“X” or “Twitter” sues pro-censorship group
Elon Musk's "X" (or Twitter) has filed a lawsuit against the pro-censorship group, Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), which it accused of "actively working to make false and misleading claims that encourage advertisers to suspend investment on the platform”.
“ X is a free public service funded largely by advertisers ,” reads aTwitter blog post. “ Through CCDH's campaign of terror and its continued pressure on brands to prevent public access to free expression, CCDH is actively working to prevent public dialogue .”
The move follows a July 19 Bloomberg article in which the CCDH said an "increase in harmful content" has caused advertisers to steer clear of the free speech platform.
“ Hate speech against minority communities increased during Musk's tenure, according to the CCDH ,” the article reads.
To justify their claim, the CCDH used data from social media analytics provider Brandwatch, which – according to the company, “contained metrics used out of context to make unsubstantiated claims about X (formerly Twitter).”
We help the world's largest brands better understand and shape their brand impact. Recently, we were cited in an article about brand relevance that relied on incomplete and outdated data. It contained metrics used out of context to make unsubstantiated assertions about Twitter.
— Brandwatch (@Brandwatch) July 20, 2023
The Twitter blog then states:
That's why X filed a legal complaint against the CCDH and its supporters. X not only rejects all claims made by the CCDH, but, through our investigation, we have identified several ways in which the CCDH is actively working to impede free expression. That includes:
- Target people across all platforms who speak out on issues CCDH disagrees with.
- Attempt to force deplatforming of users whose opinions do not conform to the ideological agenda of the CCDH.
- Target free speech organizations by focusing on their revenue stream to remove free services for people.
- Attempt to illegally gain unauthorized access to social media platform data and misuse such data.
We have a great responsibility to protect freedom of expression. And we will continue to work with all partners who want to both preserve people's right to express themselves freely, and work equally to create a safe and healthy space for all.
CCDH is run by a gentleman called Imran Ahmed . As noted by journalist Paul Thacker:
The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) came out of nowhere in late 2017 or early 2018. At the time, Ahmed was leaving a job as a policy adviser for members of the UK Labor Party and had just written a book.
As we recount in our newly published book The New Serfdom, the dominance of market fundamentalism has been a disastrous experiment that tore apart social cohesion and solidarity as the gap between the 1% and 99% widened to unprecedented levels. seen since the beginning of the last century. Homeownership, secure employment, and fair wages seem like relics of a bygone era. Meanwhile exploitative workplace practices have created a new servitude leaving many people trapped in insecure, unsatisfying and underpaid jobs with no escape.
It is unclear how this background as a political operative prepared Ahmed to call himself a disinformation expert. His LinkedIn account makes no mention of his work as a political operative in England, although his bio at CCDH states that he is "an authority on social and psychological vilification on social media, such as identity-based hate, extremism, disinformation and conspiracy theories”.
Ahmed now lives in Washington DC and his organization does not provide a list of funders.
In early 2021, CCDH released a report titled “The Disinformation Dozen” which claimed that most of the COVID vaccine misinformation came from just 12 accounts, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Ahmed released the report just as l The Biden administration began rolling out the COVID vaccine and just before the House held hearings on disinformation at social media companies.
Twitter officials at the time began sharing Ahmed's findings, soon after the CCDH released them in March. “The COVID-19 misinformation enforcement team is planning to take action on a handful of accounts that surfaced from the CCDH report,” reads a March 31 email, noting that Ahmded's report was published just before the Chamber held a disinformation hearing in which Facebook's Mark Zuckeberg and Twitter's Jack Dorsy both testified, along with Google CEO Sundar Pichai.
As Thacker further noted earlier this month in a Twitter Files release:
In a misguided campaign the year before, CCDH targeted 10 websites for allegedly posting racist narratives. CCDH alleged in one example that Zero Hedge had published a racist article claiming Black Lives Matter is “basically a revolutionary CIA agent via Soros” and another article suggesting Black Lives Matter was an “Astroturf” campaign by George Soros for “leftists and their agenda to reshape the fabric of American society.
An example of a targeted political attack against opponents of the most extreme left hidden inside a psudo center against online hate. A classic system for imposing political censorship on enemies, but this time the system didn't work. In this "X" broke many games.
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The article “X” or “Twitter” sues a pro-censorship group comes from Scenari Economici .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/x-o-twitter-fa-causa-contro-un-gruppo-pro-censura/ on Fri, 04 Aug 2023 07:00:26 +0000.