A federal judge in San Francisco has dismissed a lawsuit brought by Elon Musk and the X social media platform against a self-styled hate speech watchdog organization called the Center For Countering Digital Hate (CCDH).
X Corp. had filed a complaint in July last year, alleging the CCDH had illegally scraped data off the social media platform and cherry-picked said data to bolster a narrative that the social media platform is “overwhelmed by harmful content” and used said narrative to scare companies into diverting their advertising dollars away from the platform.
U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer, of California’s Northern federal court district, dismissed the lawsuit on Monday, concluding the social media platform had not demonstrated sufficient likelihood its case would succeed on the merits and appeared to instead be trying to punish CCDH for otherwise permissible free speech.
“Sometimes it is unclear what is driving a litigation, and only by reading between the lines of a complaint can one attempt to surmise a plaintiff’s true purpose. Other times, a complaint is so unabashedly and vociferously about one thing that there can be no mistaking that purpose,” Judge Breyer wrote of the lawsuit. “This case represents the latter circumstance. This case is about punishing the Defendants for their speech.”
CCDH CEO Imrah Ahmed welcomed Judge Breyer’s decision in a post on the X platform on Monday, saying, “This ruling sends a strong message to those who aim at intimidating and silencing independent research.”
X expressed disappointment with the ruling.
“X disagrees with the court’s decision and plans to appeal,” the social media company’s news page said Monday.
X Alleged CCDH Manipulated Data to Censor Platform
The original complaint filed by X had cast the CCDH as a proponent of censorship.
The complaint alleged the CCDH routinely produces dubious “research” reports targeting organizations and individuals who have differing views on topics like COVID-19 vaccinations, abortion, and climate change. X accused the organization of employing a number of tactics to create an inflated sense of hateful content online “like labeling as ‘hate speech’ content that merely does not conform to CCDH’s ideological views, and counting the number of mentions of selectively chosen keywords on a platform while ignoring the context in which those words were mentioned.”
X has maintained a relationship with an organization called Brandwatch, providing the organization with data to enable customers to conduct brand monitoring and marketing research. The complaint alleges that as many as 50 unknown Doe defendants improperly allowed the CCDH to access data the X platform had shared with Brandwatch, unbeknownst to both X and Brandwatch leaders.
The X lawsuit alleges the CCDH should be liable for breaching the X social media platform’s terms of service. The lawsuit further alleges that the CCDH and any other Doe defendants should be liable for breach of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, interfering with contractual relations between X and Brandwatch, and taking actions that would have breached the X–Brandwatch contract.
X Raised No Defamation Cause of Action
While X said CCDH and the other defendants should be liable for specific contractual and terms of service claims, the lawsuit did not specifically argue that CCDH is liable for any defamatory behavior. CCDH noted the lack of a defamation claim in their motion to dismiss the case.
“Conspicuously, X Corp. has not asserted a defamation claim—understandably so, since it cannot allege that the CCDH Defendants said anything knowingly false, nor does it wish to invite discovery on the truth about the content on its platform,” CCDH’s November motion to dismisses reads. “Instead, X Corp. has ginned up baseless claims purporting to take issue with how the CCDH Defendants gathered data that formed the basis for their research and publications. Each theory is flimsier and more absurd than the last.”
Judge Breyer noted X’s lack of defamation claims in his order dismissing the case.
“Whatever X Corp. could or could not allege, it plainly chose not to bring a defamation claim. As the Court commented at the motion hearing, that choice was significant,” he wrote. “It is apparent to the Court that X Corp. wishes to have it both ways—to be spared the burdens of pleading a defamation claim, while bemoaning the harm to its reputation, and seeking punishing damages based on reputational harm.”
