Anti-Hate Group Defendant in Twitter Suit Comes Out Swinging Against Musk

CEO Imran Ahmed of the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) spared few punches Tuesday in attacking Elon Musk, owner of the X platform, formerly Twitter, a day after the platform sued his group for allegedly running a "scare campaign" to drive away advertisers. Musk’s "latest legal threat is straight out of the authoritarian playbook," emailed Ahmed.

Musk is now showing "he will stop at nothing to silence anyone who criticizes him for his own decisions and actions" to let hate content run unchecked on the X platform, said Ahmed. CCDH's research shows "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," he said.

People "don’t want to see or be associated with hate, antisemitism, and the dangerous content that we all see proliferating on X," Ahmed said. "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's "independent research won’t stop," he said: "Musk will not bully us into silence.”

Monday's lawsuit in U.S. District Court for Northern California in San Francisco names CCDH, its British counterpart and Does 1-50 as defendants, said the complaint (docket 3:23-cv-03836).

CCDH defendants -- described by X Corp. as “activist organizations masquerading as research agencies, funded and supported by unknown organizations, individuals and potentially even foreign governments with ties to legacy media companies” -- engaged in unlawful acts designed to “improperly gain access to protected X Corp. data," said the complaint. CCDH used that data to “cherry-pick from the hundreds of millions of posts made each day on X and falsely claim it had statistical support showing the platform is overwhelmed with harmful content,” it said.

CCDH US, as a registered user of X, “scraped data” from the X platform, “in violation of the express terms of its agreement" with X Corp., said the complaint. CCDH “also convinced an unknown third party,” in violation of the third party’s contract, “to improperly share login credentials to a secured database that CCDH then accessed, and retrieved information from, on multiple occasions without authorization,” it said, referencing social media analytics tool Brandwatch.

CCDH “selectively quoted data it obtained via those methods," the complaint said, and did so “out of context in public reports and articles it prepared to make it appear as if X is overwhelmed by harmful content, and then used that contrived narrative to call for companies to stop advertising on X,” it said. Defendants have a “history of using similar tactics not for the goal of combating hate, but rather to censor a wide range of viewpoints on social media with which it disagrees,” the complaint said. It referenced “’research’” reports prepared “to make it appear as if a few specific users (often media organizations and high profile individuals) are overwhelming social media platforms with content that CCDH deems harmful,” it said.

Defendants use reports “to demand that platform providers kick the targeted users off of their platforms, thus silencing their viewpoints on broadly debated topics such as COVID-19 vaccines, reproductive healthcare, and climate change,” the complaint said. CCDH seeks to “prevent public dialogue and the public’s access to free expression in favor of an ideological echo chamber that conforms to CCDH’s favored viewpoints," it said.

Some companies “paused” their advertising spend on X due to CCDH’s efforts, said the complaint. The amount of damages to X Corp. will be determined at trial but are “at least tens of millions of dollars,” it said. “More fundamentally still, CCDH's scare campaign to global advertisers and its ongoing pressure on brands is an attempt to stifle freedom of speech on the X platform,” it said.

X Corp. brings the suit against CCDH and “any presently unknown supporters and funders” who directed, acted as agents of or “participated in meaningful ways in CCDH’s unlawful conduct,” said the complaint. The identities of CCDH’s supporters and funders “are presently unknown,” but X Corp. named “Doe Defendants” and plans to amend the complaint to “assert their true names and capacities once they are ascertained through discovery.”

The complaint cites a Nov. 10 article on CCDH’s website, saying the defendant analyzed data from Brandwatch, including tweets that X Corp. says were obtained without authorization. It cited a Feb. 9 report urging companies to stop advertising on then-Twitter based on “CCDH’s incorrect implications in its report that hate speech viewed on X is on the rise" and its "incorrect assertions" that X Corp. “’doesn’t care about hate speech’” but allows “’accounts of homophobes, misogynists, self-professed neo-Nazis, and conspiracy theorists because it’s highly profitable.’”

CCDH agreed to terms of service when it registered to create a Twitter account, and terms prohibit “scraping data from X,” the complaint said. Section 4, “Using the Services,” says “scraping the Services without the prior consent of Twitter is expressly prohibited.”

Causes of action in the suit are breach of contract, breach of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, intentional interference with contractual relations and inducing breach of contract. X Corp. seeks damages sustained due to defendants’ actions, plus pre- and post-judgment interest. It also seeks to enjoin defendants and their agents from accessing licensed materials X Corp. provided to Brandwatch under agreement and disclosing any data obtained by logging into the licensed materials provided by X to Brandwatch.