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Ripple CTO David Schwartz believes that while billionaire Elon Musk claims to believe in free speech, his actions show that he has a narrow understanding of the subject.
In an X post yesterday, Schwartz slammed Tesla CEO Elon Musk after a federal court threw out a lawsuit filed by his microblogging platform X against the nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH).
Background of the Case
For context, X, under the ownership of Musk, sued CCDH in July 2023, alleging that the research group implemented a scare campaign to chase advertisers from its platform.
The lawsuit follows studies conducted by CCDH, which highlights a spike in anti-muslim and antisemitic hate speech on X since Musk acquired the platform in 2022.
Reacting to the studies, X argued that the nonprofit research group was selectively picking posts to falsely illustrate that the platform is dominated by harmful content.
As a result, X’s legal team demanded that CCDH should pay “tens of millions of dollars” in damages for causing a massive slump in its advertising revenues.
Court Tosses Out Lawsuit
However, U.S. Federal Judge Charles Beyer in the Northern District of California dismissed the lawsuit, noting that the case was filed to silence critics of the microblogging platform.
The judge stressed that X’s true intention in filing the lawsuit was to punish CCDH for its publication, which criticized the platform.
Ripple CTO Highlights Musk’s Contradictory Stance on Free Speech
Commenting on the ruling, Ripple CTO slammed Musk over his contradictory stance regarding free speech.
Schwartz said while the American businessman claims to be the defender of free speech, a federal court recently dismissed his lawsuit to get the government to punish people for engaging in protected speech he disapproves of.
He added that although Musk claims to believe in free speech, his remarks and lawsuits show his understanding of the term is comically narrowed.
Musk prides himself as a “free speech absolutist,” noting that he acquired X to create a platform where people can have healthy debate on a wide range of beliefs.
Besides CCDH, Musk is also pursuing a similar lawsuit against other groups, including Bright Data, an Israeli-based web data collection company. Last year, X sued Media Matters for America and one of its reporters over an investigative report criticizing the platform.
The split second court opens on Monday, X Corp will be filing a thermonuclear lawsuit against Media Matters and ALL those who colluded in this fraudulent attack on our company pic.twitter.com/55vl7PspaQ
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 18, 2023