Twitter is threatening legal action against the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a nonprofit that researches hate speech and content moderation on social media platforms.
The letter from Twitter’s lawyers alleges that CCDH’s research publications are intended to ‘harm Twitter’s business by driving advertisers away from the platform with incendiary claims.’
This is a pretty bold move from Twitter, especially considering that CCDH is a well-respected organization that has been doing this kind of research for years. And it’s especially ironic coming from Elon Musk, who has said that he’s a ‘free speech absolutist.’
But Musk has also shown that he’s sensitive to criticism, so it’s not surprising that he’s taking this kind of action against CCDH
Please, please do that. I can’t wait to see the discovery portion of the trial
Yes, let’s see the data
I was just going to say, wouldn’t they have to disprove the findings to win?
Even better, the emails from Musk about this. Those would be a bombshell.
Elon used to love saying he was a Free Speech Absolutist, but once again that only extends to speech he likes.
The man will say absolutely anything.
Except things that are actually funny.
The response from CCDH is savage -
https://counterhate.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Letter-to-A.-Spiro-from-R.-Kaplan-re-CCDH.pdf
I love it. The gist is:
- hate speech is running rampant on your platform.
- you’re doing nothing to stop it.
- here’s our evidence.
- where’s your e idence?
- why are you spending time and money on fighting us instead of on fighting the literal white supremacist death threats on your platform?
- telling us we’ve not sampled enough tweets while you’re in the process of making impossible the mass sampling of tweets is…a bit rich.
- we’re not intimidated by your threats
- your threats are also bullshit
- we’re not gonna stop
It’s a textbook example of “no u” in grown up language. Bravo.
Not to mention how it starts with
“We write in response to the ridiculous letter you sent our clients on behalf of X Corp.”
They are not taking any BS. I love it.
Legal snark is by far the most expensive brand of humor, but when it’s deployed on your behalf it’s so goddamn satisfying.
During a hearing in my divorce, I answered a question from the judge, the other lawyer says “we can’t have hearsay in this discussion”, my lawyer responds “well this will be a short hearing then because everything in your client’s motion is hearsay”.
That little snap cost me about $15 but it was worth it.
Legal snark is by far the most expensive brand of humor
I trust that you’ve read this one?
Bad link
It’s direct to a PDF (maybe shows in ‘downloaded documents’ for Android, or download menu in Connect?) but for anyone on a device that doesn’t like PDFs, the link was The Onion’s amicus filed with the US Supreme Court (summarised in newspapers)
The best part of it:
If your clients do file suit, please be advised that CCDH intends to seek immediate discovery regarding hate speech and misinformation on the Twitter platform; Twitter’s policies and practices relating to these issues; and Twitter’s advertising revenue. In that event, a court will determine for itself the truth of the statements in our client’s report in accordance with the time-tested rules of civil procedure and evidence.
Now that is a nuclear statement in a lawyers letter…
I love that this is a legal letter and yet contains the very direct phrase:
That threat is bogus and you know it.
Savage indeed !!
Evidence based documentation is going to be hard to win against, unless the plan is just drag them through legal proceedings until they can’t afford it. The american dream.
Wouldn’t surprise me if in this case enough people would donate. Enough people are sick of Musk at this point.
Yes, free speech and evidence based documentation will be fine, Musk won’t be able to afford prolongued legal proceedings. American dream indeed.
For a company that claims to be desperate to cut costs they sure do have a lot of money for frivolous lawsuits…
Does Stinky believe that by suing these researchers, the rise in hate speech didn’t happen?!
No, but he can scare off anyone else from making him look bad.
It’s expensive and scary to get hit with a lawsuit like this.
He doesn’t need any help with that anyway.
Just donated to the CCDH, they definitely don’t have the resources to fight Twitter alone.
Given that Twitter trust and safety was almost completely gutted upon his acquisition, I think it’s very improbable that type of content was moderated effectively.
No, but he can pretend it didn’t
Does he smell bad too? It wouldn’t surprise me considering he’s unpleasant in so many other ways, I just hadn’t heard that one.
It’s a reference to “musk”
Ohhhhhh!
The man-child billionaire says he is not for censorship, while using the judicial system to censor.
This is a great example of a SLAPP suit
We don’t need to call it X or even the platform formerly known as Twitter. It’s just Twitter.
I mean their site is twitter[.]com
They haven’t changed the url yet? Wonder when they’ll do it… Probably gonna break a lot of stuff everywhere.
It’s Brand X. It’s an appropriate name.
Everything is better than Brand X. Every ad has told me so.
The foodfight paralels are uncanny, musk himself looks like a character from that movie.
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Sue everyone you don’t like. That’s the thin-skinned, narcissistic billionaire way.
Doesn’t matter if they’re right or wrong, pile up the costs and they’ll all cave in.
Free speech absolutist.
Free speech abolitionist
Fee speech absolutist
Wasn’t he all about free speech and even against censorship?
“ I think if you go down the censorship route, it’s only a matter of time before censorship is turned upon you.” -musk
free speech until his interests aren’t endangered
If they go to court, wouldn’t the court make them prove that the claim was false or defamation? And if CCDH can prove that it’s not false or defamation then now it’s legal record that hate speech has increased since the takeover? This all seems ok with me.
That’s not how the American court system works.
A company like Twitter can bleed the CCDH dry and just walk away with a frivolous lawsuit and a minor (insignificant) penalty.
And the way that works is not by accident.
In a defamation lawsuit, it would not be X that had to prove it was a lie. It would be CCDH that had to prove it had evidence for their claims (notice that it does not need to be true, only has to be reasonable for CCDH to believe it is true based on evidence they had).
Musk should sue himself then. Seems like he has done the most to drive away advertisers.
