Center for Countering Digital Hate: Ending 'disinformation' while taking aim at Musk, conservatives

This story is the fourth in a four-part series this month by Just the News on watchdogs who promote censorship.

On Nov. 4, one day prior to the 2024 presidential election, a headline on the increasingly left-leaning news aggregating site The Drudge Report screamed: “Misleading claims have been viewed more than 2 billion times on X.”

The headline linked to a CNN story based on an analysis by the Center for Countering Digital Hate, the British-American nonprofit whose stated purpose is to stop the spread of disinformation and hate speech and that has targeted liberals but appears more intent on the so-called "de-platforming" of conservative-leaning thought leaders and news outlets. 

The story is based on analysis from the group's researchers of 87 posts on X by the social media site's owner, Elon Musk, the libertarian-minded billionaire entrepreneur who backed Republican Donald Trump in his Nov. 5 presidential victory. The researchers found the election-related posts to be “false” or “misleading."

In this final installment of a four-part series on the so-called Censorship Industrial Complex, Just the News takes a look at the Center for Countering Digital Hate, perhaps lesser known than media watchdogs NewsGuard and Media Matters for America, but nevertheless powerful in helping decide what information reaches American news-media consumers. 

Magic Words

Though the Drudge website linked to a CNN story, the study was also picked up by a dozen other outlets, including Reuters, NBC News and The Washington Post, all of which reported the CCDH findings as though they were unimpeachable. Such conclusions are frequently reached when the legacy media reports anything with the magic words “study” or “research” attached – as long as the results fit the progressive narrative.

But some of Musk’s posts highlighted by the CCDH as false contained verified statistics, and many were his opinion or a prediction, so only time will tell whether at least some are either factual or misleading. 

The CCDH typically uses reliably left-wing “fact-checkers” and “experts” to tag claims it dislikes as falsehoods (and to defend open immigration, it uses the libertarian Cato Institute).

“If the Democratic Party big government machine wins this election, they will ban voter ID nationwide, not just in California,” is one example of a highlighted post by Musk. To prove Musk wrong, the CCDH fact-check says that 36 states require voters to show some form of ID and the 14 others use “other methods to verify the identity of voters.”

To boost its assertion, the CCDH cites DW.com, a left-of-center website operated by an international broadcaster in Germany that acknowledges that it does not dispute a story by The New York Post stating “welfare offices in 49 states are handing out voter registration applications to illegal aliens,” but adds that there’s “no evidence of widespread noncitizen voting fraud.”

"Immigrants lean left"

Musk has, in fact, warned many times via X of the dangers of an open southern U.S. border, opining that most of those who enter the country will be Democrat voters at some point, hence the party has an incentive to allow illegal immigration. The CCDH says Musk is wrong because it takes years for immigrants to become U.S. citizens with voting rights and because there is no guarantee who they would vote for.

Neither of those assertions make Musk’s predictions or opinions incorrect, just different from the approved narrative. 

But the fact-checkers themselves acknowledge the inconvenient truth to Musk’s assertion: immigrants from Mexico and most other countries vote Democrat more than Republican, though you’d not know that without clicking the proper footnote leading to a different footnote that finally contains some actual data.

The CCDH largely relies on Pulitzer Prize-winning Politifact, often accused of fact-checking statements made by conservatives more often than it does those made by progressives. The Politifact article footnoted by the CCDH says that “there are incidents of non-citizens voting in elections, but they are sporadic.”

So how does that square with calling posts by Musk false? And how many such incidents are too many to save "democracy"?

In its article, Politifact also notes that 3.6 million people who entered the country illegally were removed, returned or expelled under Democratic President Joe Biden, that voting illegally “carries serious risks,” that would-be voters sign a form declaring that they are citizens and that states “can check databases” – if they choose to do so. 

And, as noted, the article also says Musk is wrong to assume that when an immigrant votes, they’ll be doing so for a Democrat, though Politifact’s own data says “there is some evidence that immigrants lean left.”

None of this means that Musk’s predictions and opinions are false, thus Politifact – known for tagging grossly false statements as "Pants On Fire" – quotes an immigration expert who says that his claims of Democrats importing voters are “ludicrously untrue” and that “there is zero evidence that immigration has harmed Republican Party prospects.”

The conclusion of Politifact’s story, one of many used by CCDH to try to debunk Musk’s posts about the Democrat Party’s lax approach to border enforcement, reads: “Immigrants cannot vote until they become citizens, a process that takes several years. We rate this statement False.”

Previous to the CCDH’s report on election misinformation on X, an outlet called the Disinformation Chronicle said it uncovered a document in which the CCDH listed “Kill Musk’s Twitter” as a top priority. 

Musk tried suing the CCDH once, and a second lawsuit or appeal is in the works, with Musk having reposted a screen shot of the related document, in which he in part wrote, "We are going after CCDH. AND their donors.”

Musk first filed a lawsuit against CCDH in July 2023, after the organization published studies with such names as “Toxic Twitter” that claimed X was a haven for hate speech, thus leading to an exodus of advertisers to the tune of multi-millions of dollars. 

Musk’s attorneys said the CCDH reports were “unsubstantiated” and “incorrect,” and that the CCDH was engaging in a “scare campaign” to discourage companies from buying ads.

The lawsuit described the CCDH and CCDH UK as “activist organizations masquerading as research agencies, funded and supported by unknown organizations, individuals and potentially even foreign governments with ties to legacy media companies.”

The lawsuit notes that in 2021 the CCDH published its “Disinformation Dozen” that targeted 12 people who were critical of COVID-19 protocols and of the approved narrative surrounding the pandemic, and followed that up with “The Toxic Ten” that took aim at publications that challenged the manmade climate-change narrative.

A judge dismissed the lawsuit in March, ironically, largely based on the assertion that X was attempting to squash the free-speech rights of the CCDH. The CCDH was founded in London by its CEO, Imran Ahmed, known for his work as an adviser to the far-left and notoriously antisemitic British Labour party. It was largely flying under the radar until June 16, 2020.

An NBC News reporter penned an article falsely claiming that Google banned conservative outlet The Federalist from its advertising platform, thus depriving it of critical revenue. Tellingly, the reporter went so far as to publicly thank the CCDH for its “collaboration” in trying to harm The Federalist.

The piece relied on a CCDH “study” indicating that The Federalist’s coverage of the civil unrest surrounding the May 25, 2020, killing of George Floyd at the hands of white cops in Minneapolis was racist because it focused on rioters and looters rather than peaceful protesters. 

Just as journalists rush to harass Fox News advertisers at each perceived transgression, the NBC News reporter alerted Google of the study and demanded to know why it was helping The Federalist sell ads (as Google does with thousands of websites).

Then, NBC News reported that the giant search engine had stopped the practice, only for Google to contradict the reporter later (Google merely asked The Federalist to shut down its comments section, which it did).

Not about free speech

Then The Federalist published a response to the controversy headlined: "Corporate Media Wants To Silence The Federalist Because It Can't Compete.”

“In an apparent collaboration with a leftist activist group from the United Kingdom, the eerily named “Verification Unit” of NBC News lobbied Google to demonetize the website you’re reading right now,” The Federalist wrote. “A producer with the NBC News Verification Unit, bragged about getting The Federalist demonetized by having Google remove its ability to make money off its ad platform. Unfortunately, this turned out to be the exact sort of ‘fake news’ (NBC News) and the CCDH claim to fight.”

“Despite the clever naming of activist groups like the CCDH, this isn’t about ‘hate’ speech, which these days is anything that goes against the current claims of radical leftist neo-Marxists,” The Federalist continued. "It also isn’t about free speech. This is the left’s latest attempt to rig a battle of ideas that, despite numerous advantages, it’s still losing.  It’s about who can say what, in what way, about whom, and which groups The Anointed have declared to be strictly ‘off-limits’.”

Since the dustup with The Federalist, and with X, the CCDH has actually grown in stature by expanding into the U.S. as a 501(c)(3) charitable organization, allowing it to raise funds and operate in the U.S.

Last year, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, sent a letter to Ahmed asking him how and to what extent the CCDH is involved in the Executive Branch’s effort to coerce and collude with companies to censor speech. Jordan asked Ahmed to supply documents and communications regarding interactions with the U.S. government and social-media companies, and to disclose its funding.

In a press release about Jordan’s ongoing investigation is a link to an article from Breitbart News stating the CCDH is partially funded by “a shadowy Swiss investment group that is funding communist China’s bid for global dominance” called Oak Foundation. 

“The foundation funds a wide variety of left-wing causes, including efforts opposing the enforcement of U.S. immigration laws, voter registration and mobilization efforts for Democrat-leaning demographic groups, and a broad spread of left-wing environmental groups,” Breitbart News reported.

The Oak Foundation did not respond to a request for comment from Just the News, who has not been able to verify the underlying allegations.

 The CCDH responded to Jordan’s request with a letter from an attorney who noted that Ahmed wasn’t one-sided, because he was invited by Trump’s special envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism.

The attorney acknowledged that the CCDH “seeks to communicate robustly and candidly with social media companies,” and highlighted a meeting between Ahmed and Microsoft CEO Linda Yaccarino. The letter states that the CCDH is funded entirely by private donors and has never received money from the U.S. government.

“Please be assured that CCDH will not be dissuaded from pursuing its vital mission by litigation, governmental inquiry, or public pressure,” the letter reads.

Thus, in August last year, Jordan subpoenaed the CCDH on the grounds that the House of Representatives has jurisdiction over “issues related to the violation of civil liberties of citizens of the United States.”  

The CCDH did not provide responses to the following questions by Just the News:

• Are there examples of the CCDH labeling liberal speech as “hate speech,” or does it only focus on speech emanating from the right?
• Why are posts about alleged fraud in elections deemed “hate” speech?
• Why were accurate stories about some rioting at BLM riots considered “hate” speech?
• Why are posts that challenge the narrative about man-made climate change or COVID-19 protocols considered “hate” speech?
• Has the CCDH complied with Congressman Jim Jordan’s subpoena and supplied information regarding your funding and other information about your organization?
• Can you please name your largest donors? Does the CCDH get government funding from any country? If so, which ones?

Click here, here and here for the previous installments of this publication’s series on Big Censorship.

 Paul Bond is a veteran journalist. You can follow him on X @WriterPaulBond.