Elon Musk’s X/Twitter is now suing anti-hate speech group
Elon Musk, the owner of X/Twitter, is now set to sue an anti-hate group after it did extensive research on hate speech on the platform.
The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) is facing a lawsuit from Elon Musk. Originally reported by the New York Times, the potential lawsuit entails the group’s work at regularly reporting on X/Twitter’s inability to protect users from hate speech.
Over the last day, the threat has now turned into a real lawsuit, with Musk’s side claiming that the CCDH has “intentionally and unlawfully” scraped data from Twitter to put together this data. The scraping of data didn’t use to be an issue for the site, as it provided a free API for development and research purposes.
Since Musk’s takeover, this has been shuttered in favor of charging for access. It’s also partially why the site had to introduce “rate limits“, and zero access for those who weren’t logged in a few weeks ago.
A recent report found that Twitter does nothing about 99% of the hate speech that stems from its Twitter Blue subscribers.
Musk has been at the center of the CCDH’s reports, as his first act of business was to lay off a majority of the teams at Twitter. This has included most of the trust and safety teams, as well as child protection teams.
The lawsuit originally came from the company’s lawyer, Alex Spiro. In a letter published on the CCDH website, Spiro claims the organization has made “a series of troubling and baseless claims that appear to harm Twitter.”
Spiro claims the CCDH has “no methodology for its selection or testing of tweets,” among other things. The CCDH has responded in kind, posting its response on the same page.
The response email backs up its claims with sources, pointing out how it conducted its research:
“That article involved CCDH’s review of 100 hateful tweets that contained racist, homophobic, neo-Nazi, antisemitic, or conspiracy content—i.e., content that plainly violates Twitter’s own policies in this regard.”
CCDH responds to Musk’s Twitter lawsuit
CCDH’s CEO, Imran Ahmed, has claimed Elon Musk is a “petty tyrant.” The group also stated that they “stand by our research.”
In a new tweet, Ahmed said that Musk is now trying to “silence us”.
Musk tweeted himself about the group just days before the threat of a lawsuit. He questioned who was funding the group and called them “truly evil.”
Over the last week, Musk was embroiled in controversy – again – as he reinstated a Twitter Blue account that posted child abuse images.
