Updated Mon, March 25, 2024
'X' logo is seen on the top of the messaging platform X, formerly known as Twitter
By Jonathan Stempel
(Reuters) -A U.S. judge on Monday threw out Elon Musk's lawsuit against a nonprofit group that faulted him for allowing a rise in hate speech on his social media platform X, formerly Twitter.
U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer in San Francisco said it was "evident" that Musk's X Corp sued the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) because he didn't like its criticism, and thought its research would hurt X's image and scare advertisers away.
"X Corp has brought this case in order to punish CCDH for CCDH publications that criticized X Corp--and perhaps in order to dissuade others who might wish to engage in such criticism," Breyer wrote.
"It is impossible to read the complaint and not conclude that X Corp is far more concerned about CCDH's speech than it is its data collection methods," he added.
X, in a statement, said it plans to appeal.
The decision is a blow to Musk, the world's third-richest person, who has for many years styled himself as a free-speech champion.
But since paying $44 billion for Twitter in October 2022, he has faced wide criticism for firing too many people who policed misinformation, and from civil rights groups for allowing more harmful and abusive posts.
Imran Ahmed, chief executive of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, in a statement said Breyer's decision affirms his group's right "to hold accountable social media companies for decisions they make behind closed doors."
Roberta Kaplan, a lawyer for the nonprofit, said the decision shows that Musk "cannot bend the rule of law to his will."
Musk and X have also faced many other lawsuits, including claims by former Twitter executives that Musk improperly withheld severance, and by vendors claiming they haven't been paid.
Tesla, the electric vehicle maker that Musk runs, has separately faced several lawsuits claiming it tolerated the harassment of workers. It has denied those claims.
MUSK TAKEOVER NOT FORESEEABLE
X accused the center of breaching its 2019 user contract by scraping and cherry-picking data to create false and misleading reports that Musk turned X into a haven for hate speech, extremism and misinformation.
According to X's complaint filed last July, the nonprofit designed its "scare campaign" to drive away advertisers, and caused tens of millions of dollars in damages.
X had argued that the nonprofit was bound by Musk’s policy changes, and could have left Twitter if it didn’t like them.
Breyer agreed that X's desire to staunch criticism was "entirely reasonable from a business point of view."
But he said the nonprofit could not have foreseen when it signed up with Twitter that Musk would eventually take over and loosen how it moderated user content.
Breyer also dismissed X's claims against the European Climate Foundation, a nonprofit based in The Hague, Netherlands that promotes efforts to mitigate climate change.
X had accused it of conspiring with the Center for Countering Digital Hate to illegally gather data.
Nathaniel Bach, a lawyer for ECF, said that nonprofit was grateful for the dismissal of Musk's "frivolous" lawsuit.
Musk's own speech has often also drawn complaints.
In November 2023, Musk endorsed an antisemitic post on X that said members of the Jewish community were stoking hatred against white people, saying the user spoke "the actual truth."
Musk has denied being antisemitic and sought to make amends, including in a January visit to the former Nazi death camp Auschwitz in southern Poland.
The case is X Corp v. Center for Countering Digital Hate Inc et al, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, No. 23-03836.
X Suit Against Online Hate-Speech Watchdog Gets Tossed by Judge
Rachel Graf
Mon, March 25, 2024
(Bloomberg) -- A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit by Elon Musk’s X Corp. against a group that monitors online hate speech, concluding that the social media platform’s complaint was aimed at “punishing” criticism of it.
US District Judge Charles Breyer’s ruling Monday is a win for the Center for Countering Digital Hate, which was accused in the suit of falsely stating in a public research report that the social media platform “is overwhelmed with harmful content.”
“X disagrees with the court’s decision and plans to appeal,” the company said in a statement.
Musk, who is among the world’s richest people and is famous for his provocative posts on social media, late last year incited outrage with his endorsement of antisemitic commentary. At the same time, the serial entrepreneur has lashed out at critics who say that toxic speech on X — formerly known as Twitter — has proliferated since he took over the company in 2022.
X alleged in the suit against the Center for Countering Digital Hate that it launched a “scare campaign to drive away advertisers from the X platform.” One report from the center had said Twitter took no action against 99% of 100 Twitter Blue accounts the center reported for “tweeting hate.”
The social media platform claimed the nonprofit obtained the data illegally, then highlighted select information out of context to make X seem inundated with harmful content. X also named Stichting European Climate Foundation as a defendant for allegedly giving the nonprofit access to a secured database that housed data about X.
Musk has voiced similar grievances against multiple organizations that he sued or has threatened to sue. Some advertisers fled the platform after Musk bought it for $44 billion and started making changes, including reinstating formerly banned users and firing content moderators. Many have not returned, and Musk’s own tweets have been the cause of some concern among marketers.
In December, X lost its effort in court to block a California law that seeks to control toxic posts on social media by requiring companies to disclose their content-moderation polices.
Breyer used strong language to side with the center’s argument that X was trying to censor its work.
“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,” the San Francisco judge wrote. “Other times, a complaint is so unabashedly and vociferously about one thing that there can be no mistaking that purpose. This case represents the latter circumstance. This case is about punishing the defendants for their speech.”
The nonprofit said in a statement that the ruling “sent a strong message about seeking to censor those who criticize social media companies, which we are confident will resonate throughout Silicon Valley and beyond.”
The case is X Corp, a Nevada Corporation v. Center for Countering Digital Hate, Inc., 23-cv-03836, US District Court, Northern District of California (San Francisco).
--With assistance from Aisha Counts, Kurt Wagner and Steve Stroth.
©2024 Bloomberg L.P.
Judge Tears Apart Musk’s Lawsuit Over Hate Speech on X
Noah Kirsch
Mon, March 25, 2024
Reuters/Gonzalo Fuentes/File Photo
On Monday, a federal judge emphatically dismissed a lawsuit filed by X against a nonprofit that had raised concerns about harmful content on the social media site, declaring that the lawsuit was transparently a retaliatory ploy.
“Sometimes it is unclear what is driving a litigation,” wrote Judge Charles Breyer, whose brother, Stephen, previously served on the U.S. Supreme Court. “Other times, a complaint is so unabashedly and vociferously about one thing that there can be no mistaking that purpose. This case represents the latter circumstance. This case is about punishing the defendants for their speech.”
X, owned by billionaire Elon Musk, had sued the Center for Countering Digital Hate and other entities in July, alleging that the defendants had unlawfully gained access to its data and had misleadingly cherry-picked posts on the site to claim that it “is overwhelmed with harmful content.”
X said the defendants tried to use those findings to persuade advertisers to withhold spending on the platform. The company claimed it lost tens of millions of dollars as a result.
The CCDH, meanwhile, declared in public statements that the litigation was “a direct assault on our free speech, with the aim of running up legal costs, distracting us from our work, and deterring others from reporting on X.” The nonprofit noted that it was represented by Roberta Kaplan, who secured massive judgments against Donald Trump in his defamation battle with writer E. Jean Carroll.
Musk acquired X, formerly known as Twitter, in late 2022, and he has since faced scrutiny for his allegedly capricious management style and for laying off the vast majority of the firm’s staffers; to some critics, the remaining skeleton crew are less equipped to rein in hate speech and other abuses.
Musk has insisted the platform is thriving and performing better than ever, financially and otherwise.
The Daily Beast.
Elon Musk’s Supreme Court Endgame in Defamation Lawsuit
Rebecca Buckwalter-Poza
SLATE
Mon, March 25, 2024
Late last year, Elon Musk sued nonprofit media watchdog Media Matters for America for defamation. That complaint, filed Nov. 20, alleges that an article by Media Matters showing that X had paired high-profile company ads with pro-Nazi content was somehow contrived, false. By suing, Musk aims to deter Media Matters and other organizations not just from publicizing X’s advertising practices but from fighting disinformation generally. Musk’s suit against Media Matters presents a genuine threat—to the watchdog, of course, but also to the First Amendment itself.
In legal parlance, Musk’s suit against MMFA is a textbook SLAPP suit—an intimidation lawsuit, brought not on merits but as a way to coerce critics into backing down by crushing them with frivolous and expensive civil litigation. Such suits are prohibited in many states for their chilling effects on speech. But there is no overarching federal anti-SLAPP law and no consensus among courts when it comes to applying individual states’ anti-SLAPP laws.
X filed its suit against Media Matters in a federal court friendly to right-wing ideologues and their political plays. The choice of venue is telling: X is based in Nevada, but MMFA is based in Washington—and the reporter who wrote the MMFA report, also named in the complaint, is based in Maryland. And Musk filed suit in the Northern District of Texas. Although changes announced this month by the federal judiciary may prevent such venue shopping in the future, X successfully bid for, and received, assignment of its case to a politically sympathetic judge.
Judge Reed O’Connor is notorious for his 2018 ruling attempting to overturn the Affordable Care Act, a decision tossed by the Supreme Court because O’Connor didn’t have jurisdiction to begin with. He was likewise overruled by that court after ruling that members of the military could defy orders surrounding COVID vaccination, with Justice Brett Kavanaugh writing that O’Connor had wrongly inserted himself “into the Navy’s chain of command.”
The home-court advantages don’t end there. Texas, along with Louisiana and Mississippi, falls under the jurisdiction of the far-right U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, which has barred the application of Texas’ anti-SLAPP law in federal court. Of its 17 active judges, 12 are Republican appointees—and six of those 12 are Trump appointees.
Texas, to which Musk has relocated and is attempting to move as many of his business ventures as possible, has rolled out the red carpet for X Corporation. The day X filed its complaint, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced a complementary fraud investigation into Media Matters. No wonder: X has hired three former Paxton lieutenants to handle the Media Matters case. Judd Stone II is the former state solicitor general, a former law clerk of Justice Antonin Scalia, and a former chief counsel for Sen. Ted Cruz.
In going after Media Matters, X means to weaponize the First Amendment against its critics. Musk has long reveled in alleging liberal-led censorship, even as he censors liberal accounts. Shortly after taking over Twitter, Musk gutted its content moderation infrastructure. He staged a circus by releasing pre-acquisition internal files and claiming that the U.S. government conspired to censor conservatives and, inter alia, cover up the crimes of Hunter Biden. It was all a conspiracy, he said, against “free speech.”
Even in Texas, Musk’s suit would founder before an impartial judge. X’s complaint blames Media Matters for advertisers—among them Apple, Comcast, NBC Universal, and IBM—ending relationships with X Corporation. Musk’s legal manipulations and bombastic attacks on the organization make clear that his intent is to punish Media Matters, driving up legal fees, and deter other journalists from reporting on X.
Even if the Northern District of Texas did have jurisdiction, that court should not find any merit in X’s suit. Whether unable to rebut the Media Matters report or unwilling to settle for citing facts in X’s favor, if any exist, the X complaint instead advances claims almost certain to be proved false.
X asserts that Media Matters “manufactured” white-nationalist content juxtaposed with advertisements and fraudulently portrayed it as X’s doing. Yet, critically, X’s complaint does not deny the heart of Media Matters’ assertion: Users on X could see top advertisers’ content next to hate speech. That’s a major problem for X: In defamation cases, the truth is an absolute defense in every federal court of appeals in the country save one. (The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit alone has held that deploying truth maliciously may still be defamatory.)
X also fails to effectively allege malice. According to X’s legal team, it was just Media Matters, as a result of its “manipulation” of X’s algorithms—and, at most, one other X user, the complaint notes in a throwaway aside—that arrived at pairings of ads with racist, antisemitic, and other white nationalist content. The organization should instead have reported, X claims, on “real users” and “the actual, organic production of content and advertisement pairings.” The claim amounts to arguing that by using X the way a “real” user might, just more efficiently and at scale, and by failing to conform to X’s preferences and parrot its representations—that is, by reporting—Media Matters acted maliciously.
In X and Musk’s version of reality, they are the arbiters and defenders of free speech. Their media strategy—threatening reporters and critics, following with legal action—buttresses that narrative. It’s all part of a more ambitious agenda. The suit should fail, but if ever there were a federal court where it might succeed, it’s the Northern District of Texas. Likewise, the 5th Circuit has proved to be a hyperpartisan venue, the most likely of all appellate courts to allow Musk’s SLAPP suit to proceed. If that’s what happens, corporate titans and right-wing blowhards will be emboldened to weaponize “free speech” against critics, eroding actual freedom of speech.
X’s gambit against Media Matters must be recognized as the cynical trick it is. Musk’s endgame is getting to the Supreme Court. There, X could fight to push First Amendment jurisprudence further rightward, aiding both corporations averse to critique and purveyors of disinformation, giving them new paths to avoiding accountability and retaliating against journalists and watchdogs. For these reasons, among many others, X’s Texas suit against D.C.’s Media Matters poses a profound threat to journalism, the Constitution, and democracy nationwide.
More and More People Leaving Twitter as Elon Musk Ruins It
Mon, March 25, 2024
Late last year, Elon Musk sued nonprofit media watchdog Media Matters for America for defamation. That complaint, filed Nov. 20, alleges that an article by Media Matters showing that X had paired high-profile company ads with pro-Nazi content was somehow contrived, false. By suing, Musk aims to deter Media Matters and other organizations not just from publicizing X’s advertising practices but from fighting disinformation generally. Musk’s suit against Media Matters presents a genuine threat—to the watchdog, of course, but also to the First Amendment itself.
In legal parlance, Musk’s suit against MMFA is a textbook SLAPP suit—an intimidation lawsuit, brought not on merits but as a way to coerce critics into backing down by crushing them with frivolous and expensive civil litigation. Such suits are prohibited in many states for their chilling effects on speech. But there is no overarching federal anti-SLAPP law and no consensus among courts when it comes to applying individual states’ anti-SLAPP laws.
X filed its suit against Media Matters in a federal court friendly to right-wing ideologues and their political plays. The choice of venue is telling: X is based in Nevada, but MMFA is based in Washington—and the reporter who wrote the MMFA report, also named in the complaint, is based in Maryland. And Musk filed suit in the Northern District of Texas. Although changes announced this month by the federal judiciary may prevent such venue shopping in the future, X successfully bid for, and received, assignment of its case to a politically sympathetic judge.
Judge Reed O’Connor is notorious for his 2018 ruling attempting to overturn the Affordable Care Act, a decision tossed by the Supreme Court because O’Connor didn’t have jurisdiction to begin with. He was likewise overruled by that court after ruling that members of the military could defy orders surrounding COVID vaccination, with Justice Brett Kavanaugh writing that O’Connor had wrongly inserted himself “into the Navy’s chain of command.”
The home-court advantages don’t end there. Texas, along with Louisiana and Mississippi, falls under the jurisdiction of the far-right U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, which has barred the application of Texas’ anti-SLAPP law in federal court. Of its 17 active judges, 12 are Republican appointees—and six of those 12 are Trump appointees.
Texas, to which Musk has relocated and is attempting to move as many of his business ventures as possible, has rolled out the red carpet for X Corporation. The day X filed its complaint, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced a complementary fraud investigation into Media Matters. No wonder: X has hired three former Paxton lieutenants to handle the Media Matters case. Judd Stone II is the former state solicitor general, a former law clerk of Justice Antonin Scalia, and a former chief counsel for Sen. Ted Cruz.
In going after Media Matters, X means to weaponize the First Amendment against its critics. Musk has long reveled in alleging liberal-led censorship, even as he censors liberal accounts. Shortly after taking over Twitter, Musk gutted its content moderation infrastructure. He staged a circus by releasing pre-acquisition internal files and claiming that the U.S. government conspired to censor conservatives and, inter alia, cover up the crimes of Hunter Biden. It was all a conspiracy, he said, against “free speech.”
Even in Texas, Musk’s suit would founder before an impartial judge. X’s complaint blames Media Matters for advertisers—among them Apple, Comcast, NBC Universal, and IBM—ending relationships with X Corporation. Musk’s legal manipulations and bombastic attacks on the organization make clear that his intent is to punish Media Matters, driving up legal fees, and deter other journalists from reporting on X.
Even if the Northern District of Texas did have jurisdiction, that court should not find any merit in X’s suit. Whether unable to rebut the Media Matters report or unwilling to settle for citing facts in X’s favor, if any exist, the X complaint instead advances claims almost certain to be proved false.
X asserts that Media Matters “manufactured” white-nationalist content juxtaposed with advertisements and fraudulently portrayed it as X’s doing. Yet, critically, X’s complaint does not deny the heart of Media Matters’ assertion: Users on X could see top advertisers’ content next to hate speech. That’s a major problem for X: In defamation cases, the truth is an absolute defense in every federal court of appeals in the country save one. (The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit alone has held that deploying truth maliciously may still be defamatory.)
X also fails to effectively allege malice. According to X’s legal team, it was just Media Matters, as a result of its “manipulation” of X’s algorithms—and, at most, one other X user, the complaint notes in a throwaway aside—that arrived at pairings of ads with racist, antisemitic, and other white nationalist content. The organization should instead have reported, X claims, on “real users” and “the actual, organic production of content and advertisement pairings.” The claim amounts to arguing that by using X the way a “real” user might, just more efficiently and at scale, and by failing to conform to X’s preferences and parrot its representations—that is, by reporting—Media Matters acted maliciously.
In X and Musk’s version of reality, they are the arbiters and defenders of free speech. Their media strategy—threatening reporters and critics, following with legal action—buttresses that narrative. It’s all part of a more ambitious agenda. The suit should fail, but if ever there were a federal court where it might succeed, it’s the Northern District of Texas. Likewise, the 5th Circuit has proved to be a hyperpartisan venue, the most likely of all appellate courts to allow Musk’s SLAPP suit to proceed. If that’s what happens, corporate titans and right-wing blowhards will be emboldened to weaponize “free speech” against critics, eroding actual freedom of speech.
X’s gambit against Media Matters must be recognized as the cynical trick it is. Musk’s endgame is getting to the Supreme Court. There, X could fight to push First Amendment jurisprudence further rightward, aiding both corporations averse to critique and purveyors of disinformation, giving them new paths to avoiding accountability and retaliating against journalists and watchdogs. For these reasons, among many others, X’s Texas suit against D.C.’s Media Matters poses a profound threat to journalism, the Constitution, and democracy nationwide.
More and More People Leaving Twitter as Elon Musk Ruins It
Frank Landymore
Mon, March 25, 2024
Masterful Gambit
Whatever you think of X-formerly-Twitter more than a year after Elon Musk's takeover — whether, perhaps, you think inescapable porn bot spam and paid-for blue check reply guys are worth enduring — the numbers don't lie. A mix of new data shows that the number of daily X users has been falling dramatically, NBC reports, as the chaotic social network struggles to stabilize.
According to research from market analysis firm Sensor Tower, X had 27 million active daily app users — defined as someone who "registered a session of at least two seconds in length, once in that day" — in the US this February, which is a staggering 18 percent down from a year before.
And if you start from November 2022, the first full month of Musk's leadership, that figure plunges further down to 23 percent.
It looks even worse compared to its competitors. Out of Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat — all of which have had a net decline in US app users since that November — TikTok had the largest at 9.5 percent, which still isn't even half of what X has lost.
Lousy Leadership
There's no shortage of explanations for the dropoff. Upon taking control, Musk began carrying out layoffs that would eventually see over half of X's workforce cut down, including key engineers. Since then, the site's functionality has noticeably declined.
He's also implemented controversial changes to some of its key features, such as ditching its old verified program in favor of allowing users to pay for a checkmark instead, cheapening a symbol that had long been a badge of authenticity and immediately leading to a flood of public figures being impersonated.
Not least of all, Musk's personal presence on the platform has been repulsive to both users and advertisers. With a dubious commitment to free speech, the platform has seen an uptick in hate speech since his takeover, fueled by its owner's penchant for racist, anti-semitic, and "anti-woke" rants.
Number Fumble
Still, figures shared by X paint a healthier picture. On Monday, it claimed that 250 million people were using its app daily across the globe, which NBC notes is still 8 million less than what was claimed at the start of Musk's takeover. Monthly, it claims to boast a tally of 550 million.
Some would argue that those numbers don't add up. Notably, X doesn't explain how it counts active users, NBC notes. It also claims that 1.7 million users join X every day — but according to research firm Apptopia, that's triple the amount of daily downloads of the app globally.
There's still some wiggle room to be had with the exact numbers, it seems — but anecdotally, the mass of exodus of users from the platform is hard to argue against, so the real question seems to be whether it's recouping those losses with new or returning users. If the research firms are to be believed, the answer seems to be a firm "no."
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