Elon Musk’s X Corp. Sues POC-Led Nonprofit Over Hate Speech Report
Elon Musk’s X Corp., formerly Twitter Inc.— has sued a nonprofit group, The Center for Countering Digital Hate, over its report describing the extent of hate speech on the social media platform.
Led by Imran Ahmed, The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) aims to protect human rights and civil liberties online
The company holds platforms accountable and responsible for their business choices by highlighting their failures, educating the public, and advocating change from media and governments to protect communities.
What did the report find?
The CCDH report said that Twitter failed to act against 99% of 100 Twitter Blue accounts that it had reported for “tweeting hate.”
According to Bloomberg, the report found that Twitter failed to act on tweets containing racist, homophobic, neo-Nazi, antisemitic, or conspiracy content posted over a month.
Previous studies from CCDH have looked into anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim hate on Twitter, finding that the platform had failed to act on 89% and 97% of posts, respectively.
Why is Musk suing?
Musk’s X Corp. platform accuses the POC-led nonprofit group of falsely describing the social media platform (previously named Twitter) as “overwhelmed with harmful content.”
X Corp. claims that the group is illegally “scraping” its servers and cherry-picking objectionable posts as part of “a scare campaign to drive away advertisers.”
Musk said that advertising revenue at Twitter is down more than 50% since October and is now seeking monetary damages in a lawsuit and an injunction to bar the center from accessing its data.
“By threatening us, Musk is trying to hide the truth about his own failures,” CCDH said on Twitter.
“Platforms must be held accountable for spreading hate and lies.”
This isn’t the first time Musk’s platform has come under fire. Changes such as limits to the number of daily tweets visible on Twitter and several technical mishaps in recent months have seen users turn to alternatives like Spill, Bluesky, Mastodon, and, more recently, Threads.
