A federal judge has dismissed X owner Elon Musk’s lawsuit against a research group that documented an uptick in hate speech on the social media site, saying the organization’s reports on the platform formerly known as Twitter were protected by the First Amendment.
Musk’s suit, “is so unabashedly and vociferously about one thing that there can be no mistaking that purpose,” wrote U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer in his Monday ruling, “This case is about punishing the Defendants for their speech.”
Amid an advertiser boycott of X last year, Musk sued the research and advocacy organization Center for Countering Digital Hate, alleging it violated the social media site’s terms of service in gathering data for its reports.
One of the group’s findings, published in June, detailed how “racist, homophobic, neo-Nazi, antisemitic or conspiracy content” from paid users went unmoderated on the site.
During a February hearing, lawyers for Musk asked if the suit could be refiled against the research group, but Breyer declined that request. The judge said claiming the alleged data scraping was harming the platform’s safety and security does not “make very much sense.”
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Article URL : https://www.npr.org/2024/03/25/1239549276/elon-musk-lawsuit-hate-speech-researchers