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
Please, please do that. I can’t wait to see the discovery portion of the trial
Yes, let’s see the data
I was just going to say, wouldn’t they have to disprove the findings to win?
Even better, the emails from Musk about this. Those would be a bombshell.
Elon used to love saying he was a Free Speech Absolutist, but once again that only extends to speech he likes.
The man will say absolutely anything.
Except things that are actually funny.
He likes any speech as long as it makes him money.
It’s our fault honestly. We kept hearing “free speech” but he’s been saying “fee speech” this whole time!
The response from CCDH is savage -
https://counterhate.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Letter-to-A.-Spiro-from-R.-Kaplan-re-CCDH.pdf
I love it. The gist is:
- hate speech is running rampant on your platform.
- you’re doing nothing to stop it.
- here’s our evidence.
- where’s your e idence?
- why are you spending time and money on fighting us instead of on fighting the literal white supremacist death threats on your platform?
- telling us we’ve not sampled enough tweets while you’re in the process of making impossible the mass sampling of tweets is…a bit rich.
- we’re not intimidated by your threats
- your threats are also bullshit
- we’re not gonna stop
It’s a textbook example of “no u” in grown up language. Bravo.
Not to mention how it starts with
“We write in response to the ridiculous letter you sent our clients on behalf of X Corp.”
They are not taking any BS. I love it.
Legal snark is by far the most expensive brand of humor, but when it’s deployed on your behalf it’s so goddamn satisfying.
During a hearing in my divorce, I answered a question from the judge, the other lawyer says “we can’t have hearsay in this discussion”, my lawyer responds “well this will be a short hearing then because everything in your client’s motion is hearsay”.
That little snap cost me about $15 but it was worth it.
Legal snark is by far the most expensive brand of humor
I trust that you’ve read this one? [*PDF]
Bad link
It’s direct to a PDF (maybe shows in ‘downloaded documents’ for Android, or download menu in Connect?) but for anyone on a device that doesn’t like PDFs, the link was The Onion’s amicus filed with the US Supreme Court (summarised in newspapers)
The best part of it:
If your clients do file suit, please be advised that CCDH intends to seek immediate discovery regarding hate speech and misinformation on the Twitter platform; Twitter’s policies and practices relating to these issues; and Twitter’s advertising revenue. In that event, a court will determine for itself the truth of the statements in our client’s report in accordance with the time-tested rules of civil procedure and evidence.
Now that is a nuclear statement in a lawyers letter…
I love that this is a legal letter and yet contains the very direct phrase:
That threat is bogus and you know it.
Savage indeed !!
It’s a shame that people are still using that platform.
I really think all the artists still on there are shooting themselves in the foot in the long run.
And that obviously has already started with the direct messaging restrictions that messes with contacting commissioners.
If they leave Twitter, where are they going to go? Artists need to promote themselves. They sure aren’t coming here to promote themselves. Twitter has always been where people go to keep up with their favorite artists whether it be art, music, comedy, etc. If they leave then they’re shooting themselves in the foot. Twitter is still massively popular even if you don’t agree. Same goes for Reddit.
People who have made a living promoting themselves on Twitter aren’t going to leave it just because Musk is a dumbass. Most artists as you mention typical have business emails in their profiles. Until Musk does something to fuck with their income, they’re staying.
It’s the same shit when people on Reddit say they’re abandoning COD this year because the devs pissed them off only for the game to have the highest sales ever. You, me, Lemmy users, and Reddit haters are just a fraction of the people who use those sites.
Mastodon? Pixiv? Deviantart? Artstation?
Mastodon is a good pick to keep in the back pocket but it doesn’t have mass adoption yet, and all the others are art-dedicated websites. The advantage of Twitter was that it made it easy for their art to be shared widely but linked back to their account so that regular people just browsing would get to know their work and maybe follow them through it. Anyone regularly browsing those other websites are already art enthusiasts so that’s not so effective to expand their audience.
It won’t have adoption until it gets adopted. And the only way for that to happen is for people to adopt it of course. What probably needs to happen is for someone to write a simple app to either post to both at the same time or something that someone could run themselves or pay an inexpensive nominal fee for someone else to run for them to mirror their posts.
That was made harder because Twitter now charges for their API. Some people are trying to do both manually, but they can’t entirely move away since their livelihood depends on maintaining their audience.
We did these sort of things before apis. They will be possible when all apis are gone still.
They (celebrities) would have the biggest pull to get people moved onto one of these new services.
I know nothing short of the names as I don’t need that kind of app or service but if one of these new places like blue sky or mastadon had an easy way to get signed up for the masses then someone like Taylor Swift saying she was signing up and to join her there as she drops twixxter then millions of people would sign up in days.
The issue is that not every artist is a celebrity.
Sure Taylor Swift can move a lot of people, but some upcoming niche artist can barely hold onto the little audience they built even by staying there.
“Twitter has always where people go to keep up with their favorite artists…”
Somehow fandoms managed to exist before 2007.
Wait what restrictions? Can you no longer DM an artist?
From what I have seen/heard from people still on there, there’s a new setting that only allows you to receive DMs from “verified users” (i.e. Twitter Blue subscribers). You are automatically opted into this and have to opt out to receive DMs from others.
On the upside, it’s mostly morons and assholes. The reporting that’s got Musk snorting rails of battery pack acid and pursing his oh-so-ruby lips basically addresses the stark increase in both the assholes and the vastly more numerous waterheads they manipulate and grift. I’ve looked at #X from others’ accounts and it’s hilarious. I’d feel guilty if I were to sign up. Undignified. Embarrassing. Icky.
Why? It’s mostly positive experience for me. I don’t quite see why someone else not liking Twitter means I shouldn’t be there either.
Someone else not liking it, sure. But if it’s doing nothing about hateful speech and death threats then by continuing to use it you appear to be fine with that.
I guess in a way I’m fine with that. I tolerate it. As long as it stays out of my feed atleast. I don’t see it being being something that Twitter is somehow especially riddled with compared to other social media companies or even Lemmy for that matter.
If I were to boycott every company that does something I don’t agree with I’d pretty much be living alone in the forest eating berries and mushrooms.
No one is saying boycott all. They’re just saying boycott some. And that’s a bridge too far for you.
For a company that claims to be desperate to cut costs they sure do have a lot of money for frivolous lawsuits…
Does Stinky believe that by suing these researchers, the rise in hate speech didn’t happen?!
No, but he can scare off anyone else from making him look bad.
It’s expensive and scary to get hit with a lawsuit like this.
He doesn’t need any help with that anyway.
Just donated to the CCDH, they definitely don’t have the resources to fight Twitter alone.
Given that Twitter trust and safety was almost completely gutted upon his acquisition, I think it’s very improbable that type of content was moderated effectively.
No, but he can pretend it didn’t
Does he smell bad too? It wouldn’t surprise me considering he’s unpleasant in so many other ways, I just hadn’t heard that one.
It’s a reference to “musk”
Ohhhhhh!
Evidence based documentation is going to be hard to win against, unless the plan is just drag them through legal proceedings until they can’t afford it. The american dream.
Wouldn’t surprise me if in this case enough people would donate. Enough people are sick of Musk at this point.
Yes, free speech and evidence based documentation will be fine, Musk won’t be able to afford prolongued legal proceedings. American dream indeed.
The man-child billionaire says he is not for censorship, while using the judicial system to censor.
We don’t need to call it X or even the platform formerly known as Twitter. It’s just Twitter.
I mean their site is twitter[.]com
They haven’t changed the url yet? Wonder when they’ll do it… Probably gonna break a lot of stuff everywhere.
It’s Brand X. It’s an appropriate name.
Everything is better than Brand X. Every ad has told me so.
The foodfight paralels are uncanny, musk himself looks like a character from that movie.
Free speech absolutist.
Free speech abolitionist
Fee speech absolutist
This is a great example of a SLAPP suit
I think Elon’s rebranding from “twitter” to “X, The Social Media Platform Formerly Known As Twitter” was really smart. You know what, I am gonna go XTSMPFKAST-eet that right now! Obviously the branding was the weakest part of the product he bought!
And I’m glad he can’t destroy “twitter” anymore
There’s always tomorrow, I’m sure he’ll manage to fully sink it…
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Sue everyone you don’t like. That’s the thin-skinned, narcissistic billionaire way.
Doesn’t matter if they’re right or wrong, pile up the costs and they’ll all cave in.
If they go to court, wouldn’t the court make them prove that the claim was false or defamation? And if CCDH can prove that it’s not false or defamation then now it’s legal record that hate speech has increased since the takeover? This all seems ok with me.
That’s not how the American court system works.
A company like Twitter can bleed the CCDH dry and just walk away with a frivolous lawsuit and a minor (insignificant) penalty.
And the way that works is not by accident.
In a defamation lawsuit, it would not be X that had to prove it was a lie. It would be CCDH that had to prove it had evidence for their claims (notice that it does not need to be true, only has to be reasonable for CCDH to believe it is true based on evidence they had).
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