Elon Musk’s X sues Center for Countering Digital Hate over Twitter scrutiny

Elon Musk’s X Corp. sued the Center for Countering Digital Hate and accused the nonprofit watchdog of unlawfully accessing data to fuel a smear campaign to scare advertisers away from his company.

The center said Mr. Musk is attempting to stifle criticism and thwart research into the rise of hate and lies on his social media platform.

The X platform, formerly known as Twitter, is styling the exploding legal dispute as a fight for free speech that the center views as a defense of hate speech.

“The Center for Countering Digital Hate and its backers have been actively working to assert false and misleading claims encouraging advertisers to pause investment on the platform,” X said in a blog post. “X is a free public service funded largely by advertisers.”

X’s lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on Monday alleges that the center breached its contract with the social media platform, violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and intentionally interfered with contracts.

The lawsuit said the center is steering a “scare campaign” to drive advertisers away from X.

“CCDH has done this by engaging in a series of unlawful acts designed to improperly gain access to protected X Corp. data, needed by CCDH so that it could cherry-pick from the hundreds of millions of posts made each day on X and falsely claim it had statistical support showing the platform is overwhelmed with harmful content,” the lawsuit said.

The center has responded in statements on its website — and on Mr. Musk’s X platform.

The center shared news articles covering the threatened litigation as evidence that the “richest man in the world wants to silence CCDH.”

“We won’t let arrogant billionaires bully us,” the center said on X on Tuesday.

The center said on its website it received a letter threatening legal action against the nonprofit last week because of its “exposing the proliferation of hate and lies on Twitter” since Mr. Musk’s takeover last year.

“Elon Musk’s actions represent a brazen attempt to silence honest criticism and independent research in the desperate hope that he can stem the tide of negative stories and rebuild his relationship with advertisers,” the center said Monday.

The center alleges that hate and disinformation have skyrocketed on Twitter since Mr. Musk took over and has organized a #StopToxicTwitter campaign to urge big brands to boycott the social media platform.

X’s lawsuit said the center’s efforts to get advertisers to boycott the platform have worked.

“In direct response to CCDH’s efforts, some companies have paused their advertising spend on X,” the lawsuit said. “CCDH’s unlawful conduct as alleged herein has directly and proximately damaged X Corp. in an amount to be proved at trial, but in any event at least tens of millions of dollars that X Corp. estimates it has lost in advertising revenues and other costs incurred.”