Twitter Sues Hate Speech Researchers Days After It Unbanned Kanye West

X, formerly known as Twitter, sued the Center For Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) on Monday, arguing that the nonprofit “embarked on a scare campaign to drive away advertisers from the X platform” and illegally accessed the X’s data. The lawsuit came days after Twitter unbanned Ye, the artist formerly known as Kanye West, whom Musk kicked off the platform for tweeting a swastika in December.

The complaint claims that the CCDH illegally scraped Twitter data and “convinced an unknown third party,” to share login credentials so the organization could access a private database. The lawsuit argues the CCDH then cherry-picked statistics from that data 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.

A large portion of X’s legal complaint focuses on smearing the CCDH, rather than accusing it of lawbreaking. The lawsuit says the CCDH uses flawed research methodology and advocates for censorship, for example, neither of which are against the law. The lawsuit also goes out of its way to suggest—without evidence—that the CCDH receives some kind of shadowy funding from “unknown” organizations “and potentially even foreign governments with ties to legacy media companies.” Based on Musk’s tweets about that question, it seems the billionaire may have made that accusation up out of thin air.

“Elon Musk’s latest legal threat is straight out of the authoritarian playbook – he is now showing he will stop at nothing to silence anyone who criticizes him for his own decisions and actions,” said Imran Ahmed, CEO of the CCDH, in a statement. “The Center for Countering Digital Hate’s research shows that 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. People don’t want to see or be associated with hate, antisemitism, and the dangerous content that we all see proliferating on X. 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. The CCDH’s independent research won’t stop – Musk will not bully us into silence.”

On July 18th, Musk called Ahmed a “rat” and described the organization as “truly evil” in a series of tweets.

The CCDH is a nonprofit and says it doesn’t accept funding from tech companies, governments, or their affiliates. The organization regularly publishes research about hate speech problems on social media. Last December, the organization found that use of racial skyrocketed on Twitter the same week that Musk congratulated his team for its success fighting hate speech, for example.

In a letter sent to the CCDH, Musk’s lawyer Alex Spiro wrote that the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) “made a series of troubling and baseless claims that appear calculated to harm Twitter generally, and its digital advertising business specifically.” Spiro wrote that Twitter, which recently changed its name to X, has “reason to believe” that the CCDH is “supported by funding from X Corp.’s commercial competitors, as well as government entities and their affiliates.” Spiro did not respond to a request for comment.

In the letter. Spiro said that X is investigating whether the CCDH violated section 43(a) of the Lanham Act, which prohibits false advertising. It’s unclear how publishing research constitutes advertising, and ultimately it seems like X decided that, in fact, it does not. The lawsuit makes no mention of the Lanaham act. Instead, X suggests that the CCDH breached X’s user agreements and broke the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

Musk treatment of Ye (formerly Kanye West) seems a perfect illustration of the CCDH’s arguments about Twitter’s attitude towards hate speech. Just before Musk’s takeover in October 2022, Twitter banned Ye for posting that he was “going death con [sic] 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE.” Musk later unbanned Ye as well as a long list of other promoters of hate speech, misinformation, and Nazism. Ye then spent the next month on a bizarre and racist media tour, which included wearing a White Lives Matter shirt and an interview where he praised Hitler and said “I also love Nazis.” Musk’s tolerance for Nazism apparently ran out on December 2nd after Ye tweeted a picture of a swastika embedded in a Star of David. At the time, Musk tweeted that Ye’s account was suspended.

That isn’t enough to earn yourself a permanent ban on Musk’s Twitter, though—or “X” as he would prefer that you call it—at least not if you’re a famous conservative. Over the weekend, Twitter welcomed Ye back once again. The company told the Wall Street Journal that Ye is not allowed to monetize his account, and advertisements will not appear next to his tweets.

Ye isn’t the only right-wing darling earning second and third chances from Elon Musk. Last week, Twitter banned Qanon conspiracy influencer Dom Lucre after he tweeted a picture depicting child sexual abuse so horrific that we won’t describe it here. The ban sparked outcry from conservative Twitter users, who are apparently more concerned about “censorship” than protecting children. Musk then intervened and unbanned Lucre’s account. The image did not reappear.

“For now, we will delete those posts and reinstate the account,” Musk tweeted. In reality, Twitter’s own metrics said Lucre’s post was retweeted more than 8,000 times and viewed by over 3 million people.

Lucre used his reinstated Twitter account to lie that he had never posted the image, falsely claiming he had only tweeted a link to a story which described the abuse. Musk—who has a penchant for calling his critics pedophiles—recently tweeted that his company has a zero tolerance policy for child sexual abuse material, and has repeatedly praised his own efforts to protect child safety on Twitter.

Musk often refers to himself as a “free speech absolutist.” That stance clearly extends to Nazis, peddlers of misinformation, and far right celebrities, but it doesn’t seem to apply to the billionaire’s critics. Elon Musk gleefully censors Twitter users on a regular basis, often inventing new rules to justify his actions. For example, he updated Twitter’s doxxing policies in order to ban an account that tweeted about his private jet, and then banned a number of journalists for writing about the incident.

In fact, censorship has skyrocketed during Musk’s tenure when it comes to government requests. Governments often ask social media companies to take down posts or accounts they don’t like. Before he took over, Twitter complied with about half of these requests. The numbers shot up under his leadership; these days, Elon’s Twitter cooperates with government censorship requests 80% of the time. To name one example, Twitter banned four accounts and took down 409 tweets at the request of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan just before the country’s most recent election.

Update, August 1st, 4:05 pm EST: This article has been updated with details about the lawsuit.

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