Judge tosses Elon Musk’s X lawsuit against anti-hate group

In a decision filed Monday, federal Judge Charles Breyer dismissed a lawsuit from Elon Musk’s X against the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), saying the company’s case is “about punishing the Defendants [CCDH] for their speech.”

Judge Breyer writes that X’s “motivation in bringing this case is evident,” stating that the company’s goal is to “punish CCDH for CCDH publications that criticized X Corp. — and perhaps in order to dissuade others” from criticizing X in the future. “If CCDH’s publications were defamatory, that would be one thing, but X Corp. has carefully avoided saying that they are,” the filing reads.

The CCDH is an organization aimed at identifying and pushing back against hate speech online. Last year, the CCDH found that X didn’t address hateful content posted by 99 percent of premium users and that the platform failed to take swift action against over 200 blatantly racist and antisemitic posts.

Musk’s X sued the CCDH in July 2023 over claims the organization “embarked on a scare campaign” to drive advertisers away from the platform, resulting in the loss of “tens of millions of dollars” in ad revenue. The lawsuit also alleged the CCDH breached X’s terms of service by “unlawfully” scraping data from the platform to create “unsubstantiated and incorrect” reports.

However, Judge Breyer dismissed X’s claims of a breach of contract, along with the lawsuit’s allegations that the CCDH violated the law by “scraping” data from X to perform research. The dismissal says X failed to “adequately allege loss.”

“We hope this landmark ruling will embolden public-interest researchers everywhere to continue, and even intensify, their vital work of holding social media companies accountable for the hate and disinformation they host and the harm they cause,” CCDH CEO Imran Ahmed says in a statement published on the organization’s website.

Last November, X also sued the nonprofit organization Media Matters, which published a report saying that X posted ads for major brands next to pro-Nazi content.