Elon Musk has lost the lawsuit his company X Corp filed against a nonprofit group, which documented a rise in hate speech on X (formerly Twitter) following the billionaire’s acquisition of the company.
The lawsuit, filed in August 2023 against the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), accused the hate speech watchdog of damaging X’s reputation. It claimed CCDH picked selective posts from X for its research with an aim to target the platform. CCDH had challenged Musk’s accusations under the California law against Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPP) and sought the case’s dismissal in November 2023.
The lawsuit was tossed out of court on Monday, March 25, 2024. The judge remarked it was “evident” that Musk took CCDH to court because the billionaire took offence at its criticism and that the case was about “punishing” researchers for their work. “X Corp has brought this case in order to punish CCDH for CCDH publications that criticized X Corp — and perhaps in order to dissuade others who might wish to engage in such criticism,” the judge said.
Musk thought CCDH’s research would scare away advertisers by showing the platform in a negative light, according to the judge. He added Musk’s X Corp is more concerned about the speech at the nonprofit than it is about its data collection methods. By demanding “tens of millions of dollars” in damages for reputational harm, X Corp attempts to “torpedo” the operations of a small nonprofit because of the views expressed in the organisation’s reports, the ruling says.
“CCDH has had Elon Musk’s baseless and intimidatory lawsuit against us thrown out of court,” the watchdog said in a brief statement on its website. “This is a huge win for everyone working to hold social media giants accountable.”
X Corp plans to appeal against the verdict.
The dismissal of the lawsuit was already imminent. In a March hearing, the judge had hinted at throwing the lawsuit out, calling X Corp’s arguments against CCDH “vapid”. Musk had publicly called CCDH CEO Imran Ahmed a “rat” and the nonprofit an “evil” organisation on X.
CCDH has published a significant volume of research on X following Musk’s $44 billion takeover of the platform in October 2021. In November 2021, it released a report titled “Toxic Twitter”, which shed light on Musk’s reinstatement of previously banned accounts and how it contributed to a rise in hate speech across the platform and helped X Corp generate “millions of dollars in advertising revenue”. Later in September 2023, the watchdog released another report highlighting X’s continued hosting of posts reported for “extreme hate speech”. It primarily focused on the shortcomings related to content moderation at the company.
