Twitter threatens to sue hate speech watchdog for scaring away advertisers

Twitter, owned by transphobic billionaire Elon Musk, has sued a non-profit hate speech watchdog organization for scaring away prospective advertisers with its allegedly “misleading claims” about Twitter’s failure to curb hate speech among the social network’s subscribers.

Twitter sent a July 20 letter to the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) accusing the CCDH of making “troubling and baseless claims that appear calculated to harm Twitter generally, and its digital advertising business specifically.” On Monday night, Twitter announced its lawsuit against CCDH.

Related:

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The Twitter owner is on (another) anti-trans tear.

The claims appeared in a June CCDH report that found that Twitter failed to enforce its own hate speech policies against Twitter Blue subscribers’ accounts that had tweeted abusive messages targeting race, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, and gender identity.

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Some of the tweets included, “[T-slurs] are pedophiles,” “LGBTQ+ rights activists need IRON IN THEIR DIET. Preferably from a #AFiringSquad,” “Hitler was right,” and “The black culture has done more damage [than] the klan ever did.”

Four days after CCDH reported the offending tweets using Twitter’s own tools for flagging hateful conduct, 99% of the tweets and 100% of the accounts remained active.

“The research not only raises concerns that Twitter Blue users can get away with tweeting hateful content, but that they also benefit from algorithmic amplification as a result of their paid subscriptions,” the CCDH wrote in its report.

Twitter’s July 20 letter to the CCDH called the research “false, misleading or both” and accused the organization of using improper methodology, The New York Times reported. The letter also claimed that the CCDH was funded by Twitter’s competitors or foreign governments “in support of an ulterior agenda.”

The CCDH defended itself, stating that it does “not accept any funding from tech companies, governments, or their affiliates,” and pointing out that the organization also reports on other social media platforms like Facebook and TikTok.

“[Musk’s actions] represent a brazen attempt to silence honest criticism and independent research, in the desperate hope that he can stem the tide of negative stories and rebuild his relationship with advertisers,” CCDH executive officer Imran Ahmed said in a statement.

The CCDH responded by sending a July 31 letter to Musk attorney Alex Spiro asking Twitter to “preserve all documents and other information” related to hate speech and disinformation on the platform, The Hill reported. The CCDH’s letter also warned Twitter against “any further attempts… to threaten or intimidate our clients.”

In mid-July, Musk admitted that Twitter has experienced a 50% decrease in advertising revenue, maintains a “heavy debt load,” and currently has a negative cash flow since he took over. Advertisers fled the website after Musk’s takeover, as he fired scores of content moderators and restored the accounts of users who had previously violated the site’s hate speech policies.

In early November 2022, Musk alienated advertisers by promising to “name and shame” any companies who pulled ads from the site. He also damaged some companies’ public images after pranksters used Twitter’s new blue check verification system to imitate them and publish false and offensive messages under their brand names.

Musk later pulled back his name-and-shame threat in a letter to advertisers, promising companies in a letter that Twitter wouldn’t become a “free-for-all hellscape, where anything can be said with no consequences!”

Despite his promise, a March 2023 CCDH report noted that anti-LGBTQ+ tweets accusing queer people of “grooming” children for sexual abuse increased 119% since Musk’s takeover. Five of the accounts most responsible for pushing anti-LGBTQ+ groomer attacks were set to generate up to $6.4 million per year for Twitter in ad revenues, the report noted.

In April, Twitter also quietly revoked a policy that protected transgender people from deliberate misgendering and deadnaming.