Although he claimed he was a champion for the First Amendment and free speech when he took over last year, “X” chair and oligarch in training Elon Musk has ordered his company to sue a British research company, the Center for Countering Digital Hate, for reporting that hate speech has exploded on the platform since he bought Twitter, CNBC reports.
Although the lawsuit claims CCDH improperly accessed proprietary information, Musk’s obvious goal is to protect his new “X” brand from being branded as a platform for bigoted extremists, something the oligarch seemingly relishes given his own rightwing authoritarian and racist leanings as evidenced in his posts. CCDH found that Twitter has failed to act on more than 95% of the hate speech complaints it received since Musk’s takeover.
“Elon Musk’s latest legal threat is straight out of the authoritarian playbook,” Imran Ahmed, founder and CEO of the CCDH, said in a statement. “He is now showing he will stop at nothing to silence anyone who criticizes him for his own decisions and actions,” while adding his group’s research “shows that hate and disinformation is spreading like wildfire on the platform under Musk’s ownership and this lawsuit is a direct attempt to silence those efforts.”