Gavin Newsom has been on a crusade to control what Californians can see and hear online.
The wannabe dictator just got his hands on the perfect weapon to do it.
And Gavin Newsom is about to sign a bill that will slap $1 million fines on social media for this shocking reason.
California moves one step closer to Chinese-style internet censorship
California’s legislature just handed Gavin Newsom a censorship bill that would make Xi Jinping jealous.
SB 771 passed both chambers of the California legislature and was presented to Governor Newsom’s desk where it now awaits his signature.
The bill would impose fines of up to $1 million on major social media platforms that fail to censor content deemed in violation of the state’s civil rights laws.
That’s right – California wants to fine companies a million bucks for not censoring enough content.
The radical leftists pushing this bill claim they’re targeting "rising incidents of hate-motivated harm," including "hate crimes involving anti-immigrant slurs."
But notice what they’re not mentioning – the violent leftist groups that have been targeting conservatives for years.
The bill cites data from the Human Rights Campaign and the George Soros-funded Center for Countering Digital Hate, claiming a 400% rise in "anti-LGBTQ+ disinformation and harmful rhetoric on major social media platforms."
Here’s the kicker: the bill states that "the purpose of this act is not to regulate speech or viewpoint but to clarify that social media platforms, like all other businesses, may not knowingly use their systems to promote, facilitate, or contribute to conduct that violates state civil rights laws."
Translation: This is absolutely about regulating speech and viewpoint, they just don’t want to admit it.
Under this Orwellian nightmare, platforms with $100 million or more in annual revenue could face $1 million fines if they "intentionally, knowingly, or willfully relay" content that violates state law through their algorithms.
Companies found to be in "reckless violation" could face penalties of up to $500,000.
The real agenda behind California’s censorship push
Shoshana Weissmann, director of digital media at the R Street Institute, explained what this really means for free speech.
"If people think platforms remove their content too much now, they should expect to see the pattern significantly intensify with this law," Weissmann told the Daily Caller News Foundation.¹
"Rather than risk liability for showing users content one could argue (even if it doesn’t actually) violate a law, platforms will over-moderate and remove posts in order to stay out of court."
The technical implications are even more terrifying than they sound.
"Courts have recognized that algorithms are protected by the First Amendment, so punishing sites for using algorithms to deliver free speech would run into problems," Weissmann continued.²
"Further, the law doesn’t limit which kinds of algorithms would cause platforms to be held liable for user speech. This means even showing content in the order it was posted would have this effect under the law, as ‘reverse chronological order’ is an algorithm."
Think about that for a moment.
California wants to fine social media companies for showing posts in the order they were posted.
Even basic functions like displaying content chronologically would be considered an "algorithm" that could trigger these massive fines.
Business groups sound the alarm on constitutional violations
The California Chamber of Commerce, along with the Computer and Communications Industry Association and TechNet, called out exactly what this bill would do to free speech.
The business groups warned that forcing companies to face massive civil liability for content they don’t remove would create "a chilling effect" on free speech.³
They argued that billion-dollar penalties would push platforms to "over-remove lawful content" just to avoid expensive lawsuits.
The groups said this approach tramples both user rights and platform rights under the First Amendment.
Here’s what really gets me about this whole scheme.
The bill has "strong backing" from the George Soros-funded Center for Countering Digital Hate, which has made a career out of trying to silence conservative voices.
In 2021, this same group released a report called "The Toxic Ten" demanding that Facebook and Google demonetize conservative sites like The Daily Wire, Breitbart, Newsmax, The Washington Times, and Media Research Center for spreading so-called climate "misinformation."⁴
House Judiciary Committee emails also revealed that the Biden White House used a separate CCDH report called the "Disinformation Dozen" to pressure Facebook to censor accounts critical of vaccine guidelines.
So the same Soros-funded organization that worked with Biden to silence conservatives is now cheering on California’s censorship bill.
Look what happened the last time California tried this stunt
California has been playing this censorship game before, and they keep getting smacked down by the courts.
Look what happened when the Babylon Bee had enough of California’s censorship games.⁵
Last month, a federal judge tossed two of Newsom’s pet censorship laws right into the trash where they belonged.
The first law tried to ban "materially deceptive content" during elections and force satirical websites to put warning labels on jokes.
The second law ordered social media companies to flag and remove posts about elections that bureaucrats didn’t like.
And remember when Elon Musk’s X Corp. dragged California into court earlier this year?
The state caved completely, agreeing in February to stop forcing platforms to report how they handle "hate speech" and "disinformation."
But here’s the thing – even when these radical leftists lose in court, they’ve already achieved part of their goal.
They’ve chilled speech, silenced conservatives, and sent a message to anyone who dares to challenge their narrative.
The process becomes the punishment.
Companies spend millions defending themselves in court while censoring content just to be safe.
By the time the courts rule these laws unconstitutional, the damage is already done.
That’s exactly what Newsom and his fellow authoritarians are counting on with SB 771.
They know this bill is likely unconstitutional under both the First Amendment and Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which shields platforms from being held liable for user-generated content.
But they don’t care about the Constitution.
They care about control.
The governor has until October 13 to decide whether to sign this authoritarian nightmare into law.
¹ Melissa O’Rourke, "Online Censorship Bill Just One Signature Away From Becoming Law In California," Daily Caller News Foundation, September 24, 2025.
² Ibid.
³ Ibid.
⁴ Ibid.
⁵ Ibid.
