Elon Musk’s ‘X,’ formerly known as Twitter, announced Monday night it had filed a lawsuit against the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a British research group working to stop the spread of online hate and disinformation.
“Free expression is fundamental to a healthy functioning global society – and if it’s taken away, it’s almost impossible to get back,” a statement on the official X account page wrote.
“That’s why we will continue to stand up for people’s rights, including the over half a billion of you who turn to our platform continually. Free expression and platform safety are not at odds. Despite our continued progress, the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) and its backers have been actively working to assert false and misleading claims about X and actively working to prevent public dialogue.”
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The social media giant took issue with the CCDH for criticizing the platform for its handling of hate speech and misinformation, claiming Twitter “fails to act on 99%” of hateful messages from accounts with Twitter Blue subscriptions. CCDH has criticized not only Twitter in the past but a number of corporate bigwigs, including TikTok, for promoting self-harm to its users. When Elon Musk bought the platform last year, he made promises to defend free speech, but his plan quickly unravelled.
On Sunday alone, X reinstated Kanye West after an almost eight-month ban for a series of offensive tweets–a number of which were antisemitic. West is just the latest in a series of right-wing conspiracy theorists allowed back on the platform. Former President Donald Trump, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), and satirical right-wing outlet The Babylon Bee are also among the reinstated accounts.
The lawsuit filed by X Corp attorneys in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California alleges CCDH has “embarked on a scare campaign to drive away advertisers from the X platform.” The complaint points a number of accusations towards the group, including breach of contract, violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, intentional interference with contractual relations and inducing breach of contract. It alleges CCDH illegally scraped data “cherry-picked” from “hundreds of millions of posts to falsely claim it had statistical support showing the platform is overwhelmed with harmful content.”
It claims some companies have paused their advertising spend on X and seeks monetary damages and an injunction barring CCDH from accessing, using or disclosing data provided by X to Brandwatch, a social media analytics firm. “CCDH’s unlawful conduct as alleged herein has directly and proximately damaged X Corp. in an amount to be proven at trial,” the filing states, adding “in any event at least tens of millions of dollars that X Corp. estimates it has lost in advertising revenues and other costs incurred.”
On Tuesday, the CCDH posted a statement in which they described the lawsuit as “baseless legal action over our work exposing the rise in hate & lies on Twitter.” It added: “We stand by our research. Billionaires can’t bully us.” In a response to Rep. Adam Schiff, the group wrote: “Going after independent watchdogs for providing vital scrutiny is the kind of thing you see in autocratic states. It has no place in the United States.” It continued: “@ElonMusk is throwing a tantrum and having his lawyers threaten legal action because we’ve exposed hate & lies on Twitter.”
CCDH lawyer Robbie Kaplan wrote in a tweet: “We at @KaplanHecker are proud to be representing @CCDHate and @Imi_Ahmed in the face of these baseless threats to sue them simply for doing their job.”
