Musk’s X sues non-profit that fights hate-speech over ‘unsubstantiated’ claims, calls for ad boycott
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X, formerly known as Twitter, has accused a non-profit of scraping data from its platform.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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SAN FRANCISCO – Social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter,
X, owned by billionaire Elon Musk, sent a letter to the Centre for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) and threatened to sue it for unspecified damages.
In response to that letter, lawyers for CCDH accused X of “intimidating those who have the courage to advocate against incitement, hate speech and harmful content online”.
They also said X’s allegations have no factual basis.
The lawsuit stems from a media report published in July that stated findings from CCDH’s research saying hate speech has increased towards minority communities on the platform since Mr Musk acquired the company in October 2022.
X and its CEO Linda Yaccarino labelled the report “false” and said it was based on “a collection of incorrect, misleading and outdated metrics, mostly from the period shortly after Twitter’s acquisition”.
CCDH’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”, the organisation’s founder and CEO Imran Ahmed said in an e-mail to Reuters.
The non-profit, which has offices in the United States and London, will continue its independent research, Mr Ahmed added.
In a blog post on Monday, X said CCDH gained access to its data without authorisation and accused it of scraping data from its platform in violation of X’s terms. Data scraping involves an automated extraction and collection of data from websites or digital sources for purposes such as analysis
It reiterated that the metrics contained in the research were used out of context to make “unsubstantiated assertions” about X.
X recently filed lawsuits against four unnamed entities in Texas and Israel’s Bright Data for scraping data. REUTERS
