After the Center for Countering Digital Hate reported that hate speech has soared on the website formerly known as Twitter, now rebranded as “X,” Elon Musk responded by filing a lawsuit against the center over the research, calling the group “evil” and its CEO Imran Ahmed a “rat.” X accuses the watchdog group of unlawfully accessing data to “falsely claim it had statistical support showing the platform is overwhelmed with harmful content.” This comes as Musk has laid off about 80% of the workforce at X, including a large number of content moderators, and shut down its Trust and Safety Council. “When there is hate and disinformation being algorithmically amplified into billions of timelines, it’s perfectly right that people that oppose the spread, the production and distribution of hate seek to research it and seek to put that out into the public sphere,” says Ahmed. While Musk calls himself a “free speech absolutist,” silencing critics is his “go-to tactic to avoid accountability,” says Nora Benavidez, senior counsel and director of Digital Justice and Civil Rights at Free Press.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.