Elon Musk's so-called "thermonuclear lawsuit" against the nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate was dismissed for "punishing the Defendants for their speech."
California Northern District Judge Charles Beyer ruled on Monday that the intent of the litigation was to "punish" the anti-hate group and "perhaps in order to dissuade others" from criticizing Musk and X in the future.
Beyer determined the lawsuit to be "unabashedly and vociferously" intended to stifle free speech, citing California's anti-SLAPP law or "strategic lawsuits against public participation."
It is worth noting that Musk's team accused the nonprofit organization of breach of contract and unlawful data scraping, rather than defamation or libel, for bigger
The X owner filed the lawsuit against CCDH last November following its publication regarding hate speech and pro-Nazi posts appearing next to advertisements, prompting major brands like Disney, Netflix, and Microsoft to do an exodus from X.
As of writing, many of the brands that left the platform have yet to return, leaving X's ad revenues to tank throughout last year.
X Continues to Lose Users, Revenues, and Value
Ad revenues are not the only source of income X has reportedly been losing since Musk bought Twitter in October 2022.
Several recent platform analyses on X suggest that the platform is slowly losing its user base as its competitors like Instagram and TikTok gain theirs.
Estimates indicate that the platform's users are down by 18% in comparison to last year with little to no signs of growth over the past months this year.
Coincidentally, X's value has also been noted to slump from its original $44 billion. Fidelity, one of X's investors, reported last year that the platform's value has dropped by over 71% amid controversies and issues both X and Musk get into.
X's main source of income, for now, seems to be its premium subscription tier where most new features since Musk arrived were introduced.
X Stifling Critics, Trackers Under Musk Leadership
The case against CCDH was not the first time Musk, a usual target for scrutiny, has tried to penalize critics and platform trackers on X.
Just earlier this month, a judge dismissed X's request to penalize accounts tracking hate speech on the platform as nothing more than "antithetical to the First Amendment than this process of silencing people."
Many nonprofit organizations and grassroots operations remain present on X as misinformation, conspiracy theories, hate speech, and racism continue to run rampant on the platform.
