Alexander Lewis
Mar 01, 2024
The image shows X logo on phone screen. — Pexels
A US District judge Charles Breyer during a could hearing has indicated that Elon Musk's social media platform X, formerly Twitter, might lose the lawsuit against Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a watchdog organisation, that condemned the rising extent of hate speech on the platform.
Attributing a lose of tens of millions of dollars to a CCDH-led "scare campaign" that discouraged advertisers from the platform, X accused the nonprofit watchdog of contravening its user contract by nitpicking data to create false and misleading reports stating that X serves as a platform of hate speech, extremism and other misinformation.
Expressing aprehension, the US judge in a video conference said "it was foreseeable that Twitter would change its policy and allow these people to have access," when both, X and CCDH, signed a user agreement regulating entire user base of X.
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He added that CCDH could have withdrawn the agreement if it deemed the new policies introduced by Musk to be inappropriate. "When CCDH agreed to stay on the platform, it agreed to successors' versions of the policy," he remarked.
The multi-billionaire tycoon's electric vehicle (EV) firm Tesla has also faced several lawsuits in the past that said the company's work environment was immune to workers' harrassment. However, the company refuted such claims.
John Quinn, a lawyer representing CCDH, said X violated California's so-called anti-SLAPP law, or strategic lawsuits that bar voice of general public, aiming to repel cases seeking the silence staunch critics.
"CCDH used a tool that runs searches for certain people to see what public tweets are being put out, and then they commented on it," Quinn said. "X didn't have any issues with that until advertisers reacted to the content of the report," Quinn added.
