Musk threatens to sue researchers who documented the rise in hateful tweets
apnews.com
A nonprofit organization that researches links between social media, hate and extremism has been threatened with a lawsuit by X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.

Twitter is threatening legal action against the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a nonprofit that researches hate speech and content moderation on social media platforms.

The letter from Twitter’s lawyers alleges that CCDH’s research publications are intended to ‘harm Twitter’s business by driving advertisers away from the platform with incendiary claims.’

This is a pretty bold move from Twitter, especially considering that CCDH is a well-respected organization that has been doing this kind of research for years. And it’s especially ironic coming from Elon Musk, who has said that he’s a ‘free speech absolutist.’

But Musk has also shown that he’s sensitive to criticism, so it’s not surprising that he’s taking this kind of action against CCDH

  • WhirlybirdEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    I think what he’s saying is that they’re trying to pressure advertisers to abandon twitter by releasing this very dubiously compiled report. Their methodology outlined in the report absolutely does not stand up to scrutiny.

    What the report counts as a rise in hate speech is more so just a rise in discussion around a term that this company decided is hate speech - even if the discussion is anti-hate speech. From the report:

    Note that this analysis captures the volume of discourse around the ‘groomer’ narrative, which includes tweets defending the LGBTQ+ community as well as those leveling the slurs

    So 1 person saying “that queer person is a groomer!” followed by 10000 people saying “shut up idiot, they’re not a groomer” is counted in this report as 10001 instances of hate speech.

    • madjo@geddit.socialEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      Interesting. That’s indeed bad if true, but still not lawsuit worthy unless you want a Streisand effect to apply here.

      • WhirlybirdEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        It’s 100% true, their methodology is explained the report. It’s not worth the paper it’s printed on because of their methodology in that alone, because literally the rest of the report is based on those numbers.

        They declared something as hate speech, even though it’s not, and then just counted total tweets and retweets around that “narrative” as hate speech, and then used that to say that hate speech has increased 3x, even though 99% of what they just classified as hate speech could be people telling the one person that used hate speech that they’re wrong.