Activist California Judge Tosses Musk’s X Censorship Lawsuit Against Dark Money ‘Anti-Hate’ Group

A California judge has tossed out a lawsuit from social media platform X against the Center or Countering Digital Hate, contending that X is not entitled to seek restitution against the organization because third-party advertisers left the platform following CCDH’s campaign against it.

The lawsuit alleged that CCDH had unlawfully accessed and scraped data from X in order to conduct misleading studies that found a rise in hate speech following Elon Musk’s acquisition of the social media platform in late 2022. The company says CCDH has “cherry-picked” posts ot drive advertisers away, resulting in tens of millions of dollars in losses.

“This case is about punishing the defendants for their speech,” said judge Charles Breyer in California, citing a Nov. 2023 Reuters survey that found “social media researchers have canceled, suspended or changed more than 100 studies about X” as a result of Musk’s policies as CEO.

Breyer also insinuated that X filed the suit “perhaps in order to dissuade others who might wish to engage in such criticism.”

CCDH CEO Imran Ahmed celebrated his win, saying in a post-decision statement that “The courts today have affirmed our fundamental right to research, to speak, to advocate, and to hold accountable social media companies for decisions they make behind closed doors that affect our kids, our democracy, and our fundamental human rights and civil liberties.”

CCDH is a dark money nonprofit with an outsized influence over the digital advertising space and political sphere, which popped up seemingly out of nowhere.

X responded to the ruling, posting: “Today a federal court in San Francisco issued a decision in the case X brought against the Center for Countering Digital Hate for illegally obtaining platform data to create misleading research. X disagrees with the court’s decision and plans to appeal.”

Today a federal court in San Francisco issued a decision in the case X brought against the Center for Countering Digital Hate for illegally obtaining platform data to create misleading research. X disagrees with the court’s decision and plans to appeal.

— News (@XNews) March 25, 2024

Meanwhile, Musk – who has called CCDH a “truly evil organization that just wants to destroy the first amendment under the guise of doing good!” did not immediately respond.

As Paul Thacker noted in October in Tablet, Ahmed – a former British Labour party operative, released a report in 2021 about online misinformation that quickly reached the pre-Musk Twitter regime, and was used to silence divergent opinions – including those of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who the report named as one of “The Disinformation Dozen.” The report was then cited by by the Biden administration.

CCDH also targeted ZeroHedge with a false report initially claiming that we were demonetized by Google for peddling hate speech, when in fact the CCDH took passages from our comments section and claimed they were the views of ZH. The report was laundered through NBC‘s “verify” fact check unit. NBC News was internationally condemned for going after a rival using CCDH research, and written by a 25-year-old (trust fund) UK journalist who has since bounced around various outlets without much in the way of actual journalism to show for it.