(Photo by LEON NEAL/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
A judge has thrown out Elon Musk’s lawsuit against a nonprofit for criticizing Twitter/X.
"This case is about punishing the defendants for their speech,” Judge Charles Breyer wrote in his ruling on Monday.
The remark is ironic considering Musk bought Twitter/X precisely to protect free speech. But in late July, he sued the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) after it claimed Twitter failed to crack down on racist, homophobic, and antisemitic tweets.
Musk’s lawsuit alleged that the CCDH used shady methods, such as data scraping Twitter's content, to falsely conclude that hate speech was running rampant on the platform. The resulting “scare campaign” then drove advertisers away from the social media platform, resulting in at least “tens of millions of dollars” in losses, the suit claimed.
But on Monday, Judge Breyer sided with the CCDH and dismissed Musk’s lawsuit, citing the lack of legal merit. “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 wrote in the 52-page ruling.
In dismissing the lawsuit, the judge cited California’s Anti-SLAPP law, which is designed to protect people's free speech rights when speaking out on issues of public concern. “Accordingly, the acquisition of X Corp. data was newsgathering in furtherance of CCDH’s protected rights,” the judge wrote.
Breyer also noted that Twitter/X didn’t file a defamation lawsuit against the CCDH to prove that the nonprofit had made up false claims against the social media company. “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,” the judge added.
Another problem with Musk’s lawsuit is that it alleged it lost advertising revenue through CCDH’s criticism of the social media platform, rather than improperly scraping data from Twitter/X. “One way we know that this is true is that if CCDH had scraped the X platform and never spoken, there would be no damages,” the judge wrote.
So far, Musk hasn’t responded to the news, but the CCDH is celebrating the ruling as a “win for online information integrity."
"This ruling sends a strong message to those who aim at intimidating and silencing independent research,” CCDH CEO Imran Ahmed tweeted.