Elon Musk’s Twitter, renamed X, is taking legal action against critical online researchers who uncover hate speech and misinformation online. The X Corp accuses the organization CCDH in the lawsuit of illegally accessing data from the short message service. X was damaged by the reports of the researchers because advertisers had jumped off.
For the lawsuit, X selected previous reports from the CCDH (Center for Countering Digital Hate), which included misinformation about the corona virus and climate change. The CCDH is accused, among other things, of having unlawfully accessed data. X also claims, but without any evidence, that the CCDH intentionally wants to harm the platform and is being funded by competitors.
The center’s lawyer called the letter “ridiculous” and accused the company of trying to intimidate critics. She pointed out that some of the denounced tweets were clearly racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic and thus violated Twitter’s rules. The reported posts said, among other things, that “black culture” had done more damage than the racist secret society Ku Klux Klan, or that “the Jewish mafia” wanted to replace everyone. Four days later, the tweets were still available, according to the CCDH.
CCDH lawyer Roberta Kaplan hinted that a lawsuit for the platform could also backfire: The organization would then immediately demand detailed information on how hate speech is handled and on sales – even if the allegations are not about the content, but about refer to the methods used by CCDH to collect data.
Multi-billionaire Elon Musk, who bought Twitter/X last October, accuses the previous management of suppressing right-wing political views and promises “absolute freedom of speech” on his portal. But that deters some large advertisers who fear a negative environment for their brands. Musk recently admitted that advertising revenue is only half what it used to be.
This is a very real problem for the platform, since ad revenue has traditionally been its main source of income. The service also has around $12 billion in loans that Musk took out for the purchase. Even with the renaming, things are not going smoothly: the company had to remove a glowing X logo on the roof of the headquarters on Monday because it had been installed without the necessary permits.
Musk and his appointed Twitter boss, Linda Yaccarino, claim hate speech at the service has plummeted. They point out that “99.99 percent” of the posts displayed to users are “healthy”. Musk explained the procedure: Anything that is legal can be claimed – but the distribution of some statements can be restricted. At the same time, Musk cut off independent researchers’ previously existing access to Twitter data, so his claims can no longer be verified.
In the lawsuit, X now claims that the CCDH does not want to fight hate speech, but to ban from online media views with which it disagrees. It is about topics such as climate change and corona vaccines. Musk himself had downplayed corona risks and given vaccine skeptics a platform. In recent months, he has also repeatedly displayed right-wing political views and accused the US media of being “racist” towards whites. Rapper Kanye West, who was banned for making anti-Semitic comments, was allowed to return to the platform over the weekend.
