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By Catherine Yang(Epoch Times)
The House Committee on the Judiciary is targeting the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) in its ongoing investigation of the Biden administration’s campaign to pressure social media companies into censoring dissenting voices.
The CCDH had published the now infamous “Disinformation Dozen” report, which the White House used and referenced in its correspondence to social media companies.
Rep. Jim Jordan, chair of the committee, wrote a letter (pdf) Thursday to Imran Ahmed, the CEO of the CCDH, informing him of the investigation and requesting that the CCDH provide documents and information.
“The Committee on the Judiciary is conducting oversight of how and to what extent the Executive Branch has coerced and colluded with companies and other intermediaries to censor speech. Certain third parties, including organizations like yours, appear to have played a role in this censorship regime by advising government and social media companies on so-called ‘misinformation,'” Mr. Jordan wrote.
The CCDH claims that “social media companies erode basic human rights and civil liberties by enabling the spread of online hate and disinformation” and “holds them accountable” by “highlighting their failures, educating the public, and advocating change from platforms and governments to protect our communities.”
The Epoch Times reached out to the CCDH to ask whether it plans to provide the requested information and for comment.
The committee looks poised to address 2016 election-related issues as well as COVID-19 and 2020 elections topics, as it is requesting CCDH to provide information dating back through 2015, and including content linked to foreign state operations.
The committee is asking for all documents and communications the CCDH had with anyone in the Biden administration “referring or relating to the moderation, deletion, suppression, restriction, demonetization, or reduced circulation of content; the accuracy or truth of content; or the attribution of content to the source or participant in a foreign malign or state-sponsored influenced operation.”
It also requests similar correspondence the CCDH had with any technology company, as well as a list of all “employees, contractors, or agents for your organization, along with their current and prior titles” who participated in these communications.
The committee is also asking for a list of all grants, contracts, and funds received from the government and related documentation by the end of the business day of Aug. 17.
“In addition, please treat these discovery obligations as ongoing and applicable to any information generated after receipt of this letter,” Mr. Jordans wrote. “Furthermore, this letter serves as a formal request to preserve all existing and future records and materials relating to the topics addressed in this letter.”
CCDH Facing Litigation From Elon Musk
The group is also facing a potential lawsuit from tech billionaire Elon Musk.
A warning letter his lawyer made public on July 31 on behalf of X Corp. and X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, alleges that the CCDH “made a series of troubling and baseless claims that appear calculated to harm Twitter generally, and its digital advertising business specifically.”
“CCDH regularly posts articles making inflammatory, outrageous, and false or misleading assertions about Twitter and its operations,” the letter states, adding that it bills the assertions as “research” despite the lack of a “rigorous design process, analytical procedures, or peer review.”
The CCDH responded to the warning, citing “100 hateful tweets that contained racist, homophobic, neo-Nazi, antisemitic, or conspiracy content,” that it says violates Twitter’s own policies, adding that the organization never claimed to have reviewed 500 million tweets posted daily.
Mr. Musk’s lawyer Alex Spiro warned the CCDH it was investigating whether its “false and misleading claims about Twitter are actionable under Section 43(a) of the Lantham Act, 15 USC 1125.
The Latham Act prohibits false descriptions and misleading advertisements, generally in the context of hit ads against a competitor. Mr. Spiro maintains there is “no doubt that CCDH intends to harm Twitter’s business by driving advertisers away from the platform with incendiary claims.”
CCDH lawyer Roberta Kaplan responded to this by calling it a “bogus” threat that “could hardly be more inconsistent with the commitment to free speech purportedly held by Twitter’s current leadership.”
Ms. Kaplan explained that if Twitter, now called X, indeed brought a lawsuit, it would open the company to immediate discovery wherein the CCDH would request correspondence, policies, and practices “regarding hate speech and misinformation,” as well as Twitter’s advertising revenue.
Deplatforming
The CCDH’s favored approach to “countering hate” is to remove posts and people who post what the organization considers hateful or harmful.
“The most effective and efficient way to stop the dissemination of harmful information is to deplatform the most highly visible repeat offenders,” it writes.
It gained prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic with its report on the most influential accounts sharing information about the virus and vaccines that went against the government’s narrative, pointing out 12 individuals in particular as the “disinformation dozen” in a report the White House used to inform its deplatforming efforts.
