Elon Musk Threatens to Sue the Anti-Defamation League For Defamation: ‘Looks Like We Have No Choice’

Billionaire Twitter owner Elon Musk threatened to sue the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) for defamation on Monday after he accused the organization of “destroying half the value” of his social network.

“To clear our platform’s name on the matter of anti-Semitism, it looks like we have no choice but to file a defamation lawsuit against the Anti-Defamation League … oh the irony!” wrote Musk in a post to his platform Twitter, which was recently rebranded as X.

In a series of follow-up posts, Musk claimed that the organization “would potentially be on the hook for destroying half the value of the company, so roughly $22 billion.”

“Based on what we’ve heard from advertisers, ADL seems to be responsible for most of our revenue loss,” he wrote. “Giving them 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.”

Musk went on to claim that since his acquisition of Twitter last year, “The @ADL has been trying to kill this platform by falsely accusing it & me of being anti-Semitic,” and that Twitter’s advertising revenue was now “down 60%, primarily due to pressure on advertisers by @ADL (that’s what advertisers tell us).”

“They almost succeeded in killing X/Twitter!” he continued, before vowing, “If they lose the defamation suit, we will insist that they drop the the ‘anti’ part of their name.”

In November 2022, the ADL called on “advertisers to pause Twitter spending,” citing concerns “about antisemitism and hate on the platform” since Musk’s acquisition.

The ADL criticized Musk for allowing rapper Kanye West back onto the platform after West tweeted about going “death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE,” and also criticized Twitter for laying off many of its content moderators who had previously cracked down on hateful content.

On Sunday, Musk accused the ADL of being “the biggest generators of anti-Semitism on this platform,” and argued that while “the ADL has done a lot of good work in prior decades,” it had “been overzealous in recent years & hijacked by woke mind virus.”

Musk also proposed running a poll on whether the organization should be banned from Twitter, which has sought to position itself as more free speech friendly since Musk’s acquisition.

Last week, ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt announced that he had spoken with Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino about the future of the platform and that he was “hopeful the service will improve.”

“I had a very frank + productive conversation with @LindayaX yesterday about @X, what works and what doesn’t, and where it needs to go to address hate effectively on the platform. I appreciated her reaching out and I’m hopeful the service will improve,” he tweeted. “@ADL will be vigilant and give her and @ElonMusk credit if the service gets better… and reserve the right to call them out until it does.”