Musk led X sues Non Profit Organisation Over Allegations of Hate Speech on the Platform

New Delhi, 1st August 2023: On Monday, social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, sued a nonprofit that combats hate speech and disinformation, accusing it of making false claims and inciting advertisers to halt investment in the site.

Earlier, US media reported that Elon Musk’s X had sent a letter to the Centre for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) threatening to sue the non-profit for unspecified damages.

Lawyers for the CCDH responded to the letter by accusing X of “intimidating those who have the courage to advocate against incitement, hate speech, and harmful content online.” They also stated that X’s charges were without merit.

The lawsuit is the result of a media report published in July that indicated findings from CCDH’s study indicating an increase in hate speech directed at minority communities on the platform.

The claim was labelled fake by X and its CEO Linda Yaccarino, who said it was based on “a collection of incorrect, misleading, and outdated metrics, mostly from the period shortly after Twitter’s acquisition.”

In a blog post on Monday, X said that the CCDH had gained unauthorised access to its data and accused it of scraping data from its platform, which violated X’s conditions.

It repeated that the research’s measures were exploited out of context to make unfounded claims about X.

X recently sued four unnamed businesses in Texas and Israel’s Bright Data for data scraping.