Alejandra Caraballo, a transgender attorney and clinical instructor at Harvard Law School’s Cyberlaw Clinic, recently found herself at the center of a content moderation controversy on X (formerly Twitter) when her account was suspended for a few days.
What was Caraballo’s offense? Participating in spreading the alleged identity of a neo-Nazi alongside other researchers and journalists.
“The original anti-fascist researcher that uncovered the name ... they had their account suspended and the tweet thread deleted. And many of us were like ‘This is ridiculous.’ So we posted the name of the person behind the comic book, or the comic,” Caraballo recalled Thursday on Boston Public Radio. “And it was heavily censored on Twitter. People were getting locked and suspended. And it did not violate any of the terms of service.”
After those account suspensions, news outlets including Wired caught onto the story.
“It kind of backfired,” Caraballo said, noting how Musk's apparent attempt to silence critics ended up getting such media coverage. “But it ultimately resulted in Twitter changing its terms of service to include protecting the names of anonymous accounts.”
Caraballo’s account has since been reinstated, but she remains critical of X's handling of hateful content and Musk's management of the platform.
She discussed how Musk filed a lawsuit against the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a research group, which last June put out a report about how X rarely removed hateful messages or banned users who spread such material.
“Elon didn't like [the report] because it caused some of his advertisers to not want to advertise next to neo-Nazi content. And therefore he sued them,” Caraballo said.
Harvard Law School’s Cyberlaw Clinic filed an amicus brief on behalf of the Public Participation Project, urging the court to adopt an anti-SLAPP statute (an acronym meaning "strategic lawsuits against public participation"). The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press defines anti-SLAPP laws as a way to quickly dismiss lawsuits filed against a person for exercising "speech, press, assembly, petition, or association rights."
The case was dismissed on Monday.
“And the court decision was pretty strong,” Caraballo explained, “and said that it was very clear that this lawsuit was filed with the intent of punishing the speech of his critics.”
