The Center for Countering Digital Hate received a letter sent by X Corp., Twitter’s parent company, that accused the organization of intentionally hurting the social media platform’s business with its research.
The nonprofit organization monitors hate speech and misinformation that manifests across social media.
The letter was sent on July 20 to the nonprofit and said the organization made “a series of troubling and baseless claims that appear calculated to harm Twitter generally and its digital advertising business specifically.” X Corp. also threatened to sue the organization in response.
The research cited in the letter by Musk-owned X Corp. included a study conducted in June that examined hate speech across the platform. According to the research, Twitter had taken no action against 99% of the 100 Twitter Blue accounts that were tweeting out what could be considered hate speech.
X Corp. said in the letter that the research was “false, misleading or both,” and called the practices of the organization into question. According to the letter, X Corp. believes that the research is being funded by competitors “in support of an ulterior agenda.”
In response, Imran Ahmed, the chief executive of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, called the letter “a brazen attempt to silence honest criticism and independent research.” Ahmed questioned Musk’s intentions when he that he wanted to “stem the tide of negative stories and rebuild his relationship with advertisers.” The nonprofit organization denied the accusations that they accepted money from Twitter competitors or foreign governments.
Just last week, Musk officially rebranded the social media platform, changing its name to X. The change was met with intense criticism with many questioning why he would throw away valuable branding.
