In a series of recent posts on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, X CEO Elon Musk threatened to file a defamation lawsuit against the Anti-Defamation League, alleging that the antisemitism watchdog is “primarily” responsible for his company’s advertising revenue woes.
If Musk really were to follow through on his threat, it’s difficult to see how his legal argument could be defensible. It’s also troubling that Musk has singled out the ADL among many organizations and critics as the one to blame for his difficulty getting advertisers to stick around on his chaotic platform. Ironically, it seems Musk is toying around with antisemitic tropes in his attempt to clear his name of antisemitism. In targeting the ADL as his scapegoat, he appears to be hinting at the old antisemitic trope that Jews pull the strings in the world economy.
The ADL is just one voice among scores of civil rights-oriented organizations, research groups and media commentators that have criticized Musk’s laissez-faire attitudes toward hate speech.
Even given Musk’s penchant for provocative posting, his comments about the ADL are still surprising. He alleged the ADL “has been trying to kill this platform by falsely accusing it & me of being anti-Semitic.” He said that “based on what we’ve heard from advertisers,” it’s the ADL specifically that’s responsible for “most” of X’s advertising revenue loss. “Document discovery of all communications between The ADL and advertisers will tell the full story,” Musk said.
It’s unclear what kind of communications Musk is referring to, but a successful defamation suit would require him to prove that the ADL has been making false claims about him and his company. Musk and X did not immediately respond to a question from NBC News as to whether a complaint had been drafted. The ADL told NBC News on Monday that as a matter of policy it does not comment on legal threats.
The ADL’s publicly shared research and its criticisms of antisemitism on Musk’s platform in recent months are grounded in evidence. In March, the group flagged specific examples of antisemitic hate speech and tropes, and it criticized X for failing to remove posts in accordance with X’s own policies that prohibit hateful conduct, threats or incitement to violence based on individual or group identities. And in May, the ADL posted a report that documented examples of how antisemitic harassment networks are flourishing on the platform. Some of the ADL’s methodology seems unclear to me, and the organization also has a history of sometimes defining antisemitism in ways that conflate it with anti-Zionism. But the ADL flagged persuasive examples in its posts, and anyone who spends time on X knows the site is brimming with hate speech directed at all kinds of minority communities. One might also note that in these posts and in its report, the ADL is not calling Musk or X itself antisemitic, but the group is critiquing the company for failing to take action against antisemitic speech. Musk said on Monday that he was “pro free speech, but against anti-Semitism of any kind.”
Musk’s decision to single out the ADL is odd. As I noted, the ADL is just one voice among scores of civil rights-oriented organizations, research groups and media commentators that have criticized Musk’s laissez-faire attitudes toward hate speech. That’s to say nothing of the possibility that advertisers may choose to pull back on their spending on a platform without any pressure from activist groups or critics, and simply out of the calculation that the platform might be risky for their reputation in the future. As NBC News reported in 2022, some advertisers started to pull back from spending on then-Twitter immediately after Musk took over in anticipation of potential trouble because of Musk’s promises to loosen content moderation on the site. A study from Montclair University found that hate speech surged the day after Musk took over Twitter. “The data conclusively shows that there is a correlation between Musk’s arrival and a broader perceived acceptability to posted hostile content on Twitter,” the university said.
Will Musk actually sue the ADL? There’s reason to think he could. This summer he filed a lawsuit against the Center for Countering Digital Hate, alleging that the group improperly accessed data from X “so that it could cherry-pick from the hundreds of millions of posts made each day on X and falsely claim it had statistical support showing the platform is overwhelmed with harmful content.” CCDH’s CEO Imran Ahmed said in response that the lawsuit was “straight out of the authoritarian playbook — he is now showing he will stop at nothing to silence anyone who criticizes him for his own decisions and actions.”
But filing a lawsuit doesn’t necessarily mean it will succeed, of course. Musk doesn’t have to prove that the ADL has been effective at persuading the public that hate speech prevails on X. He has to prove that the ADL made verifiably false claims that damaged his business, and unfortunately for any potential case of his, the ADL is entitled to its opinion about what constitutes antisemitism — just as much as advertisers are entitled to take their money elsewhere.