Musk’s X sues nonprofit that fights hate speech

Bengaluru — Social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, on Monday sued a nonprofit that fights hate speech and disinformation, accusing it of asserting false claims and encouraging advertisers to pause investment on the platform.

US media reported earlier that X, owned by Elon Musk, had sent a letter to the Centre for Countering Digital Hate and threatened to sue the nonprofit for unspecified damages.

In response to that letter, lawyers for the nonprofit accused X of “intimidating those who have the courage to advocate against incitement, hate speech and harmful content online”. They also said that X’s allegations had no factual basis.

The lawsuit stems from a media report published in July that stated findings from the centre’s research saying that hate speech had increased towards minority communities on the platform.

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its CEO Linda Yaccarino labelled the report false and said it was based on “a collection of incorrect, misleading and outdated metrics, mostly from the period shortly after Twitter’s acquisition”.

In a blog post on Monday, X said the nonprofit had gained access to its data without authorisation and accused it of scraping data from its platform, violating X’s terms.

The Centre for Countering Digital Hate did not respond to a request for comment outside regular business hours.

X recently filed lawsuits against four unnamed entities in Texas and Israel’s Bright Data for scraping data.

Reuters