The shoe is on the other foot for Imran Ahmed, the founder and CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate US/UK (CCDH).
This group is known for backing many efforts to silence others – but now it has suddenly found out it had a taste for free speech (and that would be, “holding up a mirror to Elon Musk”) – and Ahmed complaining that the X/Twitter owner is trying to “sue them into silence.”
Even for a neutral observer, it’s clear this might be the case of Musk actually holding up a mirror to CCDH, given its past activities, free expression-wise.
CCDH is one of those “hate and disinformation fighting” outfits, that bands together racism, homophobia, harm to children, climate denial, and antisemitism into its “mission,” and also gives itself the role of holding social media “accountable” unless they perform to CCDH standards (of censorship, that is).
However, The Guardian gave Ahmed a whole op-ed to vent his frustration with the current situation. According to him, a case of “childish name-calling” on Twitter has now snowballed into a lawsuit his organization faces in California.
Ahmed denies the merits of the allegations and asserts that this is an intimidation campaign because CCDH’s “research” has gone after Musk’s social media company for allowing all manner of “disinformation superspreaders” (i.e., free speech) to flourish on the platform since the takeover.
And CCDH proudly announces itself as a “trailblazer” in what is all too often little more than a politically motivated vilification campaign against Twitter and Musk.
But then again, it could be that groups like this go after them so forcefully because of the highly embarrassing mirror held up to political centers and ideologies CCDH aligns with when the Twitter Files were published.
A “Silicon Valley bully” is how Ahmed now describes Musk, repeatedly referring to his wealth, apparently in an attempt to paint some “David vs. Goliath” picture here – as if owners of other, but “well-behaved” and falling in line, Big Tech platforms aren’t billionaires as well.
“This battle is not ours alone – it must be a collective effort by all those who believe in standing up to the powerful to establish a free and safe internet,” wrote Ahmed – but it could have easily been said by any number of Big Tech’s censorship and deplatforming victims over the years, those from the “wrong” side of the ideological divide.
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