'X', formerly Twitter, sues nonprofit that alleges platform harbored hate speech
SAN FRANCISCO - Nevada-based X Corp. (formerly Twitter) filed suit Monday against a nonprofit for allegedly scraping X's platform, and among other activity, gaining unauthorized access to X's data, causing X Corp. to suffer damages at least in the tens of millions of dollars.
The suit against the nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate follows a June 1 report by the center alleging that Twitter failed to act on nearly all of the hateful tweets by the platform's Blue subscribers.
X said in a blog post Monday that 99.99 percent of the posts on its platform are "healthy."
X Corp. alleges that the center is trying to prevent advertisers from using X and thus thwarting public discourse.
The center "intended that, in direct response to their conduct, advertisers would stop advertising on X," the suit alleges.
The center's June 1 report said it collected hateful posts from 100 Blue subscribers. The posts were reported to Twitter and four days later the platform had failed to act on 99 percent of them. All of the accounts remained active. Twitter removed content deemed hateful once.
The posts collected allegedly contained racist, homophobic, neo-Nazi, antisemitic and conspiratorial content, according to the report.
"The Twitter blue tick used to be a sign of authority and authenticity, but it is now inextricably linked to the promotion of hate and conspiracism," the center's chief executive Imran Ahmed said in the report.
"What gives blue tick hate actors confidence to spew their bile is the knowledge that Elon Musk simply doesn't care about the civil and human rights of black people, Jews, Muslims and LGBTQ+ people, as long as he can make his 8 bucks a month," Ahmed added.
The suit alleges that the center is an activist group masquerading as a research organization and that it cherrypicked from hundreds of millions of Twitter posts each day, falsely claiming "it had statistical support showing the platform is overwhelmed with harmful content."
Lawyers for Ahmed and the center said in a letter to the opposing attorneys that the allegations by Twitter have no basis in fact and are an effort to intimidate him because of the work he is doing.
Attorney Roberta Kaplan wrote that a letter to the center from Twitter is "ridiculous." The idea that the center wants to hurt Twitter's business and a warning from Twitter that it is investigating whether the center violated the Lanham Act, the federal trademark law, "is bogus."
Attorneys for both sides did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
