X asks Ninth Circuit to revive data-scraping suit against hate speech monitor

Filed 1h ago · Via Courthouse News · The Buffoon Desk

THIS STORY IS SCORED

Fig Leaf Rag

Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: Michael Rivera · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

X asked a Ninth Circuit panel to revive its suit against the Center for Countering Digital Hate, arguing the nonprofit's reports on platform content cost X millions in ad revenue through what its lawyer called invasion of privacy and breach of terms of service rather than a free speech dispute.

Judges Miller, Hurwitz and Sung pressed X's attorney on causation and on how scraping public posts anyone could view amounts to a security breach, while also doubting a Computer Fraud and Abuse Act claim built on a climate foundation sharing its own data-access credentials.

The center's attorney argued the suit exists to punish speech, echoing the lower court judge who dismissed the case in 2024 after writing that the complaint was 'unabashedly and vociferously' about silencing the nonprofit.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

If somebody stands on the public sidewalk and counts the junk in your front yard, you can sue him, but you'd better not tell the judge he broke into your house. X put its posts out where anybody could read them, and now it wants three judges to call reading them a burglary. The lower court already saw what this suit was for, and from the sound of the questions, this panel isn't squinting either.

Source: Read the original at Courthouse News → Scored: Fig Leaf Rag · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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