Aug. 2 (UPI) — Members of Congress on Wednesday demanded answers on what they said are X Corp.’s efforts to use a lawsuit to threaten and intimidate independent research organizations looking into harms on social media.
U.S. Reps. Lori Trahan, D-Mass., Sean Casten, D-Ill. and Adam Schiff, D-Calif. wrote to X Corp. CEO Yaccarino and owner Elon Musk “to express our deep concerns” over the “proliferation of hate, harassment and extremism” on the social media platform as well as “troubling decisions that appear calculated to harass, silence, and suppress research and accountability into this issue.”
The letter came after the company sued the Center for Countering Digital Hate, accusing the group of “a scare campaign to drive away advertisers from the X platform.”
The report detailed failure by executives at the social media company, then known as Twitter, to act on 99% of hateful content on the site.
“After Mr. Musk purchased X on Oct. 27, 2022, some of his first actions were to lay off trust and safety workers, dissolve the Trust and Safety Council and restore banned accounts of misogynists and Neo-Nazis,” the lawmakers wrote. “Unsurprisingly, this has coincided with a documented rise in hate speech and extremism on X.”
In their letter, the lawmakers asked if X had successfully decreased the number of terms of service violations including hate speech and extremism on the platform and if such claims had been verified by independent third parties that could provide research they generated to support them.
“Independent researchers and advocates, including those at the Center for Countering Digital Hate, regularly study trends of potentially harmful behavior on social media platforms and post articles detailing their findings,” the lawmakers wrote. “This is true of X as well as of its competitors, including Meta, Google, TikTok, and others. 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.”
The X Corp. lawsuit alleged that CCHD allegedly unlawfully accessed data, violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and interfered with contractual relations in efforts to drive advertisers away from X.
“In direct response to CCDH’s efforts, some companies have paused their advertising spend on X,” the X Corp. lawsuit said. “CCDH’s unlawful conduct as alleged herein has directly and proximately damaged X Corp. in an amount to be proven at trial, but in any event at least tens of millions of dollars that X Corp. estimates it has lost in advertising revenues and other costs incurred.”
CCHD said in a statement that the X Corp. lawsuit won’t stop the organization from doing independent research into hate and disinformation online.
“Elon Musk’s latest legal move is straight out of the authoritarian playbook — he is now showing he will stop at nothing to silence anyone who criticizes him for his own decisions and actions. The Center for Countering Digital Hate’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.”
CCHD said Musk and X are trying to ‘shoot the messenger’ who highlights toxic content on the platform rather than “deal with the toxic environment he’s created.”
