Elon Musk, X Corp. threatens lawsuit against anti-hate speech group

Elon Musk has threatened to sue the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a group of independent anti-online-hate speech researchers.

The CCDH released a letter dated July 20 from lawyers for the then Twitter X Corp. on Monday where legal representatives allege that statements made by the organization were false and damaging to Twitter X’s business interests.

The group also released their response letter along with the X letter stating that the allegations, “represent a disturbing effort to intimidate those who have the courage to advocate against incitement, hate speech and harmful content online.”

Musk threatens lawsuits, retaliates on Twitter

X owner Elon Musk claims to be a free speech absolutist. However, Musk has retaliated against critics of the platform formerly known as Twitter. The platform suspended an account that tracked Musk's private plane and temporarily banned accounts of journalists.

In June, the Center published a report detailing the proliferation of hate speech on the platform.

“Twitter did not spend its time and resources addressing the hate and disinformation that CCDH had identified, despite Twitter’s purported commitment to addressing hate speech on its platform,” the response letter said.

Earlier this month X Corp. threatened to sue Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook, alleging that the rival social media giant used trade secrets to create its Threads platform.

USA Today has reached out to Alex Spiro, the named author of the letter, for comment and has yet to receive a response.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Elon Musk, X threaten lawsuit against anti-hate speech group, critics