A US judge says Mr Musk's social media firm had sued to punish its critics
A US judge has thrown out a lawsuit brought by Elon Musk's social media firm X against a group that had claimed that hate speech had risen on the platform since the tech tycoon took over.
X had accused the Center for Countering Digital Hate of taking "Unlawful" steps to access its data.
The US judge dismissed the case and said it was "Evident" Mr Musk's X Corp did not like criticism.
Imran Ahmed, founder and chief executive of CCDH, celebrated the win, saying Mr Musk had conducted a "Loud, hypocritical campaign" of harassment and abuse against his organisation in an attempt to "Avoid taking responsibility for his own decisions".
The company, formerly known as Twitter, launched its lawsuit against CCDH in 2023, claiming its researchers had cherry-picked data to create misleading reports about X.It accused the group of "Intentionally and unlawfully" scraping data from X, in violation of its terms of service, in order to produce its research.
In his decision Judge Charles Breyer said Mr Musk was "Punishing the defendants for their speech".
Mr Musk purchased the platform in 2022 for $44bn and swiftly embarked on a slew of controversial changes, sharply reducing its workforce with deep cuts to teams in charge of content moderation and other areas.
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