X sues nonprofit watchdog group that tracks hate speech

Elon Musk’s X Corp, the parent company of the website formerly known as Twitter, filed a lawsuit Monday against a nonprofit that tracks hate speech on the social media platform.

The suit alleged that the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) improperly gained access to data on the platform for its research monitoring X, the social media platform Musk purchased last year and renamed last week.

X’s lawsuit comes one day after the CCDH revealed that the company had threatened to sue.

The CCDH has published reports tracking hate speech against minority groups, including LGBTQ individuals, Muslims and Jews, as well as dis- and misinformation on multiple social media platforms, including X.

CCDH research into hate speech on X concluded that the platform took no action against 99 percent of Blue subscribers’ posts that were reported for hate speech. Similar studies found that the platform took no action against 89 percent of antisemitic posts and 97 percent of anti-Muslim posts.

The CCDH is responsible for the loss of “tens of millions of dollars” in advertising revenue, X claims. At least eight companies have stopped their advertising solely because of CCDH reports, the suit says. The site has lost about half of its ad revenue since Musk purchased Twitter last year.

X alleged that the CCDH “embarked on a scare campaign to drive away advertisers from the X platform.” The nonprofit “cherry-picked” data to back its claims that the platform is filled with hate speech, the suit alleged.

The suit alleges that the CCDH violated X’s terms of service by scraping data from the website and gained access to data through an authorized user without the company’s permission.

It also claims the organization’s conclusions are misleading and used flawed methodologies.

The organization’s goals are not to counter hate speech, but instead to censor opposing viewpoints, the suit says.

The CCDH has vowed to fight the suit.

“Elon Musk’s latest legal move is straight out of the authoritarian playbook — he is now showing he will stop at nothing to silence anyone who criticizes him for his own decisions and actions,” CCDH CEO Imran Ahmed said in a statement Tuesday. 

“Musk is trying to ‘shoot the messenger’ who highlights the toxic content on his platform rather than deal with the toxic environment he’s created. CCDH has no intention of stopping our independent research — Musk will not bully us into silence,” he continued.