a transparency bill. Here’s Gavin Newsom himself explaining why he signed the bill into law: ‘California will not stand by as social media is weaponized to spread hate and disinformation that threaten our communities and foundational values as a country.'”
“It’s a good thing when people are allowed to speak freely,” he continued. “It’s a bad thing when Big Tech and the government work together to decide what we’re allowed to say. Why? Because they often get it wrong. Even worse, they get it wrong on purpose. As I said in my testimony before Congress, censorship guards the narrative, not the truth. In fact, it guards the narrative at the expense of the truth. In today’s post-truth, anti-reality world, describing a male person as a man is considered ‘hateful conduct.’ If Big Tech is tasked by the state with eliminating hateful or misinformative content, they’ll stuff everything they don’t like into those categories, including opinions, jokes, and even factual statements.”
What’s AB 587?
AB 587 is a new law in California that regulates social media companies. It requires Big Tech platforms to provide periodic reporting to the California Attorney General on several categories of speech, including misinformation, disinformation, extremism,…
— Seth Dillon (@SethDillon) April 12, 2023
The lawsuit also claims the law violates the 14th Amendment due to its allegedly “vague and ambiguous terms” such as “‘hate speech,’ ‘racism,’ ‘extremism,’ ‘radicalization,’ ‘disinformation,’ ‘misinformation’ and ‘foreign political interference.'” The suit is requesting a federal district court blocks the law. (RELATED: Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon Announces Deal With ‘Libs Of TikTok’ For ‘Heroic, High-Risk Work’)
Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom lauded the bill when it was first introduced. “Californians deserve to know how these platforms are impacting our public discourse, and this action brings much-needed transparency and accountability to the policies that shape the social media content we consume every day,” he said in a statement.
Twitter locked the Babylon Bee’s account for alleged “hateful conduct” in March 2022 after the account tweeted a satirical article about transgender Assistant Secretary for Health at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Dr. Rachel Levine. The article named Levine the Bee’s “Man of the Year” in reference to the HHS official being a biological male.