Elon Musk Tries to Go After a Twitter Watchdog
Since taking the helm at Twitter, Elon Musk has suspended journalists, reinstated extremist accounts and changed platform policies to ban a user he holds a personal grudge against for tracking his private jet. His attention has now turned to a nonprofit whose research has blamed him for a rise in hate speech on the platform.
X Corp., the parent company of the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, on July 20 wrote to the Center for Countering Digital Hate threatening legal action for making a “series of troubling and baseless claims that appear calculated to harm Twitter generally, and its digital advertising business specifically.”
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The letter concerns research the organization released last month examining posts that contain content that violates Twitter’s policies. It claimed that the platform “fails to act on 99% of hate posted by Twitter Blue subscribers,” suggesting that the company is allowing them to break its rules “with impunity and is even algorithmically boosting their toxic tweets.” The group faulted Musk for “allowing hate to prosper on [Twitter], all with the tacit approval of the advertisers who remain on his platform.”
Alex Spiro, a lawyer for X Corp., said that the research is “little more than a series of inflammatory, misleading, and unsupported claims based on a cursory review of random tweets.” He accused CCDH of advancing an “ulterior agenda” at the direction of “X Corp.’s commercial competitors, as well as government entities and their affiliates” by making false and misleading claims in violation of the Lanham Act, a federal trademark law that allows companies to sue for false statements.
CCDH’s research explores hate speech and misinformation on social media platforms. It has published articles critical of TikTok pushing content that promotes eating disorders, Twitter generating ad revenue by reinstating banned accounts and YouTube profiting off of climate change denial videos. The group denied accepting funds from competitors to Twitter or government entities.
In July, Musk disclosed that Twitter has negative cash flow due to a 50 percent drop in ad revenue and a heavy debt load. Advertisers have fled from the site after he bought the company because of content moderation issues partially attributable to changes to the verification system that allow users to buy a verified check mark. Brands have expressed concern that their ads would be served alongside offensive content, like hate speech. Linda Yaccarino, NBCUniversal’s longtime head of ad sales, has been named Twitter’s chief executive to right the ship.
The letter argued that CCDH is intentionally trying to drive advertisers away from Twitter with baseless claims. X Corp. took issue with the group allegedly providing “no methodology for its selection or testing of tweets, no baseline for Twitter’s enforcement time frame, and no explanation as to why the 100 chosen tweets represent an appropriate sample of the nearly 500 million tweets sent per day from which to generalize about the platform’s content moderation practices.”
In a letter responding to Spiro, CCDH stressed that the legal threat represents a “disturbing effort” to intimidate Musk’s critics.
“In fact, under Mr. Musk’s leadership, Twitter has taken steps to curtail research on the platform,” wrote Roberta Kaplan, a lawyer for the group. “To criticize CCDH for being too limited in its research while simultaneously taking steps to close the platform off to independent research and analysis is the very height of hypocrisy.”
CCDH denied accusations that its research was intended to benefit Twitter’s competitors, pointing to previous reports critical of Instagram, Facebook and TikTok. It welcomed litigation, warning that it will pursue discovery regarding content moderation policies and ad revenue.
“Simply put, there is no bona fide legal grievance here,” stated the letter. “Your effort to wield that threat anyway, on a law firm’s letterhead, is a transparent attempt to silence honest criticism. Obviously, such conduct could hardly be more inconsistent with the commitment to free speech purportedly held by Twitter’s current leadership.”
Yale management professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, founder of the Chief Executive Leadership Institute, underscored “value-destroying” business decisions that reflect Musk’s drift to the right. “I just don’t know how long he can go before this catches up with him,” he said, noting that advertisers aren’t returning.
On Saturday, the account of Kanye West was again reinstated on X, though ads won’t appear next to his posts. The rapper legally known as Ye was suspended in December for posting an image of a swastika blended with a star of David after he was locked out of his account for saying that he’d go “death con 3” on Jewish people. The account of former President Donald Trump was also reinstated under Musk’s approach to content moderation, which reflects his position that the platform should only take action to comply with laws.
Last week, a popular right-wing account known for spreading conspiracy theories that posted a screenshot of a video depicting child sexual abuse was unsuspended after only four days. “The reason for suspension should be shown, along with ability to appeal quickly and easily,” Musk said of the decision, noting that the posts containing the picture were deleted. The reinstatement came a day after Musk responded to news of the son of LeBron James suffering a cardiac arrest by claiming, “Myocarditis is a known side-effect” of the COVID-19 vaccine.
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