On Monday, a federal judge in California dismissed X’s lawsuit against a nonprofit that studies online hate speech, ruling that the social media company’s case was intended to punish researchers for speaking freely on the social media platform formerly referred to as Twitter.
In July, X sued the Center for Countering Digital Hate in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California after the organization published several articles claiming that its researchers found a rise in hate speech on the platform after Elon Musk took power. X said the group’s research was harming its business by scaring off advertisers, costing it tens of millions of dollars.
However, the court ruled that X’s lawsuit was an try to punish the group for speaking negatively about the company, and that its work was protected by law.
“Sometimes it is not clear what is at the heart of a dispute, and only by reading between the lines of a complaint can one try to guess the plaintiff’s true purpose,” wrote Judge Charles R. Breyer in his transient. ruling on Monday. “Other times, a complaint is about one thing so brazenly and loudly that you can’t doubt its purpose.” He added: “This case is about punishing the defendants for their speech.”
The ruling is a blow to Musk, who has used legal threats to combat critics of his social media platform. In November, he sued the media group Media Matters for America after it published a report that ads on X appeared next to neo-Nazi posts.
“We are creating the costs of lies and hate,” said Imran Ahmed, chief executive of the Center for Countering Digital Hate. “The courts today affirmed our fundamental right to analyze, speak out, advocate, and hold social media firms accountable for the decisions they make behind closed doors that impact our youngsters, our democracy, and our fundamental human rights and freedoms. “civic”.
X said in statement that it plans to appeal the decision and can proceed to take legal motion against the organization for “illegally obtaining data from the platform to create misleading research.”
The case was one in every of many legal disputes currently between Mr. Musk and Mr. The company is suing the law firm that represented it before Mr. Musk’s takeover, alleging that it charged unreasonably high fees. Former Twitter executives are also suing the company, alleging that Musk wrongly withheld their severance pay.
Additionally, Mr. Musk is suing OpenAI, the artificial intelligence lab he co-founded, alleging that the company violated his policies. (The New York Times is also suing OpenAI and Microsoft over misuse of copyrighted material.)
