CCDH Challenges Twitter’s Failure to Remove Hate Speech Since Elon Musk’s Takeover as CEO

Twitter, the popular social media platform, is facing a legal threat from the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a nonprofit organization. The threat comes in response to CCDH’s research into Twitter’s failure to take down hate speech since Elon Musk took over as CEO.

X Corp., the parent company of Twitter, sent a letter to CCDH accusing the group of making “inflammatory, outrageous, and false or misleading assertions” about the platform. Specifically, the letter cited one research report claiming that Twitter had failed to remove hateful tweets from paid accounts.

In response, CCDH researchers used Twitter’s reporting mechanism to flag 100 tweets from paid “Twitter Blue” subscribers that CCDH saw as violating Twitter’s policies, including “racist, homophobic, neo-Nazi, antisemitic or conspiracy” content.

Elon Musk’s lawyer, Alex Spiro, has since responded to the legal threat, claiming that the research was “calculated to harm Twitter generally, and its digital advertising business specifically.” He further argued that the research was “inaccurate and misleading” and that the CCDH had “no basis” to make the claims.

The CCDH has since released a statement, claiming that they are “committed to fighting hate speech and misinformation online and will not be intimidated by legal threats.” They also stated that they will continue to hold Twitter accountable for its failure to remove hateful content from its platform.