Twitter sues Brit non-profit, claims hate-speech reports scared off advertisers Twitter, lately known as X Corp, is suing the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) for allegedly harming its advertising business by documenting vitriol on the social network. The lawsuit [PDF] was filed on Monday in federal court in San Francisco. It alleges CCDH – a UK-based non-profit – and its US-based office in …
Elongated Muskrat thinks that his oh-so-important "first amendment rules" on free speech apply to the rest of the world. Luckily, in the UK, free speech is limited by rules on hate. And too right, they want to put people off twitter: that's the whole point. Musk lets all the right-wing nutjobs have their say and yes of course it's going to put advertisers off. He hasn't got a fucking clue what he's up against, the pot-infused narcisist.
Actually, I think he does have a clue as to what he's up against. We used to know it as fascism, a totalitarian ideology that seeks to control how people think and act that's characterized by mob rule masquerading as populism.
FYI -- I'm not a Twitter/X user, I don't own any shares in Musk related businesses and so on. I'm just an observer but what I see isn't pretty. Fortunately I live in the US where our libel laws are a bit more flexible than those in the UK ("First Amendment" is for government). I do like free speech even though the price we pay for it is that we have to wade through all sorts of BS, a lot of it not very savory (but at least we don't have to put up with the police ticketing us for 'hate speech' due to some he said/she said spurious allegation).
I've literally never seen a single thing that I would consider actionable on Mastadon under UK law. But Twitter? Holy shit. Porn, hate speech, racism... And it gets promoted to the top of your feed because they paid for Bluetick! And the weird stuff too - I looked at one female tech entrepreneur's feed, and got served, second tweet down, with an advert offering to buy feet pictures, from @feet_whisperer! Yes, Coke, Unilever, etc are all desperate to be next to that weirdness, I'm sure...
As I said on Mastadon when this news came out, discovery is going to be a bitch, elno!
Mastodon is not a platform. It is a federation of servers linked by a protocol.
Good servers block bad servers. So, "normal" Mastodon. The kind of experience you would get as a user signing up to a "normal" server? You won't see CSAM or the like. Any server that allows such things would be defederated immediately.
But, you could join a dodgy server, and see the content it hosts and any other dodgy servers it federates with.
So, declaring the software "Mastodon" as being rife with CSAM is misguided at best, just plain nonsense at worst.
No, he is saying you are fascist, the left
Disagreeing with someone is not hate speech
Having an opinion is not hate speech
Hate speech is, attacking someone for their appearance, sexuality, allegiance, membership, opposing views, etc
Instead of telling someone they cannot say a) b) or c), try instead and ask with the aim of understanding why someone said something you disagreed with
You’re welcome
The problem with hate speech is it is, as with beauty, in the eye of the beholder.
As someone once said "hate speech is free speech".
Where the real hate speech is, is in places like MSNBC here in the US. Which runs a constant stream of anti-white rhetoric that promotes violence against white people!
Given that the word's roots are Latin, via Italian, the Italian Partito Nazionale Fascista, the Italian Fasci Italiani di Combattimento the Italian Fasci d'Azione Rivoluzionaria, and the Italian Fascio Rivoluzionario d'Azione Internazionalista I think claiming a French origin might be a bit off the mark.
The problem with people like you seems to be that you can't tell the difference between Free Speech as in "I'm posting my opinion, no matter how wrong it is, and it's fine to disagree" and Free Speech as in "I'm posting lies but presenting them as fact and anybody who disagrees with me is a ******** ****** ****** and I'm gonna go round their house and ***** their *****".
The first is fine. The second wouldn't be permitted in most IRL public spaces even by people like you.
In the interests of balance, I will point out that I have seen posts matching both those descriptions from people on both sides of the political spectrum. This isn't a left vs right thing, this is a decent people vs dickheads thing.
A lot of people here seem to think that "hate speech is just things the left/the wokeratir/the liberal elite" don't like. It's not. It's speech that can have unpleasant consequences in the real world for real people.
If you are claiming that denigrating refugees as rapists and criminals, or claiming that Muslims are busy forming child grooming gangs, or any of the other evidence free abuse dished out against minorities is fine, you've probably never had a brick chucked at you because someone didn't like the look of you, or been sworn at on a bus for having the temerity to be visibly not white in public. So carry on being a proud free speech warrior, safe in the knowledge that someone else who isn't like you will be the one who bears the brunt of the hate speech you want to defend.
After he's routinely stiffed most orgs that do business with Twitter for major dollars already, would you work without cash up front from him?
Anyone of conscience has long since left left the platform and/or doing business with them, I presume it's only bottom-feeders left now, and these sorts of lawsuits expose that even more.
He didn’t like Top Gear free speech. Tried taking BBC to court and got told to grow up by the judge.
I’m hoping that he tries to litigate against somebody documenting bad stuff on x, the only defence required is “was this stuff really on twitter?” …. “Yes”…. “Grow up Elon”.
I would be interested if any US based commentators can explain the extent to which 'scraping' can be the cause of a civil action. I'm assuming the desired remedy is monetary compensation. Any ideas on how such compensation would be assessed?
PS: UK criminal law regarding hate speech is well articulated through statute and case law. Please remember that the UK has had a right of centre government since around 2010 or so. Quite far to the right with a huge majority and the ability to pass any legislation it wishes to since 2019. One assumes that they are comfortable with the present arrangements.
Icon: Rishi's off up North again
FWIR, from Techdirt last week or so: scraping is generally considered legal in most of the US. It’s possible the issue hasn’t been addressed in all federal court circuits yet though. (Circuit court rulings are not binding on each other, only the Supreme Court is.)
Yes and no. If this non-profit is positioning the unpleasant stuff on this frankly huge platform disproportionately then Musk might have a point. Twitter is a cess pit in places. If you go looking for dirt, you will find it quickly. But if you go looking for positivity you can too. I don't know how the non-profit was positioning it but you'd hope it was based on statistics not anecdotes. Advertisers know that Twitter has some dark and dingy corners, and many still decide that the positives outweigh the negatives. Personally I think most of social media has gone past the point of no return and serves no positive purpose any more.
He keeps amazing us with his ability to find new feet to shoot.
After a nose-dive take-over
And a clueless sackings policy
And two fingers (a few times) to his main sources of revenue, the advertisers
And a keystone-cops rebranding.
Now he does it again.
Coming soon to a train wreck near you:- I'm the only one allowed free speech.
Will the banks get him to listen or have they lost all their money?
Don't miss next weeks exciting episode, the one you'll all want to see, where Musk appoints himself ambassador to Mars.
The banks lost their money when Musk started shouting that Twitter was worthless: after the banks were committed to fund the deal but before they had Twitter debt in their hands that they could sell on to greater fools. Musk spent months bad mouthing Twitter between signing the merger agreement and actually following through on his irrevocable commitment. Musk got the perceived value of Twitter debt down to 60% of its face value when he took over and has been working tirelessly to drop its value further since then.
Musk had Twitter borrow more than he needed to buy Twitter, which left a large positive balance in Twitter's bank account. Musk has used that money to make the interest payments on Twitter's debt. Things will get interesting that money runs out.
《Don't miss next weeks exciting episode, the one you'll all want to see, where Musk appoints himself ambassador to Mars.》
Didn't Mongo's defeated Ming the Merciless end up on Mars too?
This musk melon is quite fruity enough to upstage Ming.
"Will the banks get him to listen or have they lost all their money?
Don't miss next weeks exciting episode, the one you'll all want to see, where Musk appoints himself ambassador to Mars."
Elon still needs large business banks for his other businesses. If Tesla finds it difficult to get lines of credit and loans while Elon remains in charge, the BoD may have no alternative but to sack him to protect shareholders. The same could go for The Boring Company and Neuralink. SpaceX is kept afloat through rounds of private investment, but still needs banks to mediate payments from it's Falcon launch program, the only unit making money.
Musk declared himself the Imperator of Mars. I don't think he'd demote himself to being a mere ambassador.
“Twitter is making millions of dollars as anti-LGBTQ+ ‘grooming’ rhetoric jumps 119% under Elon Musk”, Research.
On their website, notice how criticism of child groom is equated with criticism of the alphabet people. It's got so bad that the actual word ‘grooming’ is forbidden on a certain forum•, leading to instant account suspension. Not even the word paedophilia, it's now called Minor Attracted Persons (MAPS). An attempt to normalise kiddie fiddling. Du'ya see maps is just one varient in the rich pantheon of human sexual expression /s
• That certain forum being one of the worst on the Internet. It's like being stuck in a movie where every character is "Haywire" from Prison Break.
• Witness the reaction to the Sound of Freedom, “the QAnon-adjacent thriller” (Guardian). Who would go out of their way to discredit the movie and what would be their motivation?
This post has been deleted by its author
" It does not identify any supposed competitor that is apparently funding CCDH, rather X Corp intends to supply those names if any such parties exist and can be identified through discovery."
That's pretty much the definition of a fishing expedition, isn't it? We don't have any evidence. But if we sue, we think we can find it.
The CCDH is not a charity, it's a lobbying outfit with a revolving door of past and future UK Labour Party advisors (of which the article makes no mention, but the author still felt the need to point out that Musk does indeed own Twitter) . Regardless of our respective political leanings, have we not seen enough "misinformation" turn out to be "information" to realize any government-affiliated censorship outfit is probably a bad thing?
Couldn't care less if Twitter fails, but I hope they take as many "disinformation" crusaders down with them as possible. If people have no faith in the information you disseminate, that's on you, not some random dude posting about reptiles taking over the world.
You just need to look at the Beeb and their coverage of the Farage banking thing. Now the guy is a prat extraordinaire for sure but the Beeb, who launched their 'verify' thing a little while back, were happy to blab out unverified info without too much care.
"How do you know which are Future advisors?"
Say hello to the new boss, same as the old boss.
Most governments have installed several revolving doors on their palaces. Many of the prominent public trough feeders keep popping up in appointed positions if they lose an elected post depending on the number of skeleton filled closets they have maps for. A lower tier is as a lobbyist for a group of as a advisor for governmental affairs at a large corporation.
According to their own website they are a non-profit organisation. Only one of the listed board members has ever had any connection with the Labour party. Maybe you see it as a revolving door for Labour advisers because it tends to be people on the left who want to fight against hate and misinformation, while people on the right are perfectly happy for death threats and lies to be spread online?
>> If people have no faith in the information you disseminate, that's on you, not some random dude posting about reptiles taking over the world.
I'd like to be able to agree with this part, but the problem is when random dudes start posting nonsense about vaccines being dangerous and the leads directly to thousands of children dying of preventable diseases, that's really something a decent society ought to do something about.
I mean only this week Twitter/X(crement) allows Kan'Ye' West back on to there platform. This is a documented antisemitic who thinks Hitler did a lot of things right. And yet Elon 'Pedo Guy' Musk blames a none profit org for scaring away their advertisers.
Musk must be really desperate to run the platform into the ground so he can claim chapter 11 bankruptcy now, as there is no other explanation on why hes carry on as he is.
This case will backfire horribly if it ends up in court. Discovery will reveal the real statistics of hate speech, and we all know they aren't lower than ever as Musk tries to make out. We also will know that Musk happily takes payment from people who post hate speech and don't get banned. And, we'll know just how much of a mess the company is in with regards its advertisers...
So, all that will do is drive even more advertisers away.
The issue isn't people reporting on the hate speech, Musk, it is the hate speech itself. Companies aren't scared by reports of it. They're scared off by the hate speech... Shooting the messenger is just bad business.
He doesn't fool me. Elon is intentionally where he is. A meteor didn't strike Twitter, he did.
As far as the infestation of fascists and haters who drive away advertisers: Elon Musk made the platform a safe haven for them. The truth hurts, MF. His coup de grace was renaming it "X." WTF, have we not had enough "X" companies in the past? I was content to let Xerox have that...
In German we have an idiom „jemandem ein X für ein U vormachen“, i.e. make someone believe a “U” (originally “V”, Latin 5) – by extension of the lines – is an “X” (Latin 10.) That doubles the debt on a signed IOU. It means “to pull the wool over someone's eyes.” Seems fecking fElon chose a fitting new name.
When you look at the publics a/c's filed in the US and UK for CCDH its basically one guy who pays himself a tidy little sum and raises a lot of cash (over a mil $ in one year) from unknown "grant" sources which mostly sits in a bank a/c. That pays the one guy and his buddies salaries for years to come. This looks like the classic shakedown "Non Profit". A straight up fraud that makes a nice little earner for what are little more than grifters. Plenty of examples going back decades in San Francisco, LA, DC etc. Lots of money goes in, a few big salaries payed to the top people, no discernable work of any type done. Apart from media coverage. All hidden under the virtuous term "Non Profit".
It does not matter how sleazy Musk might be in this case CCDH is a straight up con job that raises new cash by making high profile unsubstaited and unprovable claims against third parties. Just because you dont like some ones opinion does not make it "hate speech" under the First Amendment. Get back to me when people like CCDH go after the Nation of Islam, Louis Farrakhan etc who actually have been spewing hate speech for decades. Against all races. And they have killed people too. Not going to happen. If you have ever seen the NOI goons up close you know why.
Orgs like CCDH only go for soft targets that will be good for fund raising. That's the name of the game.
Remember, this CCDH "group" is basically one guy hiding behind a grandiose organization name who pays himself a big salary and does publicity stunts to keep the grant money rolling in. Thats it.
The UK filings have little substantial info but the 501(c) IRS filings in the US is where the real info is. Number of directors etc means nothing. Follow the money.
Genuine Non Profits that do substantive work that benefit other have annual filings that have lots of very detailed info in the main filing and especially the Schedules. You can see where the money comes from and where it goes. Plus its easy to find out which agencies / foundations / donors their income comes from. All very transparent. This is just as true for any org that is US/UK based. The IRS treat all world income as relevant.
Now the CCDH a/c's on the other hand...
If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck and walks like duck then its a crooked duck.
If you do deep dives through NGO / lobby groups 501(c) and other filing year in year out you start seeing some very specific patterns. The very political high media profile ones all tend to be frauds. Just fund raising scams of one sort of another. They are very lucrative for the principals. The Non Profits who actually do such great work for so many people keep a low media profile and have very straight forward a/c's. With people like the Salvation Army in the US being a great example. Those who shout loudest in the media and at City Hall do the least good and the most harm. And are only in it for very selfish reasons. Even if its only narcissism. But they always seem to do very well financially for some reason.
Before taking on work from Musk and Twitter/X, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP really ought to ask "Are we gonna get paid for this?". You've only got to look to recent news to realise that lawyers who work for Twitter/X and don't get the result, even if successful, that suits Musk's current mood when when the bill arrives, don't get paid.
Did Elon spare the legal department when he culled the ranks? British law and procedures are different than the US and South Africa.
It seems like every week now Elon is "gunna sue somebody". Maybe by the end of the year he'll know more about worldwide civil laws "than anybody else on the planet". He'll have been involved in more law suits than anybody in history.
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