X, formerly Twitter, sues hate speech research group

X, the company formerly known as Twitter, sued a British nonprofit on Monday over research it had conducted into the proliferation of hate speech on the social media platform since Elon Musk’s takeover.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, alleges that the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) “unlawfully scraped data from the X platform” and “cherry picked” posts that support its discovery of harmful content on the platform. 

X sent a letter to the CCDH on July 20 threatening to sue the research group for conspiring “to drive advertisers off Twitter by smearing the company and its owner.”

It relates to research published by the CCDH in June, which found that X (then Twitter) had failed to take action against 99 of the 100 Twitter Blue accounts it flagged to the platform for promoting hate, including tweets containing racist, homophobic, neo-Nazi, antisemitic or conspiracy content.

The June research was cited in a Bloomberg News article published last month about how a “dramatic spike in hateful, violent and inaccurate posts on the platform” was turning off advertisers.

In a blog post about the lawsuit, X cited a tweet from social listening platform Brandwatch, which said research cited in the Bloomberg article “contained metrics used out of context to make unsubstantiated assertions about Twitter.” 

X went on to accuse the CCDH of engaging in a “scare campaign” to “prevent the public’s access to free expression.”

The lawsuit alleges breach of contract, violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, intentional interference with contractual relations and inducing breach of contract.

CCDH founder and CEO Imran Ahmed said the lawsuit is “straight out of the authoritarian playbook.” 

“[Elon Musk] is now showing he will stop at nothing to silence anyone who criticizes him for his own decisions and actions. The Center for Countering Digital Hate’s research shows that hate and disinformation is spreading like wildfire on the platform under Musk’s ownership and this lawsuit is a direct attempt to silence those efforts,” Ahmed said in a statement.

“Musk is trying to ‘shoot the messenger’ who highlights the toxic content on his platform rather than deal with the toxic environment he’s created. CCDH has no intention of stopping our independent research – Musk will not bully us into silence,” he added.

A lawyer representing the CCDH sent a letter to Musk’s legal counsel on Monday calling the legal threats “a disturbing effort to intimidate those who have the courage to advocate against incitement, hate speech and harmful content online.”

As well as its June research, the CCDH also published research in March that specifically investigated the spread of anti-LGBTQIA+ rhetoric on the platform since October, when Musk became owner.

Meanwhile, research published by the organization in February estimated that the reinstatement of 10 major accounts “renowned for publishing hateful content and dangerous conspiracies will generate up to $19 million a year in advertising revenue for Twitter.”

Brand safety challenges related to the roll back of content moderation policies and the reinstatement of previously banned accounts on X has caused many advertisers to pull spend from the platform. In the most recent example, X reinstated the account of Ye, the artist formerly known as Kanye West, on Saturday, ending a suspension put in place in December for violating the platform's rules prohibiting incitement to violence.

Musk has said that ad revenue has cratered by 50% since he became owner in late October. MediaRadar analysis of Twitter's U.S. advertisers found ad spend across ten major categories dropped by 71% from the first half of 2022 compared to the same period this year. Traffic has also declined, according to Similarweb.