Hey Elon: The ADL Convincing Advertisers To Run Away From Your Site Is Part Of The Free Speech You Pretend To Support

Not this shit again.

A month ago, free speech absolutist" Elon Musk sued the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) in an obvious SLAPP suit. As we said at the time, CCDH is, generally speaking, not a great organization. Their methodology is awful, and their reports are often silly. But they have a free speech right to be that awful. Notably, while Musk's lawyer originally threatened them with a defamation lawsuit, the actual lawsuit avoided any defamation claims.

And here we are a month later with something similar. Over the past few days, Elon has gone to war with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). The ADL is kinda similar to CCDH, just much larger and more well respected. While I appreciate it's purpose and mission of fighting anti-Semitism, the organization has a long history of being overly aggressive, and coming down on the wrong side of pushing for laws that would be damaging to free speech online, including stupidly attacking Section 230 (even though, without Section 230 it would be much more legally risky for websites to take down the type of content the ADL reasonably dislikes).

In the midst of all of this, Musk egged on a silly, idiot-driven campaign to #BanTheADL, which he can do if he wants, but kinda puts the exclamation point on how Musk's conception of free speech" on exTwitter is entirely driven by his own personal views, not any kind of principled stance.

But, then, on Monday, he went a step further. Egged on by more nonsense peddlers, Musk started talking about suing the ADL for defamation (a claim he found hilarious in his own mind, given that the organization's own name is the anti-defamation league).

But, of course, as with CCDH, there's nothing defamatory about saying that the ADL believes that there is too much hate on the platform. That's a statement of opinion, and one that Musk and his minions are free to try to disprove.

Threatening them with a defamation claim, is not the way to do it. It's abusing the power of the state to try to stifle speech over an opinion. Again, no matter what you think of the ADL (and, as noted above, I have lots of problems with the organization), it has every right to state its opinion. That's free speech.

Of course, this is Elon we're talking about, so it can (and will) always get dumber. Soon after saying he would sue, he claimed that the ADL would potentially be on the hook for destroying half the value of the company, so roughly $22 billion." And then backs down a bit and claims that (lol) giving them the maximum benefit of the doubt, I don't see any scenario where they're responsible for less than 10% of the value destruction, so ~$4 billion."

And then he does the dumb thing he does all the time where he gets excited for discovery, even though discovery does not work the way he thinks it does.

So, first of all, math genius, if $4 billion is 10% of the value destruction," that means Elon is actually saying that $40 billion in value has been destroyed since he purchased the company, which would place the current value at $4 billion. But... I'm guessing he's just confused and means 10% of the overall value of the company. Or that he's just not that smart.

But, either way that's not how any of this works. At all. If the ADL is convincing advertisers not to advertise on exTwitter, that's their free speech in the marketplace of ideas. And if that speech caused advertisers to bail, that means that Elon is losing in the marketplace of ideas. If you actually believe in free speech, you don't go sue over that. You respond with your own speech and do your best.

Second, if businesses choose not to do business with you, that's their free association rights as well. You don't get to just sue some random 3rd party for calling out your bullshit. Imagine what kind of world we'd live in if convincing companies not to do business with some other company was legally actionable? That would be ridiculous. In that world, Zuckerberg could sue Musk for making fun of Threads and potentially driving away traffic. Or Substack could sue Musk for lying about Substack and trying to drive users away from that site.

But that's not how any of this works.

Unless there's some secret hidden defamatory statement from the ADL about Twitter, which I highly doubt, the only thing that Musk and exTwitter can claim is that they disagree with the ADL's opinion that exTwitter has become a haven for hate and anti-semitism. But... that's a difference of opinion, and that's not defamatory. Furthermore, substantial truth is a defense to defamation as well, and the ADL can easily show tons of anti-semitic tweets on the platform.

Again, Musk's lawyers know this. I'm not sure Musk does, or if he's just being egged on by the absolute worst people who he's decided he has to play up to.

I'm sorry that Musk can't accept that he's losing in the marketplace of ideas, but it's pretty fucking hypocritical to claim you want your site to be the main venue for the marketplace of ideas, and then sue those who bested you in that marketplace.