Judge Dismisses Lawsuit By Elon Musk’s X Against POC-Led Nonprofit
US Judge Charles R. Breyer has sided with the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), dismissing a high-profile lawsuit filed by Elon Musk and his social media company, X.
Musk’s Lawsuit Against CCDH
Last year, Musk’s X, formerly Twitter Inc, sued the nonprofit CCDH over its report describing the extent of hate speech on the social media platform.
Led by Imran Ahmed, CCDH aims to protect online human rights and civil liberties.
The CCDH report said that X failed to act against 99% of 100 Blue accounts that it had reported for “tweeting hate,” among other failed attempts to stop hate speech.
Musk’s platform then accused the POC-led nonprofit group of falsely describing the social media platform as “overwhelmed with harmful content.”
The allegations were also part of a larger suit involving accusations of illegal data scraping and violation of platform rules through the use of Brandwatch, a third-party social media monitoring tool.
CCDH’s response, led by Ahmed, leveraged California’s Anti-Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation (SLAPP) law, seeking to dismiss the lawsuit on the grounds of intimidation and an attempt to suppress freedom of expression.
Musk’s Suit Dismissed
The court’s decision dismissed Musk’s lawsuit and denied any possibility of relitigating the case.
In his ruling, Judge Breyer highlighted the apparent intent behind X Corp.’s lawsuit: to punish and potentially deter CCDH and similar entities from engaging in critical discourse about corporate practices.
“Sometimes it is unclear what is driving a litigation, and only by reading between the lines of a complaint can one attempt to surmise a plaintiff’s true purpose. Other times, a complaint is so unabashedly and vociferously about one thing that can be no mistaking that purpose” Breyer stated in the ruling.
“X Corp. has brought this case in order to punish CCDH for CCDH publications that criticized X Corp. – and perhaps in order to dissuade others who might wish to engage in such critics.”
