A lawyer representing the social network wrote to the Center to Counter Digital Intolerance on July 20, threatening legal action over the nonprofit’s investigation into hate speech and content moderation. The letter alleged that the center’s investigative posts appear designed to “hurt Twitter’s business by driving advertisers away from the platform with inflammatory claims.”
Musk is an avowed free speech absolutist who has welcomed back white supremacists and election deniers to the platform, which he renamed X earlier this month. But the billionaire has sometimes been sensitive to criticism leveled at him or his companies.
The center is a non-profit organization with offices in the United States and Great Britain. Regularly post reports on bigoted speech, extremism or harmful behavior on social media platforms like X, TikTok or Facebook.
The organization has published several reports criticizing Musk’s leadership, detailing an increase in anti-LGBTQ discourse as well as climate misinformation since his purchase. The letter from X’s lawyer cited a specific report from June that found the platform failed to remove neo-Nazi and anti-LGBTQ content from verified users that violated the platform’s rules.
In the letter, attorney Alex Spiro questioned the investigators’ expertise and accused the center of trying to damage X’s reputation. The letter also suggested, without evidence, that the center receives funding from some of X’s competitors, despite that the center has also published reports criticizing TikTok, Facebook and other platforms.
