Judge Tosses X/Twitter Lawsuit Against Group That Produced Study On Proliferation Of Hate Speech On Platform
deadline.comA federal judge tossed out a lawsuit brought by X/Twitter against a watching group that produced a study that examined the proliferation of hate speech on the platform.
U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer concluded that the platform, owned by Elon Musk, was attempting to chill the speech rights of the Center for Countering Digital Hate and other groups.
The judge wrote that X’s “motivation in bringing this case is evident. X Corp. has brought this case in order to punish [Center for Countering Digital Hate] for CCDH publications that criticized X Corp.—and perhaps in order to dissuade others who might wish to engage in such criticism.” X/Twitter had sued the group, claiming that in doing their study, they unlawfully “scraped” the platform for its data that led to an exodus of advertisers. “X disagrees with the court’s decision and plans to appeal,” the company said.
Read the judge’s decision in the X case. Imran Ahmed, founder and CEO of the watchdog group, wrote, “This ruling sends a strong message to those who aim at intimidating and silencing independent research.” In his ruling, the judge even suggested that X/Twitter’s litigation had chilled other types of research into disinformation online.
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