X, billionaire Elon Musk’s social media platform formerly known as Twitter, exchanged arguments in the court with the hate speech watchdog it sued last year. X accused the nonprofit of scaring away its advertisers by picking selective content for its research on the rising hate speech on X following Musk’s takeover.
The lawsuit against the nonprofit, the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), was filed in August 2023, after the civil society organisation published reports documenting the rise in hateful content on X following Musk’s $44 billion acquisition of the platform, which took place in October 2022.
X accused CCDH of deliberately tarnishing its image and driving advertisers away by releasing reports that cherry-picked hateful posts from the platform. Further allegations included that CCDH prevented public dialogue on X and that the nonprofit attempted to obtain unauthorised access to its data and misused it.
However, Musk’s X now appears to be stumbling in its stand against the nonprofit in the court. In a hearing held Thursday, the judge hinted at tossing the lawsuit out of the court, calling X’s arguments against CCDH “vapid”. X’s lawyers argued that CCDH violated its terms of service by using Brandwatch, a third-party tool used to analyse posts.
They also accused the civil society organisation of deploying unauthorised means to access non-public data and sought damages from CCDH, claiming that X lost millions of dollars from advertising firms that dropped their campaigns from the site following CCDH’s research on rising hate under Musk’s management.
A CCDH attorney, on the other hand, argued the researchers at the nonprofit did not use third-party search tools to access posts that were not in the public domain. “This idea that this is about data security, this is about user data, there was something to investigate, is implausible,” they said. CCDH highlighted the findings from reports it conducted on X, with one showing the platform took no action against 99 of the 100 users who were flagged for posting hateful content.
Following Musk’s takeover of Twitter and the ensuing radical changes at the company, including removals of content moderation and human rights team, a number of major advertisers have parted ways from X. Some notable leading companies that ceased advertising on X include Disney, IBM, Apple, and Walmart.
Imran Ahmed, CCDH’s CEO, in response to the lawsuit being brought against his organisation, had accused Musk and his legal team of engaging in an aggressive campaign to intimidate and silence the CCDH researchers. Musk had publicly called Ahmed a “rat” and CCDH an “evil” organisation on X.
In December 2022, after Musk’s repeated claims of declining hate speech on X under his management, a large volume of research conducted by watchdog groups and academic institutions showed that hate speech had indeed grown on X after Musk’s takeover.
