A lawsuit from X, formerly known as Twitter, against a nonprofit group that has highlighted a rise in hate speech on the social media platform since its $44 billion acquisition by Elon Musk could be thrown out, a US judge has indicated.

The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) made waves in mid 2023 when it published a report that showed increasing levels of bigotry and other forms of hate speech on the platform. Musk’s X subsequently launched a lawsuit, accusing the nonprofit of causing it tens of millions of dollars in damages via a ‘scare campaign’.

X also accused the organisation of breaching its user contract by improperly scraping and cherry-picking data to create false and misleading reports.

Upon buying Twitter, Musk made a series of controversial decisions including firing large swathes of the company’s moderation teams and reinstating high-profile far-right and neonazi accounts.

In a video conference, US District Judge Charles Breyer poured cold water on X’s case, telling X lawyer Jon Hawk that he was sceptical that when the CCDH entered the standard user contract, it could have seen a situation in which Musk would buy Twitter and reinstate the accounts.

"You're telling me ... it was foreseeable that Twitter would change its policy and allow these people to have access," he said. "I am trying to figure out, in my mind, how that's possibly true, because I don't think it is."

Hawk said that the organisation could have left the platform following Musk’s purchase, stating: “When CCDH agreed to stay on the platform, it agreed to successors' versions of the policy.”

Hawk said the nonprofit could have left X if it didn't like Musk's changes. “When CCDH agreed to stay on the platform, it agreed to successors' versions of the policy,” he said.

A lawyer for the CCDH said that X’s lawsuit violated laws in California which are designed to stop lawsuits intended to silence critics. The lawyer said that it was “implausible” that the nonprofit scraped Twitter, and said that it was not liable for advertisers’ decisions not to use the platform.

The lawyer, John Quinn, said: “CCDH used a tool that runs searches for certain people to see what public tweets are being put out, and then they commented on it. X didn't have any issues with that until advertisers reacted to the content of the report."

He added that giving X "the power to say, anybody who uses our search function and looks at tweets, if you use an automated tool in any way, we can come after you, sue you, drag you into court ... runs straight into speech principles."

Hawk insisted that X did not sue for these reasons, and that it was for “the security of data”.

The judge gave no indication of when he would rule on the case, or if X could file and amended complaint if he dismissed it.

---