Democrats criticize Musk’s lawsuit against researchers, hate speech on X

Elon Musk, the owner of X, formerly known as Twitter, is facing pressure from Democrats over the proliferation of hate speech on the platform and the company’s efforts to push back on a group researching the hateful content on the site. 

Reps. Lori Trahan (D-Mass.), Sean Casten (D-Ill.) and Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) sent Musk a letter Tuesday slamming the company’s “hostile stance” toward a group that researched hate speech Twitter, after Musk through filed a lawsuit against it. 

The letter comes after Musk’s lawyers sued the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), an organization that tracks online hate speech and misinformation. 

The group and other researchers “regularly study trends of potentially harmful behavior on social media platforms and post articles detailing their findings,” including of X’s competitors like Meta, Google and TikTok, the Democrats wrote. 

“However, under your leadership, X is taking a hostile stance toward those efforts, further contributing to existing concerns about X’s abilities to effectively address the harms that exist on your platform,” they added. 

The letter also asked for details about how the platform allows researchers to gather data, repeating a request the three Democrats made from X in March. 

“Independent researchers play an outsize role in providing transparency and accountability into not just X, but all social media platforms. However, by filing suit against the CCDH, X is uniquely resisting those important efforts and stifling unbiased research in the public interest. Therefore, in light of X’s most recent attempt to avoid transparency, we ask the same questions once again,” they wrote in Tuesday’s letter. 

The Hill reached out to Twitter for comment in response to the letter. 

Twitter sued CCDH on Tuesday over allegations the nonprofit improperly gained access to data on the platform for its research monitoring the site. The lawsuit alleged the group is responsible for the loss of “tens of millions of dollars” in advertising revenue. 

CCDH revealed on Monday that the company had threatened to sue it. The group sent its own letter in response cautioning against further action and doubling down on its report published in June that said Twitter failed to act on 99 percent of hate posted by subscribers to Twitter Blue.