Illustration: The Verge
A month after Elon Musk sued the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), the organization is back with another report suggesting X (formerly Twitter) is allowing hate speech to remain on the platform.
In its 23-page report, the CCDH outlines how researchers collected 300 posts on X with hateful content from 100 different accounts, some of which contained blatant racism, antisemitism, and Holocaust denial. After reporting the posts to X, the CCDH found that 259 out of 300 were left online after one week, while 90 of those 100 accounts remained active on the platform. The CCDH says that each of these posts violated X’s policies on hate speech.
X denies the report’s conclusions in a post on the platform. The company argues that it has “strong moderation policies and enforcement in place,” adding that it either takes down posts that violate its rules or limits their reach. It states that the CCDH is “misrepresenting how many people have viewed the content” by not taking into account how many people saw the posts.
Since taking over X, Musk has said that hate speech on the platform will get “max deboosted & demonetized,” which means posts and accounts may not get taken down completely.
“The CCDH is asserting two false claims — that X did not take action on violative posts and that violative posts reached a lot of people on our platform,” X writes. “By not using impression data the CCDH is misleading the public and making unsubstantiated assertions about the user activity on X.” When reached for comment, X pointed The Verge toward its post.
Even as X CEO Linda Yaccarino aims to repair the company’s relationship with advertisers, the CCDH also found that hateful posts on X ran next to ads from 38 companies, including Apple and Disney. Musk’s X Corp. sued the CCDH in August over claims the organization “embarked on a scare campaign” to drive away advertisers from X. The company also accused the CCDH of “unlawfully” scraping data from X to create its research. Musk has since threatened to sue the Anti-Defamation League for driving off advertisers with criticism of the platform as well.
CCDH CEO Imran Ahmed tells CNBC that the organization didn’t use data-scraping tools to gather information for its most recent report, stating that researchers “simply went in and had a look.”
