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The US judge said X Corp’s lawsuit against the CCDH appeared to be done to ‘punish’ the non-profit for its speech and to potentially deter others from criticising the platform.
X Corp’s lawsuit against the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) has been dismissed by a US court judge, who was heavily critical about the motives behind the case.
In his ruling shared by The Verge, US judge Charles Breyer said there was “no mistaking” that the purpose of this lawsuit was to punish CCDH for their speech. Breyer also said that the case was pursued “perhaps in order to dissuade others” from criticising Elon Musk’s company – X Corp – in the future.
The CCDH publishes reports about hate speech and other harmful behaviours on social media sites. It was sued by X Corp last year after the non-profit reported 100 tweets that it claimed “plainly” violated the social media site’s policies. After four days, the CCDH said 99 of these tweets were still on the site.
In its lawsuit, X claimed the CCDH had “cherry pick[ed]” posts on X in order to “falsely claim” that the platform was full of harmful content. X said that this was done to create a “contrived narrative” to push advertisers away from the platform and that X lost “at least tens of millions of dollars” as a result.
X also claimed the non-profit was in “breach of contract” and that it had violated the law by scraping data from X for its research. These claims were dismissed and the US court said X failed to allege a breach or its losses.
The court also found it “significant” that X chose to not make this case one of defamation and that the company wanted to “have it both ways” – by being spared the burdens of a defamation case while still seeking damages based on reputational harm.
The CCDH argued in court that X Corp’s decision to not include a defamation claims is evidence that that company “cannot allege that the CCDH defendants said anything knowingly false, nor does it wish to invite discovery on the truth about the content on its platform”.
The judge said that it is “impossible to read the complaint and not conclude that X Corp is far more concerned about CCDH’s speech” than it is about the CCDH’s data collection methods.
“The courts today have affirmed our fundamental right to research, to speak, to advocate and to hold accountable social media companies for decisions they make behind closed doors that affect our kids, our democracy and our fundamental human rights and civil liberties,” said CCDH founder and CEO Imran Ahmed.
“We hope this landmark ruling will embolden public-interest researchers everywhere to continue, and even intensify, their vital work of holding social media companies accountable for the hate and disinformation they host and the harm they cause.”
What speech is free speech?
Musk has claimed to be a ‘free-speech absolutist’ in the past, but various actions he has undertaken as the owner of X have called that absolutism into question. Shortly after he took over X – previously known as Twitter – there were reports that he fired multiple engineers who posted critical comments on the social network or on its internal Slack messaging system.
Musk has also faced claims that his posts on X endorse offensive content on the platform – such as posts telling people to follow a profile that has been accused of spreading antisemitism. There are various reports of Musk later deleting these types of controversial posts.
Meanwhile, X is involved in a lawsuit against Media Matters, a non-profit that published a report that claimed ads on X appeared next to pro-Nazi content. This claim saw multiple big brands such as IBM suspend their advertising on the platform.
X claimed that Media Matters “manipulated” its results by using accounts that exclusively followed major brands or users known to produce certain types of content, Reuters reports.
There are also allegations that Media Matters “solicited donations” in Missouri to target the social media platform, according to a recent statement from Missouri attorney general Andrew Bailey.
Bailey said his office has filed a suit against Media Matters to force the non-profit to turn over documents related to his “investigation into its fraudulent business practices”.
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