Twitter, or X, has officially taken legal action against the CCDH, or Centre for Countering Digital Hate, due to several reports the group published that track the rise of hateful content since Musk took over the site. It’s a move that the CCDH calls “straight out of the authoritarian handbook” on their site.
These reports include evidence of slurs against Black and transgender people rising “significantly” in December, a month after the deal to sell Twitter went through. Further research suggests that there hasn’t been much enforcement of the consequences of rule-breaking on the app by Twitter Blue subscribers, despite a pledge to do so when the platform was bought. This might have something to do with X’s skeleton crew not involving many, if any, modders.
In turn, one of Musk’s final acts as CEO before he hands the reins to Linda Yaccarino was to send the CCDH a letter threatening legal action.
As the CCDH put it: “Last week we got a letter from Elon Musk’s X. Corp threatening CCDH with legal action over our work, exposing the proliferation of hate and lies on Twitter since he became the owner. Elon Musk’s actions represent a brazen attempt to silence honest criticism and independent research in the desperate hope that he can stem the tide of negative stories and rebuild his relationship with advertisers.”
The letter comes after a slew of tweets, sorry, X’s from Elon Musk was posted that said the CCDH were “Truly evil” and “Anyone know who is supporting this rat?”
More professionally, X Corp lawyer Alex Spiro said, “The article is little more than a series of inflammatory, misleading, and unsupported claims based on a cursory review of random tweets.”
In a responding TikTok, the CCDH said: “Musk will not silence us. We’ll continue to investigate and publish research on any platforms and will expose hate and lies wherever we find it.”
The argument of “free speech” versus “hate speech” is heating up, and it will affect marketers on the platform. Already, brands are running from the site due to being posted next to hateful content. If Elon Musk is making any attempt to moderate hateful content on the platform, he doesn’t want his fans to know it. If he isn’t moderating, he doesn’t want investors or marketers to know it. So the CCDH have put him in a corner that he will scrap to get out of.
