Elon Musk slapped with scathing jibe by Ripple CTO as X loses key legal battle

David Schwartz, the CTO of Ripple, a real-time gross settlement system, currency exchange and remittance network, Tuesday took a jab at tech mogul Elon Musk.

Schwartz shared a screengrab of a court ruling in the case lodged by Elon Musk’s X, formerly Twitter, against the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a nonprofit, in July 2023 to roast the Tesla boss.

X filed a lawsuit, accusing CCDH of launching a “scare campaign” against X for a sharp increase in the number of hate posts, which drove away advertisers.

X Corp’s lawyers in their pleadings urged the court to order CCDH to cough up “at least $10 million”.

To this, the judge said this fine would “torpedo the operations of the small non-profit,” thus also forbidding others from raising a voice against X.

Schwartz picked apart Musk, claiming the X –owner has a “comically narrow understanding of the scope of freedom of speech” and calling the California federal judge’s ruling “shocking.”

Schwartz dubbed Musk as a “self-proclaimed defender of free speech” because he tried to have the court fine CCDH for challenging X and for posts published on the social media website. “Nobody could have predicted this,” Schwartz underscored.

“Musk’s lawsuit shows that his definition of free speech is pretty subjective, and he is trying to get the court to accept it and make a verdict on its basis,” Ripple top executive stressed.

CCDH blamed X for allowing oodles of hate speech posts to make it to the platform.

Judge Charles Breyer stated that this “case is about punishing the Defendants for their speech” as he dismissed the case.

“While Elon claims to believe in freedom of speech, his own speech and lawsuits show that his understanding of the scope of freedom of speech is comically narrow. It's easy to believe in freedom of speech if you think it includes almost nothing. (Read the ruling, it's shocking.),” David "JoelKatz" Schwartz posted on X.