This week, the state of Texas won a court battle that will allow it to partially govern how social media companies like Facebook can run their platforms. Under the legislation, Texas residents can sue tech giants like Facebook for allegedly censoring their content, making it illegal for these platforms to “block, ban, remove, deplatform, demonetize, de-boost, restrict, deny equal access or visibility to, or otherwise discriminate against expression.”

Of course, this vague law raises a million questions about how Facebook can actually operate in the state moving forward. This law could lead to tons of costly legislation for the company, and it also opens up a loophole allowing platforms to be sued multiple times for the same issue.

“Texas limited nonmutual issue and claim preclusion — a fancy way of saying if the site goes into a trial court and says ‘we already won this issue in another case down the hall’ the court says ‘doesn’t matter, this is a different case,’” legal expert Ken White said. “Those are all things you’d do if you wanted to make litigation as attractive, expensive, and difficult to defend as possible.”

If Texas’ goal was to make life difficult for Facebook, it certainly accomplished its mission. However, it may ultimately end up hurting users and businesses who rely on the platform.

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