California AB 587 is a state transparency law that requires large social media companies to publicly post their terms of service and file semiannual reports with the California Attorney General describing how they moderate user content. It applies to companies that generated at least $100 million in gross revenue the previous year, and violations can cost up to $15,000 per day.1State of California – Department of Justice – Office of the Attorney General. AB 587 – Terms of Service Reports A 2024 Ninth Circuit decision has already narrowed what platforms must disclose, striking down the sections that would have forced companies to report data on hate speech, disinformation, and other politically charged content categories.
Which Companies Have to Comply
AB 587 does not reach every website with a comment box. The statute defines a social media platform as a public or semi-public internet-based service that lets users create profiles, build social connections, and post content viewable by others. Email services and standalone direct messaging tools do not qualify.2California Legislative Information. California Business and Professions Code Division 8, Chapter 22.8
A revenue floor further narrows coverage. Any social media company that earned less than $100 million in gross revenue during the prior calendar year is exempt.2California Legislative Information. California Business and Professions Code Division 8, Chapter 22.8 In practice, the law targets the major platforms rather than startups or niche networks. A parent company that owns multiple platforms files a single report covering all of them.
What the Reports Must Contain
Covered companies have two obligations under AB 587. They must post their terms of service, and they must file a Terms of Service Report with the Attorney General twice a year, on April 1 and October 1. Every submitted report is published in a searchable public repository on the Attorney General’s website.1State of California – Department of Justice – Office of the Attorney General. AB 587 – Terms of Service Reports
After the 2024 court ruling, the requirements still in force are procedural. Each report must include:
- The full, current version of the platform’s terms of service.
- A complete description of any changes to the terms since the last filing.
- An explanation of how the company’s automated moderation systems enforce its terms, and when those systems route decisions to human reviewers.
- A description of how the company responds when users report violations.
- A description of how the company removes individual posts, suspends users, or acts against groups that break the rules.
- A list of languages the platform’s product features are available in but the terms of service are not.
These surviving provisions focus on how a platform enforces its own written rules, not on what the platform believes about contested categories of speech.3California Legislative Information. California Business and Professions Code BPC 22677
What the Ninth Circuit Struck Down
As originally written, AB 587 went further. Three provisions would have forced platforms to engage directly with six politically charged content categories: hate speech or racism, extremism or radicalization, disinformation or misinformation, harassment, foreign political interference, and controlled substance distribution. Platforms would have had to say whether their terms defined each category, describe policies addressing them, and report numerical data on how much content in each category was flagged, removed, appealed, and reversed.3California Legislative Information. California Business and Professions Code BPC 22677
X Corp. (formerly Twitter) challenged those provisions on First Amendment grounds. In September 2024, the Ninth Circuit held in X Corp. v. Bonta that the content category reporting requirements compel non-commercial speech by forcing platforms to publicly articulate views on “intensely debated and politically fraught topics.” Applying strict scrutiny, the court found the provisions were not narrowly tailored and ordered a preliminary injunction blocking three sections of the statute: section 22677(a)(3), section 22677(a)(4)(A), and section 22677(a)(5).4United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. X Corp. v. Bonta, No. 24-271
The ruling leaves AB 587’s procedural core intact but removes the sections that would have given the public the most granular view of how platforms handle controversial material.
Penalties for Non-Compliance
A company violates AB 587 on each day it fails to post its terms of service, misses a reporting deadline, or materially omits or misrepresents information in a filed report. Each violation carries a civil penalty of up to $15,000 per day, and a court can also issue an injunction ordering compliance. Enforcement actions can be brought by the Attorney General or by a city attorney in a city with more than 750,000 residents. Courts have discretion to weigh whether the company made a reasonable, good-faith attempt to comply when setting the penalty.5California Legislative Information. California Business and Professions Code BPC 22678
The daily cap looks modest against the revenue of a $100-million-plus company, but it compounds. Ignoring a reporting cycle for six months could expose a company to more than $2.7 million before the next report is even due.
Where to Read the Reports
The Attorney General publishes every submitted Terms of Service Report in a searchable public repository on its official website.1State of California – Department of Justice – Office of the Attorney General. AB 587 – Terms of Service Reports Anyone can look up how a given platform describes its moderation practices, compare approaches across companies, or track how a platform’s rules have changed over time. Before AB 587, that kind of side-by-side comparison meant digging through individual help centers and corporate blog posts written for marketing rather than regulators.
What AB 587 Does Not Do
AB 587 is a disclosure statute. It does not tell platforms what content they must allow or remove, and it does not give individual users new rights to sue a platform or appeal a moderation decision. Companies remain free to set whatever content policies they choose; the law simply requires them to explain in writing how those policies work in practice. Its value to users is indirect. Once a platform tells the state how it handles reported violations or routes decisions between software and human reviewers, that statement becomes a public record the company can be measured against.