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X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter has taken legal action against the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) for allegedly attempting to steer advertisers away from the platform. X said the non-profit did this by releasing reports that criticised the platform’s handling of hateful content.
“X is a free public service funded largely by advertisers,” X said in a statement. “Through the CCDH’s scare campaign and its ongoing pressure on brands to prevent the public’s access to free expression, the CCDH is actively working to prevent public dialogue.”
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The lawsuit, lodged in the federal court of San Francisco on Monday, specifically accuses the CCDH of violating X’s terms of service and federal hacking laws by scraping data from the platform and inciting an unnamed individual to inappropriately gather information about X that had been shared with a third-party brand monitoring provider.
The CCDH, a non-profit organisation dedicated to combating online hate speech and disinformation, has been a vocal critic of X’s content moderation policies. The group has been pressuring the company to adopt stricter measures to tackle what they perceive as harmful content and extremist ideologies.
In response, CCDH’s CEO Imran Ahmed said in a CNN article that the lawsuit “sounds a bit like a conspiracy theory to me.”
“The truth is that he’s [Elon Musk] been casting around for a reason to blame us for his own failings as a CEO,” Ahdmed said.
“We all know that when he took over, he put up the bat signal to racists and misogynists, to homophobes, to antisemites, saying ‘Twitter is now a free-speech platform.’ … And now he’s surprised when people are able to quantify that there has been a resulting increase in hate and disinformation,” he said.
“All we do is hold up a mirror to the platform and ask them to consider whether or not they like the reflection they see in it,” Ahmed added. “What Mr. Musk has done is said, ‘I’m going to sue the mirror because I don’t like what I see.’”
