Elon Musk’s social network accuses the Center for Countering Digital Hate group of trying to “impede users’ freedom of expression”
O twitter opened on Monday (31.Jul.2023) a process against the NGO Center for Countering Digital Hate in a US federal court. The company alleges that the group tries to “hindering freedom of expression” and violates the terms of service for “gain improper access” to company data.
The action was carried out after the group published a letter, sent by X.Corp (the company that owns Twitter) on July 20, threatening legal action over the anti-hate work. “Elon Musk’s actions represent a brazen attempt to silence honest critics and independent research in the desperate hope that he can stem the tide of negative stories and rebuild his relationship with advertisers.”, says the statement. Here’s the full of the letter (150 KB, in English).
The NGO he said that the letter is “ridiculous”and that Musk’s allegations are baseless, in addition to representing a “disturbing effort to intimidate those who have the courage to stand up against incitement, hate speech and harmful content online”.
Since the billionaire took over twitter –now called X–As of October 2022, the Center for Countering Digital Hate has been publishing reports on the rise of hate speech and misinformation.
One report published on March 28, 2023 identified that since the beginning of 2022, more than 1.7 million tweets and retweets have been made that mention the keywords “LGBT”, “gay”, “homosexual” or “trans” along with hateful messages including “groomer” , “predator” It is “pedophile”.
“This is not an accident. Elon Musk put up the ‘Bat Signal’ for homophobes, transphobes, racists and all sorts of misinformation agents, encouraging them to flood Twitter. Not only has Musk’s ownership of the platform coincided with an explosion of the hateful ‘grooming’ narrative, but Twitter is monetizing hate at an unprecedented pace.”said the CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, Imran Ahmed.
The document also shows that 5 of the accounts that spread hateful content, such as harassment and threats, produce up to $6.4 million in advertising revenue for the twitter.
In a post on blog oficial, the platform says that “at X, people are free to be themselves” is that “freedom of expression and platform security are not at odds”.
In responseAhmed stated that this lawsuit is a direct attempt to silence the group’s efforts to combat hate and misinformation, which are “spreading like wildfire under Musk ownership”.
“The CCDH has no intention of stopping our independent research – Musk will not bully us into silence”he said.
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