“Leaders are doing everything they can to create an environment conducive to the actions they want to take, without review or accountability from actors like our courts, our legislators or others,” she says.
Since taking over X, formerly Twitter, Musk has become one of Trump’s most important allies, financially support his campaign and lending the full weight of his own platform to promoting Trump’s talking points during the campaign. He has since participated in meetings with foreign leaders with the president-elect and weighed in on choice of personnel for the new administration. Other tech leaders have taken note, cozying up to Trump and donate to its inauguration fund. But even before the elections, other tech companies followed X’s lead in rolling back policies and protections which existed before.
For his part, David Greene, senior attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, says Meta and other social platforms would likely have to comply with state laws regardless of their location. And moving staff to Texas doesn’t mean all of its supposed moderation issues will be resolved. Prejudice, he says, can cut both ways.
“Misinformation is actually one of many, many problems that social media platforms face,” he says. “Having a moderation team in Texas could also raise concerns about bias. For example, Texas has laws on the books that make it illegal to publish certain information about the availability of abortion services.
But Benavidez says Texas’ social media law may not be the state’s only draw. “Once a company is headquartered or has significant operations in a state, that allows it to use that state as a jurisdiction for any future filings it has,” she says.
In 2023, X filed a lawsuit in Texas against the nonprofit watchdog Media Matters for Americaalleging that the group disparaged the company by pointing out that hate speech and misinformation on the platform were served alongside ads. At the time, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton also announced his office opened an investigation into the organization. A federal judge in Texas refused to dismiss the case in August 2024. X has since has modified its terms of use so any lawsuit against the company must be filed in Texas. The federal measures are to be introduced in the Northern District of Texas, widely seen as favorable to Musk’s interests. (The judge in the Media Matters case, for example, would have stocks bought and sold in Musk’s Tesla company earlier this year, before the lawsuit was filed.)
The meta terms of servicecontrary to its community guidelines, so far remain the same, requiring disputes to be resolved either in the Northern District of California or, at the state level, in San Mateo County. But that could change.
“The legislative environment, the judicial environment, the gubernatorial environment in Texas is incredibly supportive of leaders like Musk, and now Zuckerberg,” Benavidez says.
Gill posits that the regulatory environment in Texas could look like what businesses think the national regulatory environment will look like under a new Trump administration.
“I think they look to the future and see an environment that will be dominated by a conservative-leaning, extremist-type administration,” she said. “So they’re moving to places where that’s the norm so they can comply beforehand.”
Gill also notes that Meta faces a Federal Trade Commission antitrust lawsuitwhich a friendly administration might see fit to reject. “By preemptively making these changes that they hope will appease the administration, perhaps they are hoping for a friendly decision in return,” she said.
Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
