August 3, 2023 - 5:00pm
On 1 August, X Corp filed a lawsuit in US federal court against the UK-based Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH). The company accused the organisation of illegally accessing its data, and producing reports falsely charging that Elon Musk’s acquisition of the social network precipitated an explosion of hate speech, in order to damage the platform’s advertising revenue.
While perhaps not a household name, CCDH is by some margin one of the most impactful operators within the Censorship Industrial Complex. In recent years, the Center has campaigned for numerous figures on the Left and Right to be banned by social networks, directly advised tech firms and government agencies on Covid-19 and climate change, influenced the composition of London’s highly controversial Online Safety Act, and more.
The Center has been heavily focused on Twitter since Musk’s acquisition last October, which resulted in permanent suspensions of many individuals and organisations previously targeted by CCDH being undone. In 2023 alone, the organisation has produced a panoply of “news” items on the social network, and three dedicated “disinformation” reports.
Its most recent claim alleged that X Corp “fails to act on 99% of Twitter Blue accounts tweeting hate,” with these users permitted to break platform rules with impunity. Commenting, the Center’s founder-and-chief Imran Ahmed went so far as to charge that Musk was personally and deliberately undermining “decades of progress” on the “human rights” of ethnic minorities, Jews, Muslims and the LGBTQ+ community, “at an ever-accelerating rate”, with “the tacit approval” of his site’s advertisers.
How such incendiary conclusions were drawn from CCDH’s findings isn’t certain. The Center appears to have simply reported 100 hateful tweets chosen at random by its in-house “expert” team for allegedly breaching platform rules. If the tweet in question wasn’t removed within four days, X was judged to have failed, and consciously permitted hate speech to remain extant.
The report is just the latest component of a dedicated CCDH campaign to damage X’s revenues. Dubbed #StopToxicTwitter, a section of the Center’s website demands “big brands” — including Amazon and Apple — “step up…stop bankrolling the spread of hate and disinformation…[and] remove your ads from the platform now.” Since Musk’s takeover of Twitter, the social network’s advertising income is reportedly down 50%, and its value has fallen considerably according to major investment firms.
The CCDH has been on similar crusades, resulting in absolutely devastating effects on affected targets. In March 2019, an anonymous internet campaign dubbed Stop Funding Fake News (SFFN) was launched to demonetise a variety of political websites on the Right and Left, by directly lobbying companies to remove their advertisements.
Within six months, SFFN succeeded in shutting down Westmonster, a pro-Brexit site founded by Aaron Banks, while damaging the takings of Corbynite media outlet The Canary to such an extent, it was forced to make job cuts. The latter was also investigated by press regulator IMPRESS, due to SFFN alleging it published anti-Semitic content. The probe ultimately found no evidence whatsoever to substantiate that charge.
In May 2020, SFFN was revealed to be a CCDH asset. By that time, Imran Ahmed had begun personally advising the UK government on “conspiracist ‘news’ sites”. Given the Center once counted opposition leader Keir Starmer’s chief-of-staff Morgan McSweeney among its directors, and shares an address with “party in a party” Labour Together, Ahmed could well expect an even more influential post after the next general election.
CCDH’s relentless quest to financially starve targets it arbitrarily accuses of peddling “disinformation” and/or “harmful content” is all the more egregious, given the sources and size of its own budget are wholly opaque. The organisation is reportedly funded by “philanthropic trusts and members of the public,” per a vanishingly brief blurb on the Center’s website.
It should also be noted that CCDH’s “backers” are also targets of X Corp’s legal challenge. While their identities are not revealed, the company’s lawyers state they “have reason to believe” the Center — and “its campaign to drive advertisers off Twitter by smearing the company and its owner” — is bankrolled by X Corp’s “commercial competitors, as well as government entities and their affiliates.”
One can only hope those details are released publicly, and further illuminate the murky relationship between major tech firms, state organs, and supposedly independent “disinformation” experts, which underpin the Censorship Industrial Complex. How this toxic triumvirate secretly conspires was first exposed by the Twitter Files. Musk’s sponsorship of those disclosures made him a marked man. Evidently though, X Corp isn’t going down without a fight.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeThis is the group that issued a report called the “Disinformation Dozen” which sought to “deplatform” dissident Covid thinkers from Substack, including RFK Jr, smearing them as “anti-vaxxers.”
Why it is allowed to hide its sources of funding is very discouraging. Groups like this are a direct threat to democracy. I hope Musk can take these guys down.
Or put another way, swivel-eyed loons. Sounds like they are doing a valiant job to me.
Until it all turns on you, Robbie K, and it is decided that you too are a swivel-eyed loon. Saying that, I would still prefer to read your rejoinders than have some censorship bureau tuck them away.
Three cheers for the censors!! I blame the printing press. If it wasn’t for that dastardly invention, we would all be better off – basking in the benevolence and warmth of the church.
Haha! Less visceral than certain other modest proposals.
Haha! Less visceral than certain other modest proposals.
Smearing
(i) opponents of vaccination mandates
as
(ii) opponents of vaccination
sounds like a valiant job to you?
I ask, because despite myself opposing vaccination mandates I’m not myself an opponent of vaccination. In fact, I was myself fully vaccinated.
Overall, I think Wuhan Flu vaccination was probably a good idea. It probably caused more benefit in terms of reducing the symptoms of the disease than it caused in terms of adverse effects with which someone will no doubt deluge me.
That said, I was and remain utterly appalled by the conduct of all branches of the authorities in response to the disease. Vaccination mandates were part and parcel of a disgraceful totalitarian overreach attacking sacred liberties and bodily autonomy, non of which must ever be allowed to happen again.
In any event, far from denigrating anti-vaxxers, if anything we should thank them for helping to spread the less harmful strains of the disease which superseded its original more virulent strains.
Until it all turns on you, Robbie K, and it is decided that you too are a swivel-eyed loon. Saying that, I would still prefer to read your rejoinders than have some censorship bureau tuck them away.
Three cheers for the censors!! I blame the printing press. If it wasn’t for that dastardly invention, we would all be better off – basking in the benevolence and warmth of the church.
Smearing
(i) opponents of vaccination mandates
as
(ii) opponents of vaccination
sounds like a valiant job to you?
I ask, because despite myself opposing vaccination mandates I’m not myself an opponent of vaccination. In fact, I was myself fully vaccinated.
Overall, I think Wuhan Flu vaccination was probably a good idea. It probably caused more benefit in terms of reducing the symptoms of the disease than it caused in terms of adverse effects with which someone will no doubt deluge me.
That said, I was and remain utterly appalled by the conduct of all branches of the authorities in response to the disease. Vaccination mandates were part and parcel of a disgraceful totalitarian overreach attacking sacred liberties and bodily autonomy, non of which must ever be allowed to happen again.
In any event, far from denigrating anti-vaxxers, if anything we should thank them for helping to spread the less harmful strains of the disease which superseded its original more virulent strains.
I would wager that their primary funders are the Open Society Foundation and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, likely in that order.
Ya. It makes me very suspicious when these censors refuse to disclose their funding. I’m sure they’re lining up at the trough of govt grants too.
Ya. It makes me very suspicious when these censors refuse to disclose their funding. I’m sure they’re lining up at the trough of govt grants too.
Or put another way, swivel-eyed loons. Sounds like they are doing a valiant job to me.
I would wager that their primary funders are the Open Society Foundation and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, likely in that order.
This is the group that issued a report called the “Disinformation Dozen” which sought to “deplatform” dissident Covid thinkers from Substack, including RFK Jr, smearing them as “anti-vaxxers.”
Why it is allowed to hide its sources of funding is very discouraging. Groups like this are a direct threat to democracy. I hope Musk can take these guys down.
Team Musk the whole way!
Team Musk the whole way!
Musk needs to start a group called ‘The X-Men’.
Musk needs to start a group called ‘The X-Men’.
This is an arm of the debanking pro-cancellation crowd of ultra-woke slackers who want their social engineering views to top the priority list.
Succinct and accurate.
Succinct and accurate.
This is an arm of the debanking pro-cancellation crowd of ultra-woke slackers who want their social engineering views to top the priority list.
I was personally subject to CCDH’s ruthless defamatory attacks. This compelled me to look deeper into who was funding their campaigns. Thankfully, there is plenty of open source, publicly verifiable information on at least 9 of their funders, featuring 7 UK-based ‘charities,’ two of which receive sizable grants from the UK government itself. You can find all that information here:
9 ‘Dark Money’ Sources Funding CCDH: A Foreign ‘Digital Hate’ Group Which Used the White House to Quash Free Speech” https://greenmedinfo.com/blog/9-dark-money-sources-funding-ccdh-foreign-digital-hate-group-which-used-white-hou34
I was personally subject to CCDH’s ruthless defamatory attacks. This compelled me to look deeper into who was funding their campaigns. Thankfully, there is plenty of open source, publicly verifiable information on at least 9 of their funders, featuring 7 UK-based ‘charities,’ two of which receive sizable grants from the UK government itself. You can find all that information here:
9 ‘Dark Money’ Sources Funding CCDH: A Foreign ‘Digital Hate’ Group Which Used the White House to Quash Free Speech” https://greenmedinfo.com/blog/9-dark-money-sources-funding-ccdh-foreign-digital-hate-group-which-used-white-hou34
What lies beneath…
What lies beneath…
“Hate”. The iron law of woke projection strikes again.
“Hate”. The iron law of woke projection strikes again.
How idiotic does one need to be to be on Twitter or similar? If every social media platform went bust tomorrow, I wouldn’t even notice.
For myself, I agree with you; but a lot of people depend on social media to keep up with what’s going on.
Even more worryingly, some watch the BBC and read The Guardian.
Even more worryingly, some watch the BBC and read The Guardian.
You would, because much of the legacy media takes its talking points from Twitter etc.
For myself, I agree with you; but a lot of people depend on social media to keep up with what’s going on.
You would, because much of the legacy media takes its talking points from Twitter etc.
How idiotic does one need to be to be on Twitter or similar? If every social media platform went bust tomorrow, I wouldn’t even notice.
What does it matter? Only the terminally stupid believe anything they read on Twitter. And Musk will have run the whole thing into the ground by this time next year.
Seems like you spend a lot of time on X.
Champagne Sociopath usually rage quits in the late afternoon when the hypoglaecemia kicks in, and then again about 3am when the pharmaceuticals are beginning to turn against him. He’s always back on X by lunchtime though, and is stupendously dexterous in combining splenetic typing at speed with the ingestion of Sandanista cocaine cooperative coffee and the expeditious delivery of nutritious tidbits to that coiled serpent, his gut.
Champagne Sociopath usually rage quits in the late afternoon when the hypoglaecemia kicks in, and then again about 3am when the pharmaceuticals are beginning to turn against him. He’s always back on X by lunchtime though, and is stupendously dexterous in combining splenetic typing at speed with the ingestion of Sandanista cocaine cooperative coffee and the expeditious delivery of nutritious tidbits to that coiled serpent, his gut.
I have no love for Twitter and the other vacuous social media platforms but if government and their sycophantic allies (see Substack’s excellent ‘The Twitter Files’) can decide who can and can’t say what, we are deeply in Hitler/Stalin/Mao etc authoritarian territory.
Seems like you spend a lot of time on X.
I have no love for Twitter and the other vacuous social media platforms but if government and their sycophantic allies (see Substack’s excellent ‘The Twitter Files’) can decide who can and can’t say what, we are deeply in Hitler/Stalin/Mao etc authoritarian territory.
What does it matter? Only the terminally stupid believe anything they read on Twitter. And Musk will have run the whole thing into the ground by this time next year.