Misinformation Inc. has had quite a time of it over the past few years while functioning as another propaganda arm of the Democratic Party. But now it appears someone is finally fighting back, and his name is Elon Musk. The owner of X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, has threatened legal action against one of the major players in the misinformation industry.
Musk has reached out to the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a nonprofit organization that focuses on addressing hate speech, disinformation, and supposed extremism on social media platforms. The group conducts research and compiles reports in order to advocate for policies designed to impede the spread of problematic content and misinformation online. He sent a letter threatening to sue them for spreading deceptive narratives about the company:
Elon Musk has over the last year threatened legal action against tech competitors, employees and people who use Twitter, which he owns. Now he is also taking aim at an organization that studies hate speech and misinformation on social media.
X Corp., the parent company of the social media company, sent a letter on July 20 to the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a nonprofit that conducts research on social media, accusing the organization of making “a series of troubling and baseless claims that appear calculated to harm Twitter generally, and its digital advertising business specifically,” and threatening to sue.
The letter cited research published by the Center for Countering Digital Hate in June examining hate speech on Twitter, which Mr. Musk has renamed X.com. The research consisted of eight papers, including one that found that Twitter had taken no action against 99 percent of the 100 Twitter Blue accounts the center reported for “tweeting hate.” The letter called the research “false, misleading or both” and said the organization had used improper methodology.
The letter added that the center was funded by Twitter’s competitors or foreign governments “in support of an ulterior agenda.”
CCDH has joined other organizations and media outlets in launching smear campaigns against Twitter since Musk took the platform over. Like their allies, they falsely claim Musk has done little or nothing to combat the spread of “hate speech” on the platform despite his showing data proving the opposite. This, along with other factors, has taken a toll on the company’s advertising revenue:
Twitter’s advertising business has been struggling under the ownership of Mr. Musk, who bought the company last year. U.S. ad revenue for the five weeks from April 1 to the first week of May was $88 million, down 59 percent from a year earlier. Advertisers may have been spooked by Mr. Musk’s changes to the social network, including the removal of rules of what can or can’t be said on the service and more ads featuring online gambling and marijuana products.
The world of misinformation has been rather beneficial to the hard left, which never saw an opposing view it didn’t want to censor. The idea to label any opposing viewpoint as “misinformation” and “disinformation” was a rather clever way to deceive the public into embracing progressive narratives on everything from COVID-19 to elections. It has become a cottage industry of sorts.
The problem is that organizations like CCDH often lie to smear their political opposition. Almost exclusively, they target conservatives and libertarian figures on the internet with the intent of getting them censored or banned. Considering this, it can be no surprise that CCDH went after Twitter for the same reason.
It is worth noting that all social media platforms have issues enforcing their terms of service – not only Twitter. Under Musk, the company has made strides in removing material it deems to be problematic from its platform. However, the new direction of the platform is about the free expression of ideas, which is the real problem progressives seem to have. The social media site clearly has issues – just like any other platform. But the notion that organizations like CCDH would single it out shows that it’s highly likely there’s a political motivation here.
